What is Decentraland... and what does it have to do with NFTs? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 228 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 12, 2022

What is Decentraland... and what does it have to do with NFTs?

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

Ever wondered what people actually refer to, when they talk about interacting with each other in virtual reality?

It takes many forms, and one of them is Decentraland. It's a virtual world that you can log in from your browser. Your can create your own avatar, and walk around, check out the entire world, and interact with other people's avatars.

It's a surprisingly rich experience actually. There are virtual concerts, art shows, and homes you can live in and decorate.

What makes Decentraland special is that it operates on the blockchain. Ownership of items and your avatar is recorded onit. The users own all the things and the world they live in.

And that's where NFTs come in. People want to make their avatars special, and for many that means showing off what items they can afford. An interesting way that Decentraland catered to that was a virtual fashion show, where brands like Dolce Gabbana or Tommy Hilfiger were selling their clothes as NFTs.

Playing it is free though - but you do have to connect through a crypto wallet. Check out course 6 on cryptohunt.it for a detailed tutorial.

We hope you enjoy the experience - VR might be here to stay!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Barbie is now an NFT - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 227 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 11, 2022

Barbie is now an NFT

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

Barbie, the iconic plastic doll that lives in hundreds of millions of kids' toy collections is now also an NFT.

What the heck? Has Barbie's maker, Mattel, completely forgotten who their target audience is?

Not so fast! Like any iconic brand and product, Barbie has evolved in the last couple of years to somewhat of a collector's item. Vintage barbies are scoring record prices, and Mattel has tapped into the market by releasing high-end barbie versions in collaboration with fashion brand KITH, which were sold for hundreds of dollars each.

Makes sense now? Every luxury and collectible item brand these days is trying to get into the well-funded crypto space. And so Barbie was reborn as an NFT collection designed by French luxury brand Balmain, who provided the digital clothing which looks like something you'd otherwise only expect at a fashion show.

And of course: People paid tens of thousands for those. We've come far from Barbie just being a normal toy.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How Ray Ban is betting on the Metaverse with virtual sunglasses - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 226 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 10, 2022

How Ray Ban is betting on the Metaverse with virtual sunglasses

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

Remember the sunglasses Tom Cruise wears in his role as Maverick in Top Gun or those that President Biden sports when he's out and about?

Those are Ray Ban's famous Aviator model. And now the company has gone digital: Last year they were the first to sell a virtual version of the popular Aviators as an NFT.

Sounds silly? Not so fast, this is part of a larger strategy. Ray Ban, who've also partnered with Facebook, is betting heavily on virtual reality - makes sense if you think about it: If people hang out more in VR, they'll want to show off the brands they wear just as they do in real life. And there are a few things more iconic than those sunglasses.

Certainly a long shot, but we think they are onto something.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are "NFTiffs", the crypto-related jewelry from Tiffany? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 225 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 09, 2022

What are "NFTiffs", the crypto-related jewelry from Tiffany?

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

Luxury jewelry brand Tiffany just released real jewelry that is inspired by Cryptopunks, the famous NFT collection.

You may remember these Cryptopunks: They were the first NFT collection that became popular, because the 10,000 pixelated images resembling punk faces became a cultural phenomenon... and very expensive.

Now Tiffany is making up to 250 jewelry pieces, each looking like its corresponding Cryptopunk. The twist? Only a Cryptopunk's owner can order them.

Why is that? Well, the thing is that those owners technically own the copyright to their punks. So Tiffany can't just sell them to anyone. And priced at $50,000 each, the NFTiffs are definitely not cheap. And as you may have guessed already - they sold out all of them immediatly and made a sweet $12.5M in revenue.

Of course, you've also likely noticed what is really going on here. Tiffany is trying to sell to an audience that has money and is motivated to show it off. It's all just clever marketing.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are the Nike’s Cryptokick sneakers? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 224 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 08, 2022

What are the Nike’s Cryptokick sneakers?

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain English.

This week, we are taking a deeper look at how brands are tapping into crypto culture. First up: Nike and their Cryptokicks.

Cryptokicks were a collection of 20,000 virtual sneakers that Nike sold earlier this year. You heard that right - not actual sneakers you can wear, but digital sneakers.

So why would anyone want those? It helps to understand the collectible sneaker market a little bit. For years, people have been collecting real Nike sneakers - not to wear them, but to own them as collectibles.

As the sneaker market heated up, so did the NFT market. And Nike saw an opportunity to combine the two. After all, why not go all digital if the sneaker wasn't going to be worn anyhow?

And it worked. One of Nike Cryptokicks was sold for $134,000.

That was Cryptokicks! And tomorrow we'll talk about crypto-inspired jewelry that Tiffany recently released.

And if you want to hear all 5 episodes for this week already now: Consider supporting us on Patreon where you get early access - check out patreon.com/cryptoinplainenglish

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is "Flippening"? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 223 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 05, 2022

What is "Flippening"?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Ever hear a crypto enthusiast get excited about an event they call "flippening"? Let us break it down for you!

Flippening simply refers to a possible time in the future when Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin in total market capitalization.

Right now, the total amount of money invested in Ethereum is roughly half of that invested in Bitcoin. And so the question is: Will that actually ever happen?

It looks like it might, but it's a long road for Ethereum as an incumbent. Bitcoin dropped from dominating 70% of the crypto market share in early 2020 to just 45%. Meanwhile, Ethereum went from 8% to about 20%.

But there are a lot of other projects that may nib at both their heels. Things are going up and down constantly - but keep an eye on this. It'll give you an understanding of how much the market values each cryptocurrency in relation to all the others.

Let’s say the Flippening does happen… When would that be: Your guess is as good as ours! It’s very hard to predict, but send us your thoughts to podcast@cryptohunt.it if you want to make a guess and we’ll feature you in future episode.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the Howey Test? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 222 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 04, 2022

What is the Howey Test?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

You've probably just listened to yesterday's episode on Uniswap, the decentralized crypto exchange that is looking into paying the holders of their UNI token a portion of their earnings.

Enter the "Howey test"! Named after the defendant in a United States Supreme Court case from 1946, it is a set of questions that determines if a transaction is an "investment contract".

And that is a very important classification. One of the governments' jobs is to keep its citizens safe, and that includes safety from investment scams. They do this by forcing those offering investments to disclose a lot of information and register their business with the authorities.

As you know, we are a huge fan of learning and doing your own research, and that's exactly what these rules help with, making it harder for people to hide important information. It also forces them to comply with the law.

The technical term is "security". Once such an investment has been classified as a security by applying the Howie test, there is a lot that has to be done and provided by the issuer.

And that's exactly at stake here with Uniswap. As soon as they hand out money to token holders, the US government is almost certainly going to classify the UNI token as a security and enforce all the requirements that come with that. For Uniswap, that may be impossible, or just not worth doing and for that reason alone they might decide to cancel this proposal, at the risk of angering their token holders.

And now that you understand the background, keep an eye on the story in the coming days! It'll get interesting!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Uniswap (UNI) and why has it been in the news lately? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 221 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 03, 2022

What is Uniswap (UNI) and why has it been in the news lately?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Lately, one company was in the news quite a bit. And that is Uniswap. Why is that and what do they do?

Uniswap is a decentralized crypto exchange. That means you can swap one cryptocurrency for another, hence the latter part of the name. And "uni"? Well, that comes from unicorn, the brand animal of the company.

And it's not really a traditional company, it is governed by its users through a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization.

Let's break it all down!

When you go to Uniswap, the site lets you connect your wallet to exchange one crypto for another. It is a decentralized exchange, because there are no middlemen. Code on the blockchain executes all the trades for you.

Uniswap takes a small fee, but in total that made the company a whopping $40m in 2021.

And the future of what happens with that is now under discussion. Uniswap gives the holders of their UNI token voting rights in company decisions, and a new proposal to distribute the companies income to those token holders has just been released. This would be similar to what a dividend does for stock.

Sounds great for the token holders? Yes and no - because there are legal consequences. That's why Uniswap is in the news, and we'll dive into that in tomorrow's episode about the ominous "Howey test"

Oh, and in case you missed it yesterday - we just started a Patreon account for this podcast so you can get tomorrow’s "Howey Test" Episode already now! If you enjoy this show every day please consider supporting us on patreon.com/crytptoinplainenglish.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Episode 220: How many active wallets are there on Bitcoin and Ethereum? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 220 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 02, 2022

Episode 220: How many active wallets are there on Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Last time we tried to answer the question of: How many people are actually using Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest crypto currencies?

We did that by looking at daily transactions. Today, we'll continue, and we are looking at something a little different: How many daily active wallets there are.

Think about it this way: You have a real wallet, and you use it to buy things once a day, let's say lunch. That's one wallet and one transaction. But your neighbor eats out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner - three transactions, but still just one wallet.

That's why daily active wallets are an interesting perspective to take, because they represent more accurately how many actual users there are on these blockchains.

And the story is interesting: Ethereum was lagging behind Bitcoin in the beginning, but shot up like a rocket almost immediately. It has since caught up with Bitcoin, and has roughly the same 800,000 daily active wallets now.

So, to summarize today and yesterday - Ethereum caught up in numbers of wallets, but has 5x more transactions. People are using it more actively, building decentralized apps, buying NFTs, etc. - all which is not possible with Bitcoin.

Now go out and do your own research! Just keep in mind one little caveat: While you and your neighbor will probably not carry around more than one wallet, creating those on a blockchain is easy and can be automated. So not every wallet also means there is a new individual behind it.

And one more thing: We just started a patreon account for this podcast. If you enjoy this show every day consider supporting us on patreon.com/crytptoinplainenglish.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How many people actually use Bitcoin and Ethereum daily? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 219 - by cryptohunt.it Aug 01, 2022

How many people actually use Bitcoin and Ethereum daily?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Sure - many people may buy and hold Bitcoin and Ethereum as an investment, but how many people actually use it every day to move money around? One way to approximate is to look at how many transactions there are

Bitcoin averages about 250,000 daily transactions right now. How many of those are just for investment vs. using it as a digital currency is very hard to tell.

But what is very telling is the comparison with Ethereum: It sits at around 1.2 million per day, almost 5x more than Bitcoin.

And that's an interesting difference. Think about it: There is about half as much money invested in Ethereum, yet much more is happening.

The key - as avid listeners to this podcast will know by now - is that Ethereum is much more versatile, thanks to being programmable money.

And if you are comparing blockchains, transactions per day is certainly a metric that should be in your toolbox. It puts things into perspective and gives you a perspective on how actively something is used.

And tomorrow, we’ll look at a different metric trying to answer the same question: Daily active wallets. But for now, why not go out there and compare a few more blockchains' daily transactions?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 218 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 29, 2022

What is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

The Ethereum Virtual Machine - EVM in short - is Ethereum's secret sauce. But what does it actually do?

The Ethereum Virtual Machine is the software that runs Ethereum's smart contracts. And because that explanation isn't all that helpful, let's use an analogy.

Take the game of football. Football has specific rules, and - within those - you can play the game in any way you want. But there are things you need, most notably a playing field.

Those fields can be anywhere, and you can play your games on any of them as long as they are of the right size, have the right markings, etc. In other words, they have to meet a certain standard.

Those football fields are like the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The EVM is a standardized environment that allows smart contracts to run on any Ethereum computer. The smart contracts are like your football game: Computer programs that say: If this happens, do that. For example: If someone sends money here, send half of it to this other wallet that belongs to a charity.

Standardization is the magic ingredient: Just like you can play football on any standard field, the smart contracts will run on Ethereum, no matter what computer is processing them.

And that's really what made Ethereum special when it came out: The ability to do more with money than just move it from A to B. And thanks to the EVM and smart contracts, this works all the time.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is crypto shilling? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 217 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 28, 2022

What is crypto shilling?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Where there is a lot of money and a lot of desire to make it, there are always scams. And crypto is one of the most scammed areas right now.

That's why people are "crypto shilling". Shilling means that they talk well about a project to get others to buy into it. The goal is almost always to pump up the value and for them to dump their holdings, making sometimes large amounts of money.

But you won't find people just saying: "Buy my crypto". Shilling is usually much less obvious and more crafty. Influencers and celebrities may just casually talk about a coin, giving it the allure of popularity. Or people are starting to talk about how something is about to break out.

You get the point - and that's why we always say: Do your own research. You can not trust other people, no matter how much you think of their reputation.

Stay safe out there and have fun researching! Give us a visit at cryptohunt.it/projects to start.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Blockchain As A Service? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 216 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 27, 2022

What is Blockchain As A Service?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Imagine you want to create your own blockchain, one that will change the world.

And remember that blockchains are decentralized, meaning many computers participate in validating all of the transactions independently.

That means you will need to operate a bunch of your own computers until you find others to help with that.

Where do you put them? In your bedroom? Your friends' garages? All of those locations?

Well, lucky for you, big cloud computing providers like Amazon and Microsoft have anticipated your needs. They are providing "Blockchains As A Service" where you can rent and manage those resources virtually, all with the click of a button.

And that is Blockchain as a Service. Next time you run into someone dreaming of their own blockchain, tell them about it. Your friends' garage spaces will thank you.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a crypto oracle? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 215 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 26, 2022

What is a crypto oracle?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Today: Let's understand what a crypto oracle is.

Imagine you had a bet with your friend: If the temperature goes above 100 Fahrenheit next week, you get $20 from them. If it doesn't, they get $20 from you.

And you decide to do this with blockchains, so you set up a smart contract. This is a simple program, and both of you deposit $20 worth of crypto into it. It will pay the winner $40 when the time comes.

There is only one problem: The program doesn't know what temperature it is outside, because blockchains are designed to work entirely by themselves.

That's where an Oracle comes in: It is a third party data source that your smart contract can get the current temperature from.

So there you have it: An oracle is just an external data source, and hopefully one that you can rely on. And guess what - you were right, and it got really hot - and the smart contract worked. Congrats, you made $20!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Golden, and how is it trying to catalog the world’s knowledge? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 214 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 25, 2022

What is Golden, and how is it trying to catalog the world’s knowledge?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Let's end this special about Proof of Physical Work with Golden, a "decentralized canonical knowledge graph".

Is your head spinning already? Hang in there, we'll break it down.

You see, all knowledge can be broken apart into smaller pieces, and we can describe how these pieces relate to each other. That's what a canonical graph is.

For example: A banana. Banana is a thing and a type of fruit. It has certain properties, such as taste being sweet and color being yellow. You could describe every fruit using those properties and slowly build a database. And fruits are connected to other types of things - a banana grows in certain regions for example. Now you'll start describing the regions according to their properties - where they are, what their climate is, etc.

This way, we can create a connection between the entire world's knowledge and structure it in a way that is much more usable than freeform text like Wikipedia. We could find all the yellow fruits that grow in a certain climate for example.

Golden is trying to build this knowledge graph. They will reward editors with tokens whenever they add a piece to the puzzle. And you can see that there are endless amounts of those pieces - anything you can think about can be described as knowledge. And because it's on the blockchain, changes can be made and are documented openly.

Such a database doesn't exist today at scale, and hopes are that it'll fundamentally change the way we can access and process knowledge.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Pollen Mobile, and how does it try to replace wireless phone carriers? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 213 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 22, 2022

What is Pollen Mobile, and how does it try to replace wireless phone carriers?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Two episodes ago we talked about Helium, which tries to create an alternative wireless data network for internet connected devices.

Today, let's talk about Pollen, a project that is quite similar, but tries to replace the actual wireless phone carriers. Don’t confuse that with Pollen DeFi, which we covered last time!

Pollen Mobile creates network coverage through so-called flowers. Those are essentially 5G antennas that connect to your home or office internet. When someone uses your flower, you get rewarded in Pollen tokens.

And the connection couldn't be easier: Simply add or replace the SIM card in your existing phone with their "Hummingbird" SIM, and you are ready to use Pollen Mobile.

But to verify that these flowers are working well, the project has a trick up its sleeve: So called Bumblebees. Those are small devices that community volunteers use to measure signal strength and speed of the 5G "flowers" out there.

Using blockchains and tokens has a few advantages according to the company: Lower costs, because you don't have to pay for overhead like marketing and executive compensation. You might also get coverage, where traditional cell phone companies don't - simply because they decide the location is too expensive, but volunteers can easily set up antennas.

And there you have it: Blockchains might do more in the future than just move money around… They may end up replacing Verizon and AT&T.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How can blockchains democratize investment strategies? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 212 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 21, 2022

How can blockchains democratize investment strategies?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

What if you could simply tap into the investment knowledge of other crypto experts?

That's what Pollen DeFi, a community driven approach to investing is trying to do.

The idea is pretty simple: If you are great at investing, why not share your portfolio and trades with the community so they can do the same?

In return, you get rewarded with the Pollen token. That token comes from those who are subscribing to you, because you help them make trades. They convert their money to Pollen, and put it into your trading strategy.

The project is still relatively young, and of course there are very high risks involved with just blindly letting someone else invest the money for you. But we think it's a great example of how blockchains and community can come together.

Just always remember: Never invest into something you don't fully understand. As tempting as it seems, investing in crypto can mean that you lose all of your money.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How can blockchains help map out the world? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 211 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 20, 2022

How can blockchains help map out the world?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

You probably take great maps for granted: All you have to do is hop into your car, turn on Google Maps, and off you go.

There is a problem though: There are only a few companies that own all of the data. What if Google decided that navigation would suddenly cost everyone $9.99 per month?

And that's not hypothetical: If you want to use maps in your own product, Google is charging an arm and a leg, up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year even for startups.

Enter blockchains, and a project called Hivemapper.

Hivemapper's community buys a dashcam from the company, and when they are driving around to collect map data, they get rewarded with the Honey token.

And the blockchain is smart enough to increase or decrease those rewards based on where mapping is most needed.

Companies that want to use the maps buy Honey tokens and essentially send them to the mappers. And even more interesting: If there is a region they want mapped, they can pay a little more to give people a reason to drive around in it.

So - why not just have Hivemapper pay people? Why do we need a blockchain? Because it sets the rules of the game in stone, so everyone is on the same page. It also prevents the company to go the same way that Google did: Change their mind and start charging an arm and a leg.

And tomorrow, we'll talk about how this concept of rewarding community can be applied to crypto trading.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Helium (HNT) and what makes it special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 210 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 19, 2022

What is Helium (HNT) and what makes it special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

You know that we really love when blockchains actually solve a real problem. Today, let's talk about Helium!

What if, instead of using an expensive cellular plan to connect all of your devices to the internet, you could use a cheaper alternative provided by the community?

That’s the idea behind Helium, a network of everyday folks worldwide who plug Helium-compatible transmitters into their home or business internet.

Whoever wants to use that community internet connection simply needs to have a Helium-compatible device and some Helium tokens, to pay for the data they use.

The hotspot’s host then gets those "HNT" tokens as a reward for transmitting that data. They can sell those on an exchange for cash, or apply them towards their own data usage.

This also incentivizes hosts to put Hotspots where there is no coverage yet: Because if you are the first one in that location, all data goes through you, and you earn more.

That's an example of how blockchains solve a real problem and create useful incentives. And while this will not replace your cell phone provider anytime soon, it is already used in devices like Lime scooters all over the world.

And tomorrow we'll look into a similar project that wants to use blockchains to create an alternative to Google Maps.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Proof of Physical Work? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 209 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 18, 2022

What is Proof of Physical Work?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day explaining crypto. In plain English.

Today, we'll look into a relatively novel concept: Proof of Physical Work.

If you've been listening to this podcast, you have a pretty good understanding of what Proof of Work is - and don't worry if you are just tuning in now. Proof of work refers to a complex computation that crypto miners need to perform when they process transactions. In turn, they get rewarded with crypto.

But what is Proof of Physical Work then? It means that someone has to perform actual work to get rewarded, not just computations. Let's look at an example: Helium.

Helium is a blockchain that powers thousands of tiny wireless access points. Their purpose is to provide cheap and reliable internet connections to devices around the world. If you've ever zipped around a city on one of those scooters - many actually use Helium to connect to the internet, because it's much cheaper than having each equipped with a 5G phone.

Here's where Proof of Physical Work comes in: People who provide those connections attach a little box to their home network, that allows these scooters to dial into the internet. And when their connections get used, they make crypto money.

That's what Proof of Physical Work does: It incentivizes people to do physical work: Like providing internet access, or driving around and mapping out areas.

And in the next few episodes, we look at some really cool use cases in depth. Stay tuned, and until then!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why are all these crypto companies declaring bankruptcy? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 208 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 15, 2022

Why are all these crypto companies declaring bankruptcy?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

The latest crypto company to declare bankruptcy is Celsius, putting almost $5bn dollar of user deposits at risk. You may remember the name because we talked about their crumbling business a while back.

But what is happening here in general? Don’t these companies have at least enough money to weather through a crypto storm?

No, because their business models never worked. Especially those promising high returns to lenders have been playing a very dangerous game.

Here’s how they operated: They borrow money from you and promise you high returns. Then they take that money and put it in the market, say into Bitcoin. And it’s easy to promise you 20% interest if the price of Bitcoin goes up by 40%.

But that’s exactly the problem. It only works as long as prices shoot up and people keep piling money into the lending platforms. As soon as prices go down, and too many people want their money back, companies like Celsius don’t have enough money because they lost much of it in a crash: The hole is at least $1.2 billion dollars deep in their case.

So: As always - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. We think a lot more companies will crumble. Be safe out there and remember yesterday’s podcast about regulations? We might need some of that!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the role of regulation in crypto? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 207 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 14, 2022

What is the role of regulation in crypto?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

As crypto becomes more and more popular with every boom cycle, the calls for more regulation have also become louder.

But what is regulation and what influence does it have on crypto?

Regulations are laws and directives that governments put in place to influence a certain industry or section of the economy.

"But wait", you say! Crypto was supposed to be something governments can't mess with! Clearly, rules must be a bad thing!

But things are always more nuanced than they seem. Sensible regulation can be a very good thing.

Imagine laws that force the issuers of tokens to be more transparent, or force exchanges to educate people about the risks of a crypto investment. Those could prevent a lot of crypto-novices who are blinded by the potential for a quick profit from losing money.

Likewise, regulations could increase innovations. The status quo is, that many countries simply don't have any crypto regulations yet. And that means companies who want to build something in the space run the risk of being shut down or even be criminalized in the future. One example is crypto exchange FTX which relocated to Hong Kong from the United States.

Of course, regulations must still allow innovation. If they are so strict, that they simply make using or building blockchains impossible, that would swing the pendulum the other way.

And there you have it: As always, it depends. But in either case - we are sure to see much more talks about regulations in crypto.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Saga, the crypto phone? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 206 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 13, 2022

What is Saga, the crypto phone?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the world has gone mobile. There are phones with great cameras, phones that survive even construction work, phones with large screens... and now there also is a crypto phone.

Announced by the makers of Solana, the popular blockchain, the phone goes by the name of Saga and is purpose-built to make crypto easier and safer on phones.

At first, it looks like any other higher-end Android smartphone: Big display, fast hardware, and all the features you'd expect.

But it also comes with a feature that makes it safer for crypto users: A special hardware component can securely store your crypto keys and guard access to those. In theory, creating a hardware store like this will provide an extra layer of security that is very hard to breach as a hacker.

But before you get too excited, here are a few things to consider: The phone isn't shipping until at least early 2023, and it's not uncommon for projects like these to be announced under a lot of fanfare, only to quietly die.

It's also very expensive, costing $1000 dollars.

And then there is always the elephant in the room: What happens to your crypto if the phone gets destroyed or stolen, and with it your keys? We'll hold our breath on that one until the makers explain it in more depth.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why Bitcoin will never change - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 205 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 12, 2022

Why Bitcoin will never change

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Bitcoin has been one of the most influential technologies we've seen in a long time. And despite being the very first cryptocurrency, it has a surprisingly complex set of features as well.

But there are problems too. If you've followed this podcast, you know that we don't like how Bitcoin's "Proof of work" destroys the planet and makes it too slow for everyday transactions.

But every tech product changes, right? Over time, programmers figure out better ways of running things, and so even the most inefficient blockchain can evolve, no?

Unfortunately, Bitcoin is very unlikely to change. Let's find out why it's different from all the other software out there.

It's not that Bitcoin as a technology couldn't evolve in theory. The answer lies in the economics, as always. Bitcoin mining requires special hardware investments that miners have made in hopes of returning a profit. Shaking up the way Bitcoin works - for example by using a less energy-consuming method of mining - would mean they paid money for nothing.

And there you have it: Because a lot of people are way to invested in Bitcoin the way it is, they will very unlikely allow it to change for better.

Unfortunately, we think. Bitcoin has the potential to be much more, but likely never will.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How an exchange bankruptcy can wipe out your crypto portfolio - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 204 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 11, 2022

How an exchange bankruptcy can wipe out your crypto portfolio

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Do you have crypto sitting in your account with a crypto exchange? It may not be as safe there as you think it is.

That comes as a surprise to you? No wonder, because until recently, exchanges weren’t required to highlight this type of risk. So let’s understand what is going on.

There are two ways to own crypto. Traditionally, you would have your own wallet, and manage the private keys to it directly. Without those, nobody can touch your holdings.

But those keys are a pain to deal with. They are impossible to memorize and easy to lose - and many fortunes have indeed been lost. That’s why many companies, such as exchanges said: Let’s just manage those for you. All you need is an account with us, and we save the private keys.

There is one big problem though: That means they are in possession of your crypto. In the case of an exchange going bankrupt, that has big consequences. Bankruptcy is a process meant to protect those, that a failing company owes money to. When it is initiated, all operations and funds are frozen, with the goal to repay debts.

But there is a pecking order - first, banks and other institutions will get money back… and you are at the very end of that list. By the time they get to you, your crypto will very likely have gone to satisfy a debt to someone much higher on the list. No more money for you.

There you have it - “not your keys, not your crypto” as they say. But the good news is that many exchanges offer wallets that you truly own, and money transfers are very easy. Check those out, you might thank us later!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Regenerative Finance applied: Carbon Credits on the blockchain - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 203 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 08, 2022

Regenerative Finance applied: Carbon Credits on the blockchain

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Last episode, we introduced you to the concept of Regenerative Finance: Trying to use money as a tool to do good, rather than just make amassing it the ultimate goal. When money flows, it can move things, when it sits in someone’s account, it won’t.

It's an ambitious and grand idea, but some projects are already trying to make it happen. One such area is carbon credits.

Carbon credits have existed for a long time. The idea is that anyone, usually a company, can make the deliberate decision to be greener than they need to be. For example, they could invest in solar, and go above and beyond to be green. The company can then certify their action as a carbon credit and sell it to, say, Shell. That makes Shell feel a little better about destroying our planet, and they get to tell the media a nice story.

What is happening here is essentially that carbon credits wrap positive impact into financial incentives that have an open market. This makes it attractive for companies to do good.

Enter blockchains: For the first time in history, we, the people and builder, have control over the flow of money. This is significant, because we don't need to wait for governments to slowly take action, assuming they ever will. A project called Toucan for example, helps create carbon credits as tokens - and anyone who's moving money around blockchains or building Web3 apps can decide to put money there.

Yes - carbon credits are a complex thing, and we agree with you: Maybe Shell shouldn't get away with polluting our planet in the first place. But we are where we are, so it's great to see how blockchain technology puts the action back into our hands.

And with that, we wish you a great weekend! Go and participate in a project like Toucan!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Regenerative Finance (ReFi)? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 202 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 07, 2022

What is Regenerative Finance (ReFi)?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's talk about Regenerative Finance and what it has to do with crypto.

The term Regenerative Finance refers to a set of ideas that look at money as a tool to drive positive change rather than something to accumulate.

Let us explain: Traditionally, money in capitalism has always played the role as the ultimate reward, the outcome one strives for. Companies optimize for profits, people for wealth. And that has led to a world where money accumulates with fewer and fewer people, and companies will do anything to make a buck.

Regenerative finance is trying to turn this on its head: Money's job is only to get circulated to achieve something, and the ultimate goal is to create sustainable systems.

Take investing for example. Regenerative Finance investment funds would not invest in a company that makes a lot of money, they would invest in the company that plants the most trees or employs the most people.

Sounds very idealistic? It certainly is a new idea, but that's where crypto comes in. If you want to shape how money gets used, it makes sense to create that money to set incentives. And that's exactly why certain blockchains exist: To use the capital they created to foster outcomes that are non-monetary.

Thanks for taking a step into new ideas with us - and we'll be right back tomorrow!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why can you trade crypto 24/7? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 201 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 06, 2022

Why can you trade crypto 24/7?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you’ve ever traded stock, you’ve likely encountered an interesting phenomenon: The markets are only open during weekdays at business hours.

Crypto on the other hand is traded 24/7, no interruptions at all.

Why is this? Let’s dive into some of the history.

In the past, stock markets like the New York Stock Exchange, were operated by people, not computers. And people need to go home for dinner and spend weekends with their families. That’s why trading hours existed originally.

But even now, with software doing all the work, those trading hours remain. Part is tradition, but part is also that it reduces crazy price swings as investors react to news. Companies usually announce big things after hours, and the stock market can take a little bit of time to think about those before opening. That helps calm minds.

The reason this doesn’t apply to crypto is easy to understand: Crypto is entirely more modern. It is all just technology that operates anytime. And because things are just a few lines of code away, anyone can create trading platforms and decide to be open for business 24/7.

So there you have it - the stranger thing is actually that stock markets open and close - because it seems natural nowadays that any market would be open 24/7.

Happy trading!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Is Bitcoin a hedge against inflation? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 200 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 05, 2022

Is Bitcoin a hedge against inflation?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you've thought recently that everything is getting more expensive, you are not wrong: Inflation - which is the loss of purchase power of your real-world currency, is at decades-long high.

One often heard claim is that an investment in Bitcoin can offset those losses. But is that really true?

First, let's see where this claim comes from. The year was 2008, and governments were printing money to bail out big banks. That drove inflation up high, and Bitcoin was most likely conceived in protest of governments having that ability.

But it wasn't created to defend the Dollar or Euro against inflation. Instead, the idea was to inflation-proof Bitcoin itself by giving it a limited amount of Bitcoins that could ever exist - and no government could mess with that.

That might have worked in a hypothetical world where Bitcoin became the main currency. But the reality is: All of crypto together doesn't even make up for half the value of Apple. Bitcoin isn’t used like money.

And so, instead of becoming our money, Bitcoin is just another very risky asset. And when inflation is high, central banks raise interest rates, which in turn destroys the value of the riskiest assets the most.

You see: Bitcoin and crypto in general aren't just bad at protecting anyone from inflation, recently they would have even accelerated one's losses.

It turns out, the claims are not true - and people just misunderstood why Bitcoin was created in the first place.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a zk rollup? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 199 - by cryptohunt.it Jul 01, 2022

What is a zk rollup?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today we’re going to talk about zk rollups, which several blockchains use to solve the problems of slow speeds during heavy usage.

So, what is zk or zero-knowledge? Let’s start with an analogy first.

Let’s say that you’re sending applications to multiple universities. Each requires a unique essay for each university.

You’re running close to the application deadline, so you quickly seal each envelope and rush out the door to get to the mailbox.

And then it hits you, did you put the correct essay for each college in the right envelope?

You don’t have time to double-check, but what if you could verify that each essay is in the correct envelope without opening it?

And that is what a zk-rollup, or zero-knowledge rollup, can do on a blockchain. It packages up a large amount of transactions into a verifiable envelope.

This one “envelope” makes it possible for that large group of transactions to be added all at once on a blockchain, like Ethereum.

That reduction in the amount of pending transactions frees up space for other transactions, saves money since less transactions need to be validated and this also leads to faster transaction times, even when a network is slammed with activity.

And what about those application envelopes? We are sorry but there is no other way than just opening each one to check if you made things right.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What do you want to learn? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 198 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 30, 2022

What do you want to learn?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today we do something different. After 197 episodes we would love to ask you three questions?

Number 1: How do you like this podcast? Did you learn some basics? Did you sign up for cryptohunt our "duolingo style" learning plattform for crypto? We would love to hear from you either per email at podcast@cryptohunt.it or even better with a little review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

This would help us a lot and would mean the world to us!

And then 2nd - what would you like to hear us break down for you? Is there a term that you do not understand, is there a concept that you would like to learn more about? Send us an email also to podcast@cryptohunt.it and we can discuss in a future episode!

And then last but not least: It would be just awesome if you could press pause right now and share this crypto in plain english podcast with one of your friends or friends groups on Whatsapp, Telegram or SMS. Thanks in advance!

And with that: We will come back to the regular programming tomorrow - until then, keep learning - in plain english!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Ethereum’s upcoming Beacon Chain? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 197 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 29, 2022

What is Ethereum’s upcoming Beacon Chain?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

This time, we’re going to talk about Ethereum’s Beacon Chain. Sounds funny, but it’s serious business - it is supposed to help solve the scalability problems Ethereum suffers from.

Right now, Ethereum is like a busy airport with millions of travelers arriving. Those travelers, which are the equivalent of blockchain transactions, are all crowding up in front of a single customs agent. Even worse, the agent takes bribes, so whoever pays most, gets to go first. This is what makes Ethereum’s transactions so expensive in addition to being slow.

But now, let’s say you’ve recently returned from traveling internationally, and you need to get through the very busy customs section at that airport. Suddenly, over the noise of the crowd, you hear a new customs supervisor start organizing everyone.

The supervisor divides the crowd into groups and then points each group to the shortest line in front of other agents in booths on the other side of the room.

This agent is doing the job of Ethereum’s Beacon Chain, which is designed to route transactions between Ethereum’s upcoming “shard chains”. Think of those as Ethereum going from one customs agent to many.

And that’s what the Beacon Chain does. When in effect, it may actually solve the things we criticize so often about Ethereum: Slow and expensive transactions that are only for the wealthy.

And when will that happen? Unfortunately, your guess is as good as ours. The date has been pushed out so many times, we can’t even count anymore.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Sharding? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 196 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 28, 2022

What is Sharding?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about “sharding”, which is one way that blockchains are looking to solve scalability issues.

High scalability allows a blockchain to efficiently process transactions, even when its number of users increases.

Sharding is one way to do this. Instead of relying on a single blockchain to process all transactions at once, transactions are divided among several chains, or “shards”, that process smaller batches of transactions at the same time.

Think about sharding like checkout lines at a grocery store. If there was only one cashier and hundreds of customers, many of those customers would have to wait forever and get frustrated.

Sharding allows blockchains to have multiple cashiers, or chains, available to process those transactions. Each register is also connected to a central system that coordinates and records the transactions from the individual cashiers.

In practice, a user’s transaction will be processed automatically on the least busy shard while still getting the benefits of using that blockchain through the central system. Think of it like standing in the shortest line.

The best thing: To the user, this all happens transparently. All they notice is that things are transacting very fast.

This is exciting news for blockchains like Ethereum, which will soon transition to a sharding system run by “The Beacon Chain”. The Beacon Chain will coordinate and combine the transactions between Ethereum’s shard chains when they are hopefully released sometime in 2023.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol)? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 195 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 27, 2022

What is POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol)?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take a look at POAPs - what they are and why they were invented.

POAP stands for “Proof of Attendance Protocol” which is a technology that was created to give badges to people who attend a conference. Those badges are recorded on the blockchain, which makes them verifiable for everyone.

Why would anyone want such a thing? Well, think of the bigger picture. Having attended a conference, webinar, or university class may signal that you have a certain expertise. But people often claim they attended something, when in fact they didn’t.

POAPs make that impossible because the blockchain record can’t be faked and only be created by the organizer.

Technology in search of a problem or the future of credentials and diplomas? As always, we’ll let you be the judge.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a crypto “degen”? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 194 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 24, 2022

What is a crypto “degen”?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

“Degen”, short for “Degenerate” was originally used as a negative term describing inexperienced gamblers who’d bet large amounts of money on single bets in the hope of striking it big.

You may have also come across it browsing Reddit’s “Wallstreetbets”, the social media forum where people talk about risky investments in the stock market.

In the crypto scene though, this term has actually become a positive one: It celebrates those people who make wild bets on crypto markets and getting rewarded for the risk they took with large payouts.

And now that you know what a “Degen” is in the crypto context, we should look a little into the culture surrounding the term. A lot of crypto’s value explosion, especially for meme coins like Shiba Inu, can be traced back to influencer marketing. Celebrating risky investments is part of that narrative - and remember: This only works as long as things go up.

Ask yourself: Why do people praise me for taking a win-or-lose position? What do they have to gain?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is CeFi (Centralized Finance) and does it exist in crypto? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 193 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 23, 2022

What is CeFi (Centralized Finance) and does it exist in crypto?

Welcome to our cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

CeFi, short for “Centralized Finance”, refers to a form of banking or trading where your money is either held by a centralized organization, or passes through it.

Traditionally, this concept obviously applies to the existing financial system: Banks, stock exchanges, etc. are all centralized. But you’d be surprised to hear: It also exists in a world that strives to be decentralized: Crypto!

The thing is: When you buy crypto through an exchange like Coinbase, that’s CeFi, because there is still a company aggregating all the business and doing all the work. The same for stable tokens that have a reserve managed by a single entity, like USDC. Or those lending portals like Celsius that made negative headlines recently.

And, ideology aside, that isn’t a bad thing per se. Coinbase can offer you free token swaps because they technically don’t buy or sell anything. They just move things around in an internal account. And managing a stablecoin reserve through a single entity allows that company to do all the regulatory and compliance work that helps with building consumer trust.

But it could be a bad thing when that organization doesn’t mean well or is incompetent. In the case of Celsius for example, they locked all customer withdrawals. So you are exposed to arbitrary decisions those companies make about your money.

As you see… there are pros and cons. Is CeFi good or bad then? As always, it depends!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the Celsius Network and why did it freeze user withdrawals? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 192 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 22, 2022

What is the Celsius Network and why did it freeze user withdrawals?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's take a quick look at the Celcius Network, a crypto lending company that promised high returns on deposits… until they froze customers’ withdrawals.

So, what happened? Let’s look at how their company worked to understand what is going on here.

In a way, Celsius worked like a regular bank. If you put money into a normal checking account, it’s only there on paper. The bank actually takes that money and invests it, making a profit with the money you thought was just sitting there. Governments, however, limit what percentage banks can invest, and how much risk they can take, to protect you, the customer – at least to some extent.

Celsius did all of these things, without any of the limitations. Returns were abnormally high, driven by borrowers who speculated on increasing crypto prices.

But Celsius also offered special deals: If you bought their Celsius token, they would often give you much higher rates of return. That also only worked as long as people kept buying in, inflating the token’s value.

In the end it all collapsed, driven by falling crypto prices. It is unclear, if customers will see the whopping $8bn of their money back.

So consider this: Is government intervention such a bad thing in these cases? Do we need a little more balance? As always, we’ll let you be the judge.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Could stablecoin Tether (USDT) collapse? And how? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 191 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 21, 2022

Could stablecoin Tether (USDT) collapse? And how?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Could Tether, the most popular so-called stablecoin, collapse? It's possible! Let's see how this would go down.

In order for Tether to "de-peg", meaning to drop significantly below the stabilized price of $1, two things would need to happen.

First, a run on the "bank": If enough people lose trust in USDT and want to exchange it back to US Dollars, Tether, the company behind it, would have to sell their significant reserves to make that happen.

Now, if people still don't trust that Tether has enough money to convert it all back to real, hard Dollars, step 2 kicks in: They will dump USDT on the open market for a discount, hoping to avoid the worst.

So, here's the big question: Why would people think Tether can't pay? Don't they claim to be over-collateralized, meaning they have more in the reserve than there are USDTs out there?

Allegedly, but nobody really knows the details. In fact, they have been sued by the US government for shady reporting multiple times. You'll have to assume that many of their assets are volatile in value – such as stocks and crypto. And with the recent wider market crash, Tether reserves might reach a tipping point.

So, will Tether collapse? Your guess is as good as ours. It might take another black swan event to make it trip, but there have been a few of those lately.

Regardless of where you stand on that: always think about the risk/reward of owning something that will never go over $1, but could lose peg and fall way below.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is “fiat” 🚗? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 190 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 20, 2022

What is “fiat” 🚗?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

The crypto community often speaks of “fiat”, and no - they don't mean the Italian car maker, although we also think that is a cool company.

So what is “fiat” in the context of money?

Fiat is simply a government issued currency. The US Dollar is a great example, or the Euro.

What's more interesting though is, why fiat plays such an important role in the crypto world.

Everyday transactions anywhere in the world still require fiat. Crypto hasn't even made a dent yet – we are still very far away from a world of decentralized payment systems that were envisioned ever since Bitcoin launched over 13(!) years ago.

That also means that crypto has mostly been used as a means to speculate. And when you speculate, the value of your crypto portfolio is worth nothing in practice, if you don't cash out into fiat, that hard government backed cash.

And there you have it, that’s why fiat is so important - but maybe someday we'll all pay with crypto, or maybe fiat will even be blockchain-based. Interesting times ahead!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Jack Dorsey’s “web5”? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 189 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 17, 2022

What is Jack Dorsey’s “web5”?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Just as you thought you finally understand roughly what web3 means, Jack Dorsey – the co-founder of Twitter – is here to confuse you some more by introducing web5.

That’s right. Nevermind web4, we are jumping right to web5. And to make things worse, he’s releasing under a company called “TBD” - which usually stands for “to be determined”. But don’t worry, we are here to untangle his confusingly named new ideas.

His web5 wants to be a combination of web2, which represents the existing “big company controlled” internet and web3, the new wave of community owned and operated organizations. 2 + 3 equals 5. Yeah… we didn’t giggle either.

The greater idea is to give people control over their identity and data back.

Consider this example: If you sign up with Facebook, your account and all the content you post is stuck inside Facebook. You can only use it there. They can do with it what they want. If Facebook wants to go through your messages to target ads, they can and will do that.

Web5, in contrast, would provide an open service that allows you to keep those all in one place, and only you control them. Like we showed in yesterday’s episode, this is similar to crypto wallets, which also let you log into websites, or store credentials such as proof of ownership of digital art, on them. Those sites could then build traditional products like Facebook, making this the “2+3=5” hybrid approach.

And that’s also where our questions are about web5: What is it actually trying to do that wallets don’t already promise? We guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

And lastly, Dorsey and the web5 creators are big Bitcoin fans and propose to use it as the underlying technology to verify data. And you know how much we always bash Bitcoin for its energy footprint: We don’t think we really need another projects contributing to the destruction of our planet.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Can blockchains do more than just handle money? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 188 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 16, 2022

Can blockchains do more than just handle money?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you’ve followed this podcast closely, you will have likely asked yourself: If blockchains are giant decentralized databases, why’s everyone just trying to move money around?

And that’s a really great question. It is true: Crypto currencies, stable coins, smart contracts. Even NFTs - it’s all about money or some sort of asset representing value.

But we are here to tell you: Blockchains that can be programmed, such as Ethereum, can do anything the programmer wants. Think of it as simple logic: If this, then that.

They can replace your username and password for example. A wallet app lets you log into websites that support it. Your wallet becomes your online identity.

And there is more that you can do with that concept: You could record personal accomplishments, such as a learning credential, and attach it to your wallet. Because it is on the blockchain, anyone can verify it, and nobody can steal it.

And the possibilities are much larger. In fact, Jack Dorsey thinks that this type of use is going to be where blockchains really break free. And that’s why we’ll look into his idea of web5 in the next episode.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How large is the crypto market really? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 187 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 15, 2022

How large is the crypto market really?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, crypto winter, boom, crash. Crypto is in the news cycles all day long. So it should be reasonable to assume that everyone has a little crypto and it’s a massive market?

Surprisingly, not quite. Let’s take a deeper look at how much money is really floating around.

The best way to do this is to look at total market capitalization, which refers to all the money market value of all the traded crypto assets in the world.

As of today, there are around $1 trillion dollars worth of crypto assets out there. That’s a lot of money! But if you put it in perspective, you can see how early we still are if you believe that crypto is going to eventually take off.

Apple for example, the famous iPhone maker, is worth double of ALL of crypto as a single company. So is Saudi Aramco, the oil company. Microsoft is pretty close as well. And there are a whopping 2000x more US dollars in circulation than crypto.

So there you have it. You may think crypto is massive, or that a crypto winter would be a huge blow to any economy. But in reality, it still pales in comparison.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Staked Ethereum (stETH)? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 186 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 14, 2022

What is Staked Ethereum (stETH)?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

You may have heard the name “Staked Ethereum” in the news, as yet another crypto product is at risk of collapsing.

Staked Ethereum, also known as stETH is a token that solves a simple problem: How to participate in the Ethereum 2 transition and not lock up your funds.

Sounds more complicated than it is, so let’s take a step back.

At some point in the future, Ethereum will move to “proof of stake” which means that people who deposit money can take part in validating transactions and getting rewards for it. To get enough people to help validate in the future, the blockchain allows people to put their current Ethereum into an escrow, where it is locked up until the move, but earns interest.

The problem for many: It’s locked up, and nobody knows for sure when the move to Ethereum 2 happens.

That prompted a company called Lido to come up with a solution: They will take your Ethereum and put it in the escrow on your behalf, and give you their own token in return which you can use just like the real Ethereum. On top of that, they are paying you staking rewards, which are like interest. Once Ethereum 2 launches, it all gets exchanged back.

So, in theory - because one stEth will be exchanged back to one Ethereum, both will always have the same price. But if people start to doubt that they will get their money back, or think Ethereum 2 will take longer, they may start selling at a discount - and that is exactly what happened last week.

Currently, stEth is trending 5% under the actual value of Ethereum - so beware, those staking rewards may not be worth it!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the Bitcoin Lightnig network and why does it exist? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 185 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 13, 2022

What is the Bitcoin Lightnig network and why does it exist?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

By now, you’ve heard many times over that Bitcoin, the original blockchain, struggles with various problems, such as low transaction volumes, expensive transactions, and a tremendous negative impact on the environment.

And that’s why the Lightning Network was invented. It is a separate fast lane, trying to make Bitcoin more usable. If you think about it, it makes sense: Why invent all these hundreds of other blockchains when you can just fix Bitcoin’s problems?

So, let’s take a quick look at how it works. The lightning network essentially keeps transactions off the main record of the Bitcoin blockchain, and hence it doesn’t need to process them.

Say you are at a birthday party and someone bought a gift. They are collecting money from everyone. In the traditional Bitcoin world, everyone would have to leave, go to the bank, and send the person the money. They can then confirm the money has arrived and a few days later, you could finally gift the present.

In the Lightning network world, you would simply give them cash at the party, maybe even exchange something for smaller bills with another person. In the end, only the person who bought the gift would have to go to the bank.

And this is taking off by storm. Thanks to Jack Dorsey’s Cash App alone, there are already 80m people on the Lightnig network. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How do I create my own coin? And should I? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 184 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 10, 2022

How do I create my own coin? And should I?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

How do I create my own crypto coin, and should I? Today, let's look at it: Is that possible? And is it worth it?

Yes, it is absolutely possible! Anyone can do it nowadays. So let's talk about the reasons you'd want to, how to do it, and why it's probably not worth it.

There are a few reasons people want to mint their own token. It could be just to learn, for fun, or because they hope it'll be worth something one day.

Well, let's say: You just feel like it - a fun project to teach you something new. There are a few steps to jump through.

You see, your own coin is basically a computer program on the blockchain. You could write it yourself, or copy a template and fill in the blanks. But you can also easily Google many tools that get this done for you if you want to take the easy route.

And that leads us to the next topic; Anyone can practically do this now. There are 10,000 traded coins alone that have some sort of market value, and yours isn't even among them. It's very unlikely your coin will be worth something, especially if there is nothing different about it. So you’re not really doing it for the money. On top of that, fees for some blockchains. Those can be tremendous, easily in the hundreds of dollars.

But you may decide that you can’t go wrong learning something, and we’d be with you on that one. So: A fun project to dig deeper into blockchains, or a colossal waste of money? You decide.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a Soul Bound Token? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 183 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 09, 2022

What is a Soul Bound Token?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: What is an SBT, which is short for Sould Bound Token?

The idea of the soul bound token is relatively new, and was proposed by three authors: Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver, and none other than Ethereum co-founder Vitalki Buterin.

In short, it describes a record of your accomplishments on the blockchain.

You’ll remember that blockchains are really nothing more than databases, with the twist that anyone can verify a record's correctness. And the idea here is to record your achievements on it, and record them in a way that only your wallet can hold them. They can never be transferred, hence the name soul bound - bound to you.

Sounds abstract? It is, but think about it this way: If you play a video game online and earn a badge, or do a workout with your AppleWatch and get a virtual medal - those are all digital recognitions of something you accomplished, they are just not recorded on a blockchain.

But the blockchain does make sense if you take the concept further: Your university could issue you an SBT that undeniably verifies your degrees. A former employer could do the same for a reference. And whoever you show it to, can trust them instantly.

We’ll see where this goes. But we think it’s one of the few practical applications where the idea of a blockchain provides extra value.

What do you think?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Cryptohunt is going live! - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 182 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 08, 2022

Cryptohunt is going live!

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today is a special day for us. Today, we are launching cryptohunt to the public after working very hard on it for the last 6 months.

It may sound a little cheesy, but cryptohunt is a product that is trying to give you the same joy as we have when learning about crypto.

What you don’t know: Every day, my co-founder Arndt writes one of these podcast episodes during the day, And after dinner, excited like a child on Christmas morning, I sneak into the garage and learn something new while recording it.

That’s what cryptohunt aspires to do, but as a product. If you go to www.cryptohunt.it, you’ll find dozens of little classes that’ll teach you crypto from the ground up. Our goal is to make you giggle and laugh, and have fun. This stuff is technical sometimes, so we made it light and enjoyable - earn badges, and share lessons with friends.

So, that is cryptohunt. Check it out at cryptohunt.it! We hope you have as much fun using it as we have building it for you.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What’s the best way to learn about crypto? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 181 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 07, 2022

What’s the best way to learn about crypto?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about the best way to learn all about crypto and blockchains. And stay tuned for the end of the episode, where we have exciting news: This podcast is getting a big upgrade!

Crypto can be complicated. It’s a very technical topic, and we are still in the beginning stages. That means most people you’ll hear from are early adopters and builders who tend to talk in complex terms or assume you know the basics.

But here’s the secret: We were beginners too, 6 months and 180 episodes ago. And our biggest insight was: Crypto is like a new language. You can learn it one step at a time, by understanding the core concepts.

So here’s the big reveal: We are launching cryptohunt tomorrow, and with it a fun, and entertaining learning experience where we have engaging classes for all of those fundamentals. It’s like Duolingo, but for crypto.

By the time you hear this, we are probably already live, so give it a try at www.cryptohunt.it! And don’t worry, this podcast isn’t going anywhere!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Elon Musk’s history of hyping crypto - can you trust him? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 180 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 06, 2022

Elon Musk’s history of hyping crypto - can you trust him?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take a look at one of the most popular crypto influencers ever - none other than Tesla-founder Elon Musk. And the question is: Should you listen to him?

Musk has a long history of hyping crypto, in particular Bitcoin and Dogecoin. He tweeted about Bitcoin first in 2014 and has since raved about Dogecoin quite often as well. He’s also made some big moves with Tesla: The company bought $1.5bn dollars worth of Bitcoin in 2019 and even said customers would soon be able to buy cars with crypto.

But here is the strange thing about Musk: What he claims and what is actually happening are often two different things. Tesla ditched their Bitcoin holdings quickly thereafter, and the only thing Dogecoin buys to date are Tesla T-shirts.

You see, Musk has one of the most followed Twitter accounts on earth and seems to rarely filter his tweets. That’s why we wouldn’t give them too much weight; we would rather suggest you do your own research. Bitcoin and Dogecoin for example are both bad for the planet - strange for an electric car guru to promote.

Best to ignore the opinions of influencers, and develop your own! Stay tuned for our launch on Wednesday, because we’ll help you do exactly that!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What does DYOR mean? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 179 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 03, 2022

What does DYOR mean?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

“DYOR”, you might sometimes hear it in the context of investment forums and the like. It stands for “Do Your Own Research” and simply reminds you that you should always understand what you invest in.

If you think about it, that’s really solid advice. First, you are less likely to get scammed by someone if you independently research and verify their claims.

Second, it helps you figure out which things are something you want to invest in instead of just blindly following market trends. Warren Buffet famously follows this approach: He and his investment partners at Berkshire Heathaway only take long term bets in companies that they think have a fundamentally solid business model and leadership team.

And lastly, it is easy to get lured by the promises of making a quick and easy return. We’ve all told about the friend who got a Ferrari after she made a lucky investment in some crypto coin. But what they made, someone else lost because they bought into the same buzz, just later. Do your research to understand the risks.

With cryptohunt, we are building a learning platform that will teach you the fundamental building blocks of how crypto works. So you can make your own decisions and don’t need to follow someone else’s advice. Whether you are interested in personal finance or simply want to understand this new technology that is lurking around the corner.

We hope you enjoy this content - and next time we’ll talk about one of those people who’ve fueled a lot of uninformed crypto purchases: Elon Musk.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a public ledger? And why may you not want to send money via crypto if you care about your privacy? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 178 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 02, 2022

What is a public ledger? And why may you not want to send money via crypto if you care about your privacy?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Here’s a thing most people won’t tell you about crypto: Every blockchain is really nothing other than a giant notebook, stored in the cloud.

That notebook is often referred to as the public ledger. So let’s explain what the ledger is, and then look into the implications of it being public.

Think of your own bank account: Money goes in, money goes out. The result is your account balance. Your bank keeps track of your transactions, and everyone else’s.

A blockchain ledger is the same: It’s one big history of all the transactions. Nothing more, it’s really that simple. But instead of being saved on your bank’s server, an identical copy is saved on many computers that are connected peer-to-peer.

Why many computers? The point here is to eliminate the middle man, your bank. But trusting a single random person to keep this important history of transactions is problematic. They could alter it and steal your money. So many copies exist, and they are publicly accessible. If someone cheats, anyone with a separate copy can quickly find out by doing some simple math.

But that has downsides for consumers like you. By design nothing is private on a public ledger. So when you send money, anyone can see how much and where. And of course, anyone can see how much you have in your wallet as well.

So think about that as one of the downsides of using crypto. Everything is always a tradeoff.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How to avoid problems with those stupid wallet addresses that most blockchains use - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 177 - by cryptohunt.it Jun 01, 2022

How to avoid problems with those stupid wallet addresses that most blockchains use

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Last time we showed you how to send money via stablecoins. But in the process we noticed something super annoying: These wallet addresses.

They are a frustratingly cryptic string of numbers and letters… and easy to get wrong. Uppercase and lower case matter, they are seemingly randomly mixed, and are pretty long. In other words: They are user hostile and unfortunately you have to deal with it.

But there are a few ways to avoid trouble.

First, make sure everyone handling them always just copy-paste them through their computers or phones, By avoiding to manually write them down, lots of those potential errors can be eliminated.

Second, make sure you know the difference between your wallet address - which is also called public address and your private key. Both look the same, but you never want to share the private key with others. It unlocks full access to your wallet and anyone asking is likely trying to scam you. What you can share is usually called wallet address, or public address.

Lastly, if you are sending larger amounts, make sure to do a small test transaction and confirm the amount with the recipient before you send the rest.

And yes, we are sorry we have no better news for you. One day we’ll laugh about how stupid this all is, but for now we are stuck with it. But hope is on the horizon: There are blockchains, like Celo, that allow you to use email addresses or phone numbers instead, making it more like Paypal.

And next time, we’ll talk about the public ledger and why you may not want to send money via crypto if you care about privacy.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How to send money to friends and family with stablecoins - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 176 - by cryptohunt.it May 31, 2022

How to send money to friends and family with stablecoins

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we explain how to use crypto to send money to friends and family, regardless of where they are.

To be precise, we are going to talk about using stable coins. So before we dive in here, let’s clarify a few things as always!

First: Why bother? Because sending money across borders and between currencies can be hard to do, cost ridiculous amounts of fees, and is very slow. Crypto is instant and in many cases much cheaper.

Second, for those of you just tuning in, stable coins are closely following a government-backed currency in value. For example, 1 USD Coin should always be worth very close to 1 real US Dollar. Unlike Bitcoin, for example, this makes stable coins great for sending money to others because their value doesn’t change while you are transferring.

But, third, the word stable coin is a bit misleading. Not all stable coins are really stable, do you research before you choose one, and listen to episode 111 of this podcast.

Ok, let’s get to it then. Here is what’s required: You need a crypto account that allows you to buy that stable coin, and your friend needs one that allows them to receive and sell it, and both of you will likely have to go through some required checks while opening those.

Once you are sure your stable coin of choice is accepted by both wallets, it’s as simple as using Paypal: You exchange your own currency for the stable coin, and send it to the recipient, who can exchange it back into their local currency.

And there you have it. You just sent money, possibly across the entire planet, without paying your bank a single cent in fees. Neat, isn’t it?

And next time, we’ll talk about those annoying wallet addresses you still have to deal with.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What does KYC stand for and why is it so hard to create a crypto account? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 175 - by cryptohunt.it May 30, 2022

What does KYC stand for and why is it so hard to create a crypto account?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you’ve ever signed up for a crypto account with one of the big exchanges you will have noticed: The process was really hard – all kinds of questions asked, some you probably didn’t even know the answer to. Maybe you even gave up and said: “Too complicated, what do they want from me!”

We are here to tell you, those companies don’t actually WANT you to do this. They HAVE to make you do it. But why?

The requirements are different in different countries, but at the core of it is a requirement known as KYC - short for “know your customer”. Governments actually require that companies make sure to verify who you are.

There are a few reasons, but governments want to make it harder for bad players to use crypto for bad things. Because once your money is in an anonymous wallet, it’ll be hard for them to tie it back to someone. Money laundry, tax evasion, financing terrorism - you name it. There are some really bad things money can do, and of course governments try to make them as hard as possible, rightfully so.

But now you know: Because a few bad people do a lot of very bad things, you have to suffer through a long signup process.

And next episode, we show how stablecoins can help you send money to friends and family in even the most remote of places.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are on-ramps and off-ramps? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 174 - by cryptohunt.it May 27, 2022

What are on-ramps and off-ramps?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

You’ve likely heard the terms on-ramp and off-ramp in the crypto context before. And of course you figured out that we are not talking about actual ramps leading on and off freeways.

But those on- and off-ramps serve a similar purpose in the crypto world: They describe the process of buying into crypto and selling out of crypto for real-world money.

How does it work? Very simple.

To on-ramp, you use a provider, for example a crypto exchange like Coinbase or Binance, that will connect with your bank account or credit card. Then they charge you real-world money, such as Dollars or Euros, and give you crypto in exchange.

Off-ramp is exactly the opposite. Sell crypto for money, send the money back to your account.

And you can see why both are essential. Without people on-ramping into crypto, blockchains would have no value. And if you couldn’t sell again, there wouldn’t be many reasons to buy into it in the first place, given that paying for everyday purchases with crypto is still not really a thing at all.

And if you’ve ever gone through the process yourself, you will know that these providers ask for a ton of personal information: They don’t exactly make it easy to buy in and out. In the next episode we’ll talk about why: A little acronym called KYC is at fault.

Stay tuned until then! We are thrilled you are listening to this podcast!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a zero-sum game and why should you care about it with crypto? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 173 - by cryptohunt.it May 26, 2022

What is a zero-sum game and why should you care about it with crypto?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: What are zero-sum games and why should you care?

In the context of financial systems, zero-sum games describe a market where someone’s gain is someone else’s loss.

Let’s take a look at a slot machine in the casino. When you win, your wins are only possible because numerous other people have lost at that machine in the past.

Crypto is the same: When hedge funds invested a few million dollars in Terra Luna, and exited with hundreds of millions before the collapse, that money came from the other people who put their money in after them, which pushed Luna’s price up. A plus for hedge funds, a minus for everyone else: Makes zero in sum.

But why should you care? Because when things look too good to be true, they probably are. Always do your own research on things you are interested in investing in. Ask yourself: If everything is a zero-sum game, who stands to benefit from me putting money here? And if you don’t like the answer, walk away.

Come visit us at www.cryptohunt.it if you are interested in learning more. We have dozens of small, easy to understand lessons to empower you to make your own decisions. No crypto knowledge required!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Where do those high interest rates and yields in crypto come from? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 172 - by cryptohunt.it May 25, 2022

Where do those high interest rates and yields in crypto come from?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Last time we layed out how stable coins are risky, without the benefit of potential rewards. But by now you will have probably screamed: “Not so fast, what about those interest rates I can make?”

And we’ll give it to you: All over the crypto world, projects are paying out crazy high interest rates just for depositing your stable coin. What could possibly go wrong?

Let’s look at the Anchor Protocol, the project that brought down the entire Terra Luna blockchain and ultimately destroyed $80-100 billion dollars in investments. They promised you 20% returns - but let’s look at how that worked.

First, they would loan out your TerraUSD to others, where they asked for 10% interest. You were the one eating the risk that those borrowers won’t return the money. They would also ask the borrowers for collateral - other types of crypto, which they lend out again for interest. Fine, as long as prices increase. Once they decrease, everyone is losing. And lastly, a large part of the remaining interest was given back to you in ANK tokens, their own native asset which fluctuated wildly in value.

Sounds a bit like someone was trying to obfuscate things? We think so.

And that’s why it is important to realize that financial systems are zero-sum games. Someone gains what somebody else loses. And in the next episode, we’ll look into that more and why it is a dangerous game to play.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why Stablecoins are almost always a bad investment - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 171 - by cryptohunt.it May 24, 2022

Why Stablecoins are almost always a bad investment

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

As an avid listener of this podcast, you will have noticed: We have spent a lot of time explaining stable coins. This is somewhat of a passion for us: We love the idea, but we think the risks are not clearly communicated.

So, what makes stable coins so risky? They are, after all, stable right?

And that’s the problem. In theory they do represent a value that only fluctuates minimally. But many stablecoins have fundamental flaws: They may not be fully backed. Or their algorithms don’t hold up under pressure.

Whatever the risk, the most important thing to realize is that there is no reward by design. You will never get MORE for them than you paid. But they can collapse, like TerraUSD did. And let’s take another look at Tether USD: The company refuses to tell you where the money is parked, yet it is the third largest cryptocurrency in the world.

We want you to consider this: Risk with no reward. Is it worth it? We think maybe, for temporary money transfers or payments, but not to hold. But as always, do your own research - we are not here to give you investment advice, we want to teach you the basics to make the best decisions possible.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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TerraUSD meltdown, part 6: What’s next for Terra, Luna, and the world of stable coins? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 170 - by cryptohunt.it May 23, 2022

TerraUSD meltdown, part 6: What’s next for Terra, Luna, and the world of stable coins?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Remember the last episode, a chilling history of mass withdrawals of Terra triggering the Terra and Luna coin collapses? Welcome to the last part of our one-week special. Today: What will happen now?

First, let’s speculate about the future of the Terra Luna blockchain. The organization running it has spent billions of their reserve, trying to stabilize the system, and it was all for nothing. They have no more powder left and it is safe to assume that the blockchain is dead forever, as public confidence is destroyed.

Second, let’s talk about stable coins in general. As a frequent listener of this podcast, you remember that not all stable coins are as stable as they claim to be. Yet, many investors put their life savings into them because they trusted the claims. It’s likely that governments will crack down and put a lot of pressure on those instruments.

There will also be a wave of other collapses as investors are withdrawing from stable coins. If you have money parked in them, consider one thing: By definition, stable coins don’t appreciate in value. But if they collapse, you could lose everything. It’s a very single-sided risk.

And lastly, this is a great reminder for us all: Knowing the history and understanding the complicated inner workings of crypto is really crucial to making good decisions. We hope that this podcast is giving you the inspiration to learn and the confidence to choose wisely.

Thanks for listening to this special, and if you have any feedback or questions, email us at podcast@cryptohunt.it. We would love to answer your questions!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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TerraUSD meltdown, part 5: Who killed TerraUSD: Malicious attack, or simply a weak design? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 169 - by cryptohunt.it May 20, 2022

TerraUSD meltdown, part 5: Who killed TerraUSD: Malicious attack, or simply a weak design?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Welcome back to part five of our one-week special on the TerraUSD collapse. Today: What caused the stable coin algorithms to stumble and lose the peg? If you haven’t followed from the beginning, please jump back a few minutes of listening time to episode 165.

Last time we talked about the magic machine that exchanges eggs for dollar bills to stabilize egg prices. And we learned that this is exactly how TerraUSD worked - using a fixed exchange rate for Luna, it guaranteed the price of Terra.

But we also said: A machine has its limits.

And so did the Terra Luna stablecoin rubber band: A black swan event, one where many things happened at once, gave it a mighty kick and it lost balance.

One major contributor was a project called Anchor Protocol. There, you could deposit Terra stablecoins for a crazy 20% interest, but as that became impossible to maintain, the project slashed interest rates overnight. People made a run for the 14 billion dollars parked there and flooded the Terra Luna stablecoin algorithm. As the machine couldn’t keep up, people were willing to take a discount on their stable coins to get out of the market, and that snapped the rubber band.

But even worse: Now there was a ton of new Luna, printed by the machine when it exchanged Terra for it. The more Luna it created, the more the Luna price drove down. Eventually the panic crept into the general crypto market and everything dropped. In total, the market wiped out over $80bn dollars.

And while there have been speculations about foul play, none of them have been proven. Some say it was a bad actor holding a massive short position. Others claimed popular hedge funds have something to do with it. But either are just conspiracy theories at this point.

And it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that many investors had money in an ecosystem without knowing the real risks. So, in the next final episode, let’s talk about what’s next for Terra Luna, stablecoins, and what we can learn from it.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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TerraUSD meltdown, part 4: TerraUSDs Fatal Flaw - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 168 - by cryptohunt.it May 19, 2022

Episode 168: TerraUSD meltdown, part 4: TerraUSDs fatal flaw

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Welcome to part four of our one-week special on the TerraUSD collapse. Today: How did TerraUSD collapse?

Remember last episode, where we explained how an algorithmic machine can create a stable price for eggs between you and your friends? If not, jump back one episode to 167 because you’ll need the background.

So now we understand that through the process of guaranteeing a stable exchange rate between eggs and dollars, and creating or destroying each in that exchange, we can stabilize prices.

And that’s exactly how Terra worked. It has a sister currency called Luna and the two work just like those eggs and dollars. Get it? Terra - earth, grounded, stable. Luna - moon, space, volatile in value.

The algorithm, just like your magic egg-dollar machine, is the rubber band between the two: It exchanges Terra for Luna and vice versa for a fixed rate, while destroying either one of the other in the process.

But what could possibly go wrong? The system seems solid, doesn’t it?

Well, say the unthinkable happens in our egg market: Overnight everyone turns into a vegan and wants to sell their eggs immediately. That machine would have to act very fast. Destroy egg! Print dollar! Destroy egg! Print dollar!

But every machine has its limits. So did the Terra Luna exchange algorithm. It collapsed under the weight of too many requests to exchange.

In the next episode: Let’s look at the history of what exactly happened on May 9th 2022, and why the Terra Luna machine was flooded with withdrawal requests.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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TerraUSD meltdown, part 3: How TerraUSD worked - the story of the magic egg-dollar machine - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 167 - by cryptohunt.it May 18, 2022

TerraUSD meltdown, part 3: How TerraUSD worked - the story of the magic egg-dollar machine

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Welcome to part three of our one-week special on the TerraUSD collapse. Today: How did TerraUSD actually work before it collapsed?

The people behind Terra wanted to create a stable coin for easy online payments. And a decision was made: Let’s use a self-stabilizing algorithm instead of central reserves.

So, let’s look under the hood and explain how that works… with an analogy as always. Let’s go!

Say that you and your friends agree that – from now on – one egg is always worth one dollar. You all keep your promise for a while and trade happily, until one friend gets tired of eggs and wants to dump them all for 80 cents a piece. Suddenly, the entire market adjusts, and egg prices aren't stable anymore.

So you invent a really powerful machine: It can create eggs, destroy eggs, print dollar bills, and burn dollar bills.

And the machine operates by two basic laws:

Law one: If you give it a dollar, it burns it and creates you an egg.

Law two: If you give it an egg, it destroys it, and prints you a dollar.

Immediately, everyone would see the opportunity: Buy those cheap eggs directly from your friend for 80 cents, and exchange them for a full dollar through the machine. They just made 20 cents, a 25% profit!

Bankers call this arbitrage and they love it. Once they are in on the action, there are soon only eggs worth $1 left for sale. And whenever a small discount pops up again, the bankers will make sure to close that.

Your magic machine just created stable-eggs. And it’s exactly like that algorithm that powered TerraUSD.

And in the next episode, we’ll look at the machine's fatal flaw.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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TerraUSD meltdown, part 2: What is an algorithmic stablecoin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 166 - by cryptohunt.it May 17, 2022

TerraUSD meltdown, part 2: What is an algorithmic stablecoin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Remember the last episode about a peg, the rubber band that keeps a stablecoin stable? Welcome to part two of our one-week special on the TerraUSD collapse. Today: How does an algorithmic stablecoin actually work?

Let’s remember the rubber band analogy. If the value of a stable coin moves too high, the rubber band has to snap back, and the same happens in the opposite direction.

There are two types of stable coins: Collateralized and algorithmic. Collateralized coins are easy to understand: There is real money in a central reserve backing them, and whenever someone wants to exchange a stablecoin back, the real money gets taken from the reserve.

Algorithmic stablecoins are different. They use computer code to balance their price automatically. The most simple ones just create more of their own coins - which decreases the price - or invalidate existing ones - which increases the price.

But since computer code can do much more complicated things, people have also built far crazier mechanisms into stable coins. The problem is that these work in 99.9% of the real-world use cases, but in those rare moments of extreme tension, the rubber band tears and the system collapses.

And that’s exactly what happened with TerraUSD. The algorithm tripped, fell on its nose, and kicked off a snowball that turned into an avalanche. So, in the next episode, let’s look behind the curtains of how TerraUSD was working to understand what went wrong.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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TerraUSD meltdown, part 1: What is a peg? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 165 - by cryptohunt.it May 16, 2022

TerraUSD meltdown, part 1: What is a peg?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

What is a peg and what does it do for stablecoins? Welcome to part one of our one-week special on the TerraUSD collapse.

You probably heard about the crypto meltdown of the not-so-stable stablecoin TerraUSD. And it all started with it losing its “peg”. But what is a peg anyhow, and what does losing it do?

A peg describes a very close relationship in value between two financial instruments. The price of one always follows the other’s very closely, something finance called “peg”.

In this case, TerraUSD was pegged to the US Dollar, which is just a fancy way of saying that its own value is always very close to one actual US Dollar.

Unlike other crypto currencies which fluctuate a lot in value, one TerraUSD should have always been worth one US Dollar.

But the system isn’t perfect, think of the peg like a rubber band between the two. In normal times, a TerraUSD could be worth 99c, or a dollar and a cent. The rubber band keeps them close enough for those differences to be very, very small and not matter in practice.

Until it lost the peg. That rubber band snapped, and the stablecoin lost its value and plummeted. It currently sits at just 17c, a total loss of 9 billion dollars which makes this one of the largest crypto meltdowns ever.

So: How on earth did that happen? Let’s dig into the inner workings of TerraUSD’s rubber band in the next episode.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why does crypto go down when interest rates go up? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 164 - by cryptohunt.it May 13, 2022

Why does crypto go down when interest rates go up?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s try and understand the recent events in the stock and crypto markets.

You’ve seen the news: The US Federal Reserve is raising interest rates and suddenly the markets freak out. What does one have to do with the other?

When a governments’ central bank raises interest rates, it means that they will guarantee a certain amount of return on investment to anyone. For you, that means you will soon get more interest for money in your savings account, thanks to the government.

But more money in savings accounts also means that more people will take money out of risky investments, such as stock and crypto, and put it back into savings. The reason is simple: It’s much safer, and will now make them enough to be happy with.

And because those people sell that stock and crypto, it drives prices lower. And suddenly other people get worried and also sell, causing a downward spiral.

So, why on earth would governments want this? Right now, it helps reduce high inflation: People lose some money in their investments, they spend less, prices have to go down. And it gives them another powerful tool: When central banks need to, they can now lower interest rates to induce the opposite effect: Increase stock prices when markets need stimulation.

Now you know why investments have lost value recently. Hang in there and keep learning!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Are there 19 million Bitcoins or 21 million? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 163 - by cryptohunt.it May 12, 2022

Are there 19 million Bitcoins or 21 million?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

You and us, we’ve talked about this a few times now. Theoretically, there could be 21 million Bitcoins out there, but only 19 million are actually in circulation. Why is that?

Let’s take a step back in history! The year is 2008. Investment banks are collapsing under the load of their own bad financial products, and governments are bailing them out. And people are mad: The governments are printing money to do it, which is creating inflation. You, the normal citizen who caused no harm, suddenly see prices increase everywhere around you.

Bitcoin, which came out shortly after in 2009, is believed to have been created in response to these policies. The idea was: What if we created a new type of money that nobody can mess with, not even the government?

To make that happen, it was written in code that there can only ever be a maximum of 21 million Bitcoins. But things started out much more moderately than that - only 1m were in circulation. The rest is set aside as rewards for mining, the process that validates transactions. It costs money to operate the hardware, and so this reward was made part of Bitcoin.

Which brings us to today. 18m or the 19m existing Bitcoins have all been earned through mining, and 2m are left until the maximum of 21m is reached. Sounds like a small amount, but it will likely take another 50 years to get there thanks to a process called Halfing. Go check out episode 50 for that.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is diluted market capitalization? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 162 - by cryptohunt.it May 11, 2022

What is diluted market capitalization?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let us explain diluted market capitalization, a term any crypto investor should understand.

But first, jump back one episode where we explain market capitalization itself. A cryptocurrency’s market capitalization is the total amount of money in circulation of that cryptocurrency. Let’s take Bitcoin as an example. Currently priced at around $30,000 per Bitcoin, there are 19 million of them. In total they are worth 590 billion dollars.

That’s a lot of money, but it doesn’t actually include all of the possible Bitcoins. Eventually, there will be up to 21 million Bitcoin in circulation. The difference, a whopping 2 million, is just being held back as rewards for those operating the network, also called miners.

Fully diluted market capitalization refers to the theoretical value of all possible Bitcoins in circulation. If you add those 2m yet-to-be-mined coins to the market cap, you get a total diluted market cap of 650 billion at the current price, a 60 billion US dollar difference.

Head buzzing? Let’s recap. Market cap refers to all the actual money that is currently floating around in a cryptocurrency. Fully diluted market cap is the higher, theoretical value of the maximum possible number of coins.

And in the next episode we’ll explain why the inventors of Bitcoin set a limit at 21 million of them and how you could get some of the ones being held back today.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is market capitalization? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 161 - by cryptohunt.it May 10, 2022

What is market capitalization?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let us explain market capitalization, a very basic term any investor should be familiar with.

Market capitalization simply refers to the amount of money all the shares of a company are worth when taken together. Let’s take an example: Coca Cola, the company. Right now, a single share is worth about $65 dollars, and there are about 4.4 billion shares in circulation. Multiply the two, and you will see that Coca Cola has a market cap – short for capitalization – of 281 billion US dollars.

That value helps you compare companies. Pepsi for example, has a market cap of 240 billion US dollars, slightly less than Coca Cola. That means that investors think that Coca Cola has a little more business potential than Pepsi.

The same applies to blockchains. A cryptocurrencies market cap is the amount of coins that exist, multiplied by the value of each. Is your head buzzing? This example will make more sense: A single Bitcoin is currently worth about $30,000. There are roughly 19 million Bitcoins. Add all those zeros and you will see: All of the Bitcoins together are worth 600 billion dollars in market cap, almost three times as much as Pepsi and more than double that of Ethereum.

And now that you understand market cap, go browse the web and compare: How much larger is Apple than Microsoft? How many car companies could you buy with all of the Bitcoins? We are sure you’ll find tons of interesting comparisons, whether they are useful or just fun.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How the NSA helped create Bitcoin - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 160 - by cryptohunt.it May 09, 2022

How the NSA helped create Bitcoin

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

You’ve heard it everywhere: most governments are really cautious about cryptocurrencies, some even feel threatened by the new technology. It will come as a surprise to you then that the NSA, America’s National Security Agency and one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world, actually created the technology that Bitcoin is based on.

How is this possible? Let’s dig in.

It is the year 1993! The internet is just at the brink of mass adoption, very exciting times! And the military had been using it for a while already, and so have universities, and the US government started to think about security: What if someone figured out a way to listen in?

The problem at the time was that security was based on encryption algorithms that kept getting cracked by talented hackers and mathematicians. So the NSA decided: Let’s create our own and make it available to everyone. A secure internet for all is better than one everyone can hack. They called it SHA, for “secure hashing algorithm” and it took off like crazy: Everyone uses a version of it today. In fact, even the data transferring my voice to you is encrypted by it right now.

And ironically, the very thing the US government aims to regulate also uses the same algorithms. Bitcoin would not be possible without SHA, and thanks to the NSA anyone can use it for their project. In fact, SHA is so good that Bitcoin was never hacked.

So, next time the topic at the family dinner table turns to the government, you can point out that our internet would not be the same without the NSA.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a hash used for? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 159 - by cryptohunt.it May 06, 2022

What is a hash used for?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

No doubt: You’ve heard the word hash thrown around by crypto enthusiasts. Strap in, this is a complicated one, but we’ll break it down. And hey - we guarantee you that lots of those crypto folks don’t actually know what it means either and are just trying to impress you, so here’s your chance to get ahead!

First, let’s talk about the purpose those hashes solve: Simply said, they help prevent fraud in blockchains.

Here’s how that works: Remember that blockchains are nothing other than long lists of transactions, stored as separate copies on many different computers. Altering the history of that blockchain is attractive to hackers, because they could create a different record that suddenly shows them as having lots of crypto.

When people pay with crypto, each group of payments gets summarized as a hash after they have been recorded. The hash is a math function which takes all of those transactions, and that could be a lot of information, and compresses them into a really short, but unique text. It is very easy for a computer to summarize things into a hash, but almost impossible to turn a hash into the original data.

It’s like your fingerprint: All of your genes come together when you are born, resulting in hands with a unique fingerprint for each finger. It works in that direction for every human being, every time. Even identical twins don’t have matching fingerprints. But nobody can take your fingerprint and recreate your DNA from it.

But what does it do for a blockchain? Well, in one direction it makes it very easy to verify that all transactions in a blockchain are correct, but in the other it makes it super hard to unwind them and create an altered history.

And now that we at least know what hashing is used for, let’s look into the role the NSA played in enabling Bitcoin. It’s a pretty big one! Stay tuned for the next episode.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Gwei? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 158 - by cryptohunt.it May 05, 2022

What is Gwei?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you have used Ethereum, you have likely encountered the term “Gwei” (Christian: Gu-uei). And if you haven’t – tune in, because it’s one of the core things to learn when using Ethereum or similar blockchains.

A Gwei is simply the smallest possible fraction of an Ethereum. While you can certainly send around whole Ethereums, you don’t have to. In fact, an entire Ethereum is worth several thousand dollars, and if you wanted to buy ice cream with it, you would need to send a small fraction of one - otherwise, that would be a very expensive frozen treat!

A Gwei is very similar to a Dollar or Euro Cent. Those cents are also the smallest possible fractions of that currency. When you buy something, the price always comes out to something rounded to the nearest cent. No store will ever charge you 1 dollar and 95.3 cents. It’ll just be 1.95.

And a Gwei is really, really small actually. It’s one billionth of one Ethereum, which is currently worth one 30.000th of a US dollar cent.

But where does the name come from? It is named for Wei Dai, one of the pioneers of the crypto technology that is powering many of today’s blockchains.

And now that you know what a Gwei is, keep an eye out for other names of the same concept. In Bitcoin, it’s called a “Satoshi”, in Cardano a “lovelace”, and Stellar calls it a “stroop”. But now you know: It’s all the same idea.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who is Jack Dorsey? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 157 - by cryptohunt.it May 04, 2022

Who is Jack Dorsey?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about another prominent person in the crypto space: Jack Dorsey.

Jack Dorsey: Isn’t that the Twitter guy, you ask? What does he have to do with crypto?

Yes, that Jack Dorsey, co-founder and long-time CEO of Twitter is also a big player in the crypto space. Let’s dig in, and as always, start at the beginning.

Dorsey, an American born in St. Louis dropped out of college to pursue the idea of what later became Twitter. It took a while and some strange turns - from taxi dispatching to sharing messaging app statuses with friends - for the actual Twitter product to emerge, but the rest is obviously history.

But you may not know that he also started Square, a payments company that helps merchants accept credit card payments on their phone or point of sale terminal. The company has become very successful as well, and for a long time Dorsey was CEO of Square and Twitter at the same time.

If you are thinking: come on, what about crypto, here we go: Dorsey had long been interested in crypto and eventually even renamed Square to Block, with a roadmap to accept crypto at all payment terminals. He also sold his first tweet as an NFT for $48m, is a proponent of Bitcoin, and has publicly criticized Ethereum many times.

Dorsey recently left his CEO job at Twitter, to focus full time on Block. So keep an eye on that - we’ll likely see some interesting blockchain announcements from them soon.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who is Gary Vee? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 156 - by cryptohunt.it May 03, 2022

Who is Gary Vee?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you have been around crypto and NFTs, you might have heard of Gary Vaynerchuck, who is best known by his online name Gary Vee.

And if you haven't heard of him, stay tuned - because Vee is an interesting person. Most recently for example, he made a reported $90m with VeeFriends, his own NFT collection.

Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur, investor, and influencer. Born in Belarus in the mid-seventies, Vee emigrated to the United States where he developed a knack for innovative marketing while helping his parents grow their East Coast wine business.

But how exactly did he become this immensely popular Web 2 influencer, who is making waves in crypto?

It was that wine store experience that inspired him to start a Youtube channel about wines, which quickly evolved into an increasingly successful channel about everything online marketing.

Nowadays, he's a big influencer, who can fill stadiums with people who want to hear him speak. And on top of that, he's been very successful with early bets on startups like Facebook and Coinbase.

And where do influencers go these days to make another buck? Crypto of course. He's been interested in it since 2014 and invested in projects like the Bored Ape NFTs.

And that led him to create his own NFT series. Although criticized as "childish" art, he was able to market a series of his own drawings as NFTs and make a reported $90m off those. Vaynerchuk disagrees – of course. To him those pieces of art are true to themselves because they came out of his own hand.

And that's just what it is - art is subjective and we'll let you judge as always. But keep in mind: Where influencers meet crypto, there might not be long term value for the buyer.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who is Charles Hoskinson? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 155 - by cryptohunt.it May 02, 2022

Who is Charles Hoskinson

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

This episode is about Charles Hoskinson, who you may know as the founder of Cardano. So let’s dig in, because there is a lot of history here.

Hoskinson isn’t only the founder of Cardano, he was also among the original five co-founders of Ethereum. We already talked about two of the technical brains behind Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood, but Hoskinson was more on the business side of things. He helped the young team raise money through a so-called ICO, short for initial coin offering. That’s when a company sells their own token to the public instead of old-school shares.

Eventually, Hoskinson was fired by Vitalik Buterin over a disagreement about the vision of the company. Hoskinson wanted to make Ethereum a commercial project, raise VC money, and build revenue streams. Buterin wanted to keep it a non-profit which it remains till this day.

Hoskinson went on to start Cardano, a direct competitor to Ethereum. And that’s really where the most interesting part of the story lies – the crypto world is quite small if you look closely. Three of the largest blockchains have all been started by people who met on the original Ethereum team.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who is Gavin Wood? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 154 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 29, 2022

Who is Gavin Wood?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we want to introduce you to yet another cofounder of Ethereum - Gavin Wood.

Gavin Wood is an interesting person to know because he developed some of the core technologies that power today’s blockchains.

But let’s start at the beginning! Wood was born in the UK, where he attended the University of York and got a Masters in Software engineering and later on a PhD. He then went on to work as a research scientist for Microsoft.

But his most fundamental contributions started when he joined Vitalik Buterin as one of the Ethereum Co-Founders at the very beginning in 2013. Remember that Ethereum’s goal was to create a blockchain that allows people to build all kinds of financial applications on, as opposed to just functioning as a means to move around money, like Bitcoin did at the time.

To achieve that goal, a lot of completely new fundamentals had to be invented. It can get a little technical, but all you need to know is that he programmed many of them and it would be fair to say that Ethereum wouldn’t be the same without him.

Eventually, he left Ethereum in 2016 and founded another blockchain you may have heard about: Polkadot. Remember how he created all those fundamental technologies to let people create cool things on Ethereum? Well, with Polkadot his plan was even more ambitious - why have just one blockchain that serves all purposes like Ethereum? What if we created a technology allowing anyone to create their own blockchain, fully customizable to their own needs?

But you may have also heard Wood’s name pop up in mainstream media for another reason: He’s the single largest contributor of crypto donations to support Ukraine: He donated $5.8 million dollars to their government… all over the DOT, Polkadot’s native token, of course.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why is Facebook now called Meta, and what does it mean for crypto? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 153 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 28, 2022

Why is Facebook now called Meta, and what does it mean for crypto?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

So, you’ve heard the news. Facebook, the company, is no longer called Facebook. They renamed themselves to Meta, a new company with a focus on virtual reality.

Sounds crazy? Well it is! No wonder that the reactions ranged from disbelief to making Meta the topic of many jokes. But let’s break it down and take a really good look. It might actually make sense!

But first things first - Facebook, the product you know, isn’t going away, and neither are Instagram and all the other things the company operates. They will keep their names as well.

But here’s the deal: Facebook as a company has long seen the writing on the wall. User growth hit its limits, and a younger generation prefers TikTok over Facebook and Instagram. And then there are the issues of free speech vs. misinformation, privacy concerns, and potential government regulations. These are, let’s be clear, very hard problems to solve even for a company like Facebook.

So, what do you do then if you are Mark Zuckerberg: Work even harder and fight the slow death, maybe turn Facebook into something different and risk losing a money-printing business?

Absolutely not, said Zuckerberg, and instead figured he could use all that sweet money to build an entirely different empire: One that owns virtual reality. It’s a crazy gamble on a specific version of the future, but let’s look at it: Virtual reality technology is already getting so good, people fly realistic airplanes, play games, and design cars in it. Plus, Facebook already owns Oculus, one of the dominant makers of VR headsets.

It may sound distopion to you now, but is it such a stretch to assume that spending time in VR and interacting with others will be an experience many people prefer? Heck, what if we all end up spending most of our time there - working, hanging out, all the things you do.

Let’s assume that happens: Then, suddenly people will want to own things to use and show off there. Humans are humans after all. And what is better suited than crypto to pay for virtual things?

So keep an eye on it: It could be the killer use case for crypto, taking it from concept to essential. Whether Facebook will dominate the space or not, that is to be seen. But the strategy, although very bold, makes a ton of sense. If Zuckerberg succeeds, this could become the single most important turnaround any company has ever done. So, next time someone jokes about Meta, tell them there is something to this whole idea.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who is Sam Bankman-Fried? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 152 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 27, 2022

Who is Sam Bankman-Fried?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s get to know the creator of crypto currency exchange FTX, a person by the name of Sam Bankman-Fried, who - despite being a billionaire - still prefers to live with roommates and sleep in his office.

Bankman-Fried was born in Stanford, California as the son of two Standford University Law professors.

Being talented at math, he became interested in economics and started working as a funds trader while attending MIT. This turned into a full-time position, which he quit after a few years to start his own algorithmic trading firm – that means the business uses computer code to trade, not human decision.

He realized there was money to be made in Bitcoin trading at slightly different prices in different places. By buying it a fraction of a dollar cheaper in one place, and selling it for a tiny profit somewhere else using nothing but computers, he managed to grow into $25m of trading volume every single day.

Fascinated by crypto trading, he later founded FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. He moved to Hong Kong, where laws are more favorable for his business.

And if you are wondering: How do you achieve all of that? Apparently Bankman-Fried always works, never takes vacations, and sleeps on bean bags in his office. He likes them so much that he has one in every room.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who is Chris Dixon? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 151 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 26, 2022

Who is Chris Dixon?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, in our little mini series about popular blockchain people let’s introduce you to Chris Dixon, general Partner at the famous venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, often abbreviated as A16Z.

What makes Dixon interesting to know about is that he is one of the most prominent voices about Web 3 and crypto, which also turned him into one of the most successful investors in the space.

Dixon came to Andreesen Horowitz after a successful Silicon Valley career: MBA, then Venture Capital, two-times successful founder with exits to McAffee and eBay.

He got interested in crypto early, when Twitter shut down its app marketplace way back in 2008. This made it clear to him that the future of the internet shouldn’t be in the hands of just a few companies.

And his bets paid off very handsomely. He was a very early investor in Coinbase for example, and now leads Andreesen Horowitz’s crypto team.

You can find Dixon talking about crypto on Twitter, where he has a large following and regularly shares his thoughts on the future of the industry. Go check it out, he often breaks things down for the rest of us!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who is Vitalik Buterin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 150 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 25, 2022

Who is Vitalik Buterin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we start our little mini series about popular blockchain people you should know about… and the first one is: Vitalik Buterin.

So who is he and why is he an interesting person?

Vitalik Buterin is best-known as the co-founder of Ethereum and, with the exception of the mysterious Bitcoin founder Sotoshi Nakamoto, is probably the best known person in the entire crypto community.

Buterin grew up in Russia as the son of computer scientists, and his family emigrated to Canada when he was six. He ended up being placed in classes for gifted children, because he was exceptional at math, and started enjoying programming and economics.

But he also liked gaming, and spent countless hours playing World of Warcraft. Coincidentally that put him on the path to create Ethereum, because the game publisher took away his character’s main abilities in a single software update. At that very moment, Vitalik Buterin realized that centralized services have a lot of power over their users.

This eventually motivated him to start working in Ethereum, which he first described in a paper in 2013. At the time, he was the publisher of Bitcoin Magazine, and liked the idea of Bitcoin, but wanted it to be more flexible than just do payments. Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, took notice and convinced Buterin to take a $100,000 investment to drop out of school.

And the rest is history. Obviously, Ethereum has become the most important blockchain for anything related to decentralized apps and finance, and Buterin is at the helm of its foundation.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What does “Immutable” mean? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 149 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 22, 2022

What does “Immutable” mean?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Are you also tired of hearing those technical, hard to understand terms that blockchain insiders use all the time? So are we. And one of those often mentioned terms is “immutable”. Insiders will say things like: a blockchain is a so-called “immutable ledger”.

But don’t get frustrated. It’s very easy to translate: Immutable just means that something can not be changed.

Think of blockchains like a transaction history that is saved on thousands of computers. Because of that, and because blockchains have mechanisms in place to prevent bad actors from altering them, they are essentially unchangeable.

This means: You can see every single thing that ever happened, and you can trust that the information is correct. Refreshing in times where we seemingly can’t agree on all that many things these days, isn’t it?

And why don’t crypto insiders just say “unchangeable”? Beats us too. Maybe it makes them feel smarter. But don’t be frustrated – a lot of the tech talk is easier to understand than it seems, and we are here to teach you. One building block at a time!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a Genesis Block? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 148 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 21, 2022

What is a Genesis Block?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we explain in simple terms what a Genesis Block is.

A Genesis block is the first block to exist in a blockchain. But let’s take a step back and revisit the concept of blocks to fully understand what that actually means.

Think of a blockchain as nothing more than a long history of financial transactions, saved indestructibly on many computers at the same time.

If you know the history of who sent whom how much, you can easily determine what is in each person’s wallet. It’s like a family tree: History is represented by generations – parents have kids, and kids have grandkids. If you know that Peter is Christian’s son, and Audrey is Christian’s daughter, you can determine that Christian has two kids.

But back to transactions now! Blocks are groups of those transaction records, and they simply exist to make it easier for computers to process many of them at the same time.

A Genesis block gets its name from the biblical story of God creating the world out of nothing. That’s kind of what is happening with crypto too: Someone just decides to start somewhere - for example 50 Bitcoins. It’s an arbitrary starting point, and the amount is set by the inventor of that blockchain. Everything after then is up to the users of the blockchain.

There you have it. All history has to start somewhere, including that of blockchains. And sometimes, there are some interesting nuggets to be found: Bitcoins Genesis block for example contained the headline of an article about banks being bailed out in the financial crisis of 2008. This led many to speculate it was invented as a currency that can’t be controlled by governments.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Can you really make crypto while running? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 147 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 20, 2022

Can you really make crypto while running?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s look into a new trend: Apps that give you free crypto as a reward for being active: Run a mile, get a token. Get out of the house for a walk, get another one.

But how does that work, are those tokens even worth collecting, and why would someone do this?

You may have heard about “play to earn” games where you get crypto as rewards for participating. A new kind of app that works similarly, is getting popular: But this time it’s about “move to earn”.

The idea is simple: You get rewarded with an app’s own token for exercising, and because the token can be traded on crypto exchanges, that reward may be exchanged for money. Sounds strange that someone would just give you money? You are not wrong - so let’s look into how those economics work.

First, there are simply games that give you a token they invented and that token doesn’t have real value. It’s just a fun game to keep you on your toes - pun intended. And in some cases, even though those tokens are just like Yelp badges or Reddit Karma, speculators show up and pump the value up.

But there are also cleverly disguised schemes that are influenced by popular play-to-earn games: Those “move to earn” games require you to buy in first. STEPN, the most popular one, forces you to buy a “sneaker NFT” for over $1000 before you can earn the token. They don’t say it, but the economics are simple: You buy in, so someone else can cash out. If total users are growing, everyone makes money - until people want to get out. Ponzi scheme, or just skin in the game… you’ll be the judge.

And that’s it on “move to earn” - we will say: Get out of the house no matter what, but if you are intrigued, go do some more research! Maybe there is one you find fun to play.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a custodial wallet? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 146 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 20, 2022

What is a custodial wallet?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about a different type of wallet. The so-called “custodial” wallet.

You may have never heard the term before, but it is the most common form of wallet. And if you have a crypto account with Coinbase, Binance, or other exchanges, you might actually have your crypto in a custodial wallet without knowing what it is.

Remember that on a blockchain, each bank account is represented by a wallet. That wallet has an address, like your bank account number, and a secret key. Without the key, nobody has access.

And managing that is cumbersome. You have to write down the keys somewhere, make sure you don’t lose them and keep others from stealing them. Countless amounts of crypto have simply been lost because people misplaced their secret key and will never be able to access their wallets again.

Enter those “custodial” wallets. Instead of making you manage all those keys, they are simply managed by someone else, for example Coinbase. You may have noticed that once you are signed up, those services simply work - no need to write any special passwords down for each blockchain.

This has huge usability advantages for you as a user of course. But at the same time, you have to trust those services not to lose your password or let hackers in. It’s a tradeoff, and some people who want to keep crypto for a very long time opt for cold storage instead - saving those passwords somewhere offline in a nearly indestructible form.

There you have it: Custodial wallet just means someone else is keeping your funds in a wallet they have custody over. You don’t have to worry about keys and such, but have to trust them to do the right thing.

The decision, as always, is yours.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How can your crypto wallet also be your password to Web3? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 145 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 19, 2022

How can your crypto wallet also be your password to Web3?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you’ve ever come across one of those “Web 3” websites, you will have noticed that they don’t operate like normal websites: Instead of asking you to create an account with username or password, or log in through Google and Facebook, they simply connect to your wallet.

But what does that do? And is it safe?

Connecting with a crypto wallet really means nothing other than letting the website know that you own that particular address on the blockchain in that case. Think of it like buying a car on a financing plan: The dealer needs to know you actually have control over the money, they don’t really care about the sound of your name as long as you can pay. That’s why they do all these identity and credit checks.

With blockchains, it’s much easier: You are the owner of your account because only you have the key. All your history is right there for everyone you let in. Like the car dealer, those sites don’t really need to know your name or email address to allow you to use a service, for example to exchange one token for another. And because your blockchain account is tied to you and you only, it can serve a double purpose as your login.

Neat, isn’t it? But be careful - these web apps can ask for anything, including permissions to transfer things in and out of your wallet. Whatever they ask for, a dialog pops up. Always - and we mean this - always read very carefully what they are asking for. Confirming your identity is one thing, but there are plenty of scam websites out there: They will tell you it’s just a login, but hope you don’t read the dialog and just click “OK” when they are trying to clean out your wallet instead.

And there you have it: Logging in with a wallet - kind of convenient, but still a little scary, so be careful. Things will surely get better over time, but keep your guards up for now.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Does Bitcoin have to be a Planet Killer? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 144 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 15, 2022

Does Bitcoin have to be a Planet Killer?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

We’ve covered and complained about Bitcoin’s energy consumption in this podcast a bunch, but let’s face it: Bitcoin makes up over 40% of the money, putting it far ahead in the first place. Clearly, Bitcoin is attractive to investors despite the carbon emissions problem.

So, the question is: Does Bitcoin HAVE to be a planet killer? Or can it be changed?

Unfortunately, it’s a little bit of both and the answer is: It’s complicated. So let’s break it down!

At the heart of Bitcoin’s wasteful nature is “proof of work”, a mechanism to validate transactions that burns energy by design. The thought is: Someone could take over the network by owning more than 50% of the mining capacity - which is called the 51% attack. So, let’s make it expensive for them to try, and introduce arbitrary energy intensive tasks each miner has to solve to participate.

This mechanism has been really effective at preventing a 51% attack. But Bitcoin doesn’t have to be this wasteful. The technology could be advanced to use more modern methods, like “proof of stake”. There, miners lock up funds in an escrow account in return for mining rights, and would lose them if they did bad things. Proof of stake blockchains are not only extremely fast, but also need just minimal amounts of energy.

But there is a catch, and it’s not technology, it’s human behavior. You see, mining is a HUGE business. Miners have invested millions into highly specialized Bitcoin computers, which are good at one thing, and one thing only: Solving those Bitcoin puzzles. Take the puzzles away, and the investment becomes useless.

The problem? You need more than half the actors on the network to agree to that change and they have deep financial incentives to dislike that change.

There you have it: It’s very unlikely that Bitcoin will ever become an energy friendly blockchain unfortunately. But as they say: stranger things have happened! Maybe we’ll all come to our senses one day and make the leap forward.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Block Time? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 142 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 14, 2022

What is Block Time?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s explore another one of those cryptic blockchain terms: Block Time. What is it and why does it matter?

Remember that blockchains are just long historic records of every transaction that ever happened. It’s like a family tree - a historical representation of an evolving document.

Computers do the hard work of validating those transactions. They need to make sure that nobody tried to sneak a fake transaction in to inflate their wallet balance - just like you want to make sure that your prankster uncle doesn’t change your grandmother's name on your family tree. In blockchains, when enough computers come to the consensus that the record of transactions up to this point is correct, the network approves it.

Now, this may take a little while to do. Bitcoin is famously slow because it forces computers to solve arbitrary puzzles to deter the bad guys from spamming the network with fake transactions. And because that is a known problem, transactions get bundled in so-called blocks. Instead of doing a puzzle for every single transaction, the puzzle is per block.

And there you have it: Block time is the time it takes for such a block to be fully verified. For example, Bitcoin’s block time is about 10 minutes. And if you know that Bitcoin is limited to about 1500 transactions per block, you can quickly calculate that it can only handle 2.5 transactions per second.

And those 2.5 transactions per second are not a lot at all, but you need to realize 10 mins block time in itself is also a very long time. Standing in line for ice cream and waiting that long for every single person ahead of you to pay would be absolutely no fun!

So, you see - Block Time matters, because even thousands of transactions per second won’t solve a problem if you have to wait for a long time for YOURS to process.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a Blockchain Bridge? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 142 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 13, 2022

What is a Blockchain Bridge?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: What does a blockchain bridge do, and how does it work?

The problem those bridges are trying to solve is almost as old as money itself. Imagine traveling to a different country and trying to spend the bills in your wallet at a restaurant. It will most likely not accept it and demand payment in their own local currency.

That's why you can exchange money, say from your US Dollars to Euros or the other way around. But how does this work?

It's all about collateral, or creating a reserve. An exchange kiosk at the airport would take your US Dollar and put it in the vault, then give you Euro in exchange. Your dollars are now the reserve that backs the Euros you've been given.

Of course, because there are many people going to the same kiosk every day, your exact Dollar bill may end up in a different person's wallet, but the principle remains the same.

Crypto bridges do the same thing. Because blockchains are separated, normally there would be no way to use, just as an example, Bitcoin on Solana. But people may want to do that, because they like Bitcoin, but want to take advantage of faster transactions on the Solana technology.

The bridges will take your Bitcoin, and put it in a sort of digital vault. The technical term is literally "locking them up". In return, they'll create a new token that operates on Solana, representing the value of a Bitcoin. Let's call it SolanaBit. Anyone with a SolanaBit can go back to the bridge and free their Bitcoins in exchange for letting them invalidate the SolanaBit.

And there are billions of coins locked up in vaults because they have been transferred over to other blockchains. But before you do that, know that there are big risks too - like any vault, if the bridge has security flaws, someone could break into it. The Wormhole Bridge lost $325m Ethereum in a hack just recently for example.

And that's what a blockchain bridge does! If you use then, use them with caution!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why is the European Union trying to ban Bitcoin and Ethereum? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 141 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 12, 2022

Why is the European Union trying to ban Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about a recently proposed law that would have made it illegal to use blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum in the European Union.

So! Why would anyone want to do that?

Because of big concerns about the environment. The EU has ambitious climate goals, and some blockchains consume excessive amounts of energy.

At the heart of the proposal was banning those chains that use “proof of work”, which is how some blockchains verify transactions.

This process is, in fact, MEANT to WASTE energy BY DESIGN. This is to deter bad actors from trying to overtake the network with fake requests, as every one of those would cost them restrictively high energy bills.

Of course, although cleverly conceived with good intentions by the inventor of Bitcoin, this turned out to be a catastrophic idea for the planet: Bitcoin alone consumes more energy than Norway.

And nowadays, there are alternatives that use massively better methods, all the way to carbon NEGATIVE blockchains.

But making Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others that use “proof of work” illegal would have cut millions of crypto investors in the EU out of their investments. And so the law was changed to not include this provision - at least for now.

What do you think? Should we have laws that force blockchains to become planet friendly?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Biden's Executive Order on Crypto about? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 140 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 11, 2022

What is Biden's Executive Order on Crypto about?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's take a deeper look into US President Biden's executive order on crypto and what it means.

An executive order is a written instruction the US President can give to all of the federal agencies he has control over. It's called an executive order, because it is not a law - but it instructs agencies to interpret existing laws in certain ways, which can have significant impact in practice.

One such area is cryptocurrencies. In its order, the Biden administration made a first attempt to clear the path for rules around when and how they are legal to use.

And that is important. To date, rules mostly exist around taxation, but not around how to build and market crypto projects. But the crypto industry might become a major economic factor in tech, and without clear rules, companies may decide to go elsewhere. Large exchanges like FTX have already left the US and gone to Hong Kong for example. Other companies like Coinbase have long advocated for clear laws and rules instead of unknowns.

So what exactly does the order include?

First, it acknowledges that crypto is a major trend. But as a government, a balance has to be found between allowing legal innovation and protecting consumers. Take stable coins as an example - many are not as stable as they promise, and there is nobody to protect you from that today. Another important factor mentioned is the protection of the environment.

Second, the order encourages the agencies to continue their research into a "digital dollar" - which could be a sort of crypto currency controlled by the US government.

And lastly, because crypto can be so complicated, it also asks the attorney general to determine if the existing agencies are actually capable of handling a crypto future - or if the creation of a new entity, entirely focused on the topic, is necessary.

All this is encouraging for crypto innovation in the United States. But remember - this is only an exploration of what could be. Laws will still have to be written and passed.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a Consensus Mechanism in blockchains? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 139 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 08, 2022

What is a Consensus Mechanism in blockchains?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's talk about consensus mechanisms in blockchains and why they are one of the most important concepts to understand.

But first, let's quickly revisit how blockchains memorize transactions.

Imagine blockchains are like your family history. Many members of your family have a copy of your family tree, but when you compare notes at your reunion, suddenly your uncle has a strange version where a few names are very different.

So: If there are two or more copies of something, and they are not all exactly the same, who decides which one is the right one?

That's where those consensus mechanisms come in. Consus here means agreeing how to validate information. Your family could decide: Any version of your family tree that has the most identical copies is the correct one. Or you can say: We designate a person we always trust to maintain our family history, because we know they are great at that stuff.

Blockchains are the same, but deal with financial transaction history. Much like your family tree is in multiple peoples' hands, the blockchain is copied onto multiple computers, sometimes even thousands.

Without a well-designed consensus mechanism anyone could just make up new information and assign their wallet money they never had. These rules are designed to make that as hard as possible. And quite successfully actually - Bitcoin and Ethereum have never been tricked into accepting fake information.

And about that uncle - turns out he was just pranking everyone. Good that you had a working consensus mechanism in place!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a Store of Value? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 138 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 07, 2022

What is a Store of Value?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

You've probably heard the term "store of value", which is usually used in reference to Bitcoin. But what does that actually mean?

Store of value simply means that an asset is seen as one created to park money in.

The most famous store of value is physical gold. People have long invested in it to diversify their portfolio in hopes of steady and relatively stable value increases over time. And there was more to it: throughout history owning gold showed: I am wealthy, and I am powerful.

The idea itself is interesting if you think about it some more: While it finds application in products like electronics and jewelry, the amount of money parked in Gold is much higher than it should be if you just think about its practical use.

You can already see the parallels to Bitcoin. Because it was a proof of concept from the early crypto days, the technology can not keep up with today's demand for speed, transaction volume, and programmability. It does, however, have a place in many investment portfolios with the intention to treat it as a kind of digital gold.

Calling it a store of value though is a pretty large misnomer. Due to the volatility of the crypto markets, Bitcoin's price shoots up and down violently, much more than Gold does.

So: As always, you'll be the judge. Digital gold or simply another speculative asset?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why is a big Hedge Fund betting against a stable coin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 137 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 06, 2022

Why is a big Hedge Fund betting against a stable coin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

A short seller called Fir Capital is making huge bets against Tether. A hedge fund betting on the decline of an investment wouldn't be newsworthy under normal circumstances, but this is different.

Tether is a stable coin, and as such you'd expect it would always be the same value as the US dollar. And hedge funds speculate on huge price changes, not stability... So, what is going on here?

Essentially, Fir Capital is saying they don't believe the coin is stable. In fact, they are so sure that they bet $4bn on the collapse of Tether.

How does this make sense at all? Well, unlike other stable coins, Tether is not transparent about the investments they have made with the money put into their stable coin. Their reserve, also called backing, is suspected to be tied up in large Chinese real estate companies, and the hedge fund thinks those will lose a lot of value soon. This would make Tether unable to repay a larger amount of users who may want to exchange their USDT back into dollar.

It's the perfect bet if you think about it. Tether is never going to be worth over $1, representing almost zero risk for the hedge fund. And if things do go wrong for Tether, they may win big time.

A Hedge Fund betting against a crypto project for lack of transparency – ironic, but probably a good thing for consumers in the end. Just don't get caught in the middle. Goes to show: Always do your research and fully understand what's going on under the hood.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is “Transactions per second” (TPS) and why does it matter? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 136 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 05, 2022

What is “Transactions per second” (TPS) and why does it matter?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's look into one the most fundamental requirement any blockchain will have to meet: That it can process enough transactions to handle the intended use cases.

Transactions per Second, or TPS in short, is a measure of that capability. Why does it matter?

Let's assume you create a new, amazing blockchain. Your goal is ambitious: It will be one global currency, poised to replace traditional payments entirely.

Now, that would be a lot of payments. VISA, for example, processes a few thousand transactions every second, and that is only one credit card company in a few countries. Just how many your blockchain would really need to support is hard to guess, but we can safely assume it's hundreds of thousands of TPS.

And guess what? Others have also tried and failed miserably. Bitcoin can handle only 7 TPS, a number that doesn't even support a single large supermarket. Ethereum does 14, so people pay to jump in front of the queue, and transaction fees become astronomical and impractical for smaller payments.

You see, it sounds easier than it is, and any blockchain that wants to have a real shot will need to support massive TPS, and they need to be cheap as well. When you evaluate a project, keep an eye on it.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a governance token? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 135 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 04, 2022

What is a governance token?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

By now, you know that there are many different kinds of tokens: for example regular cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, and stable coins like USD Coin.

But you’ve probably also heard the term “governance token”. So what’s up with that?

A governance token represents the right to vote on the future of the crypto project that it was created for. Think of it like a decision in your local sports club - everyone who is involved gets a say in key decisions.

Here’s how that works: A new wave of companies, called Web 3 organizations, are starting to democratize ownership and influence over their decisions. They mint a crypto token and give that away to whoever they feel like. Usually that is active or early users, collaborators, and the like. That token then allows the holder to propose changes, or vote in proposals from others. Any proposal that passes will be implemented.

But because the governance token is nothing other than a small computer program on the blockchain, this process is always going to work. Nothing can really interrupt it, and nobody can steal control. Unlike your local sports club, where the elected president can just decide to change the color of the building against the majority decision, here the code determines the rules.

An interesting example of this is AAVE. This blockchain based borrowing and lending system has over 100,000 governance token holders. They use a forum to exchange ideas, such as making a new crypto currency available for users to borrow or lend on their platform.

So, you see, decentralizing control actually happens in practice. There is more to crypto than just trading.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What the meow are Cryptokitties? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 134 - by cryptohunt.it Apr 02, 2022

What the meow are Cryptokitties?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: What the meow are Cryptokitties?

CryptoKitties are one of the first crypto based games. The game lives on the Ethereum blockchain and the goal is to breed the most unique CryptoKitten.

It starts like this: You enter the game with a virtual cat, and the cat has various traits, such as mouth shape, what kind of fur, etc. In total, 12 different traits exist.

Then you can breed your kitten with that of another player or one of your own. It works like evolution - the traits mix and create new unique kittens. Yellow and Brown fur could create red fur for example.

Kittens are represented as images with the images showcasing those unique traits. And the more unique a CryptoKitten is, the more expensive you can trade it for.

And that’s Cryptokittens. A fun game or just another crazy crypto ponzi scheme? As always, we’ll let you judge!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Wrapped Bitcoin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 133 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 31, 2022

What is Wrapped Bitcoin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take a look at a really interesting crossover of the two most popular blockchains: Wrapped Bitcoin.

Also found under its ticker WBTC, this token isn’t really it’s own currency, but in fact Bitcoin, but traded on Ethereum.

Sounds confusing? We are here to help. Each wrapped Bitcoin represents the value of one actual Bitcoin, but is tradeable on the Ethereum blockchain. You see, while Bitcoin is really just a currency, Ethereum is like a bank and you can transact any financial instrument there, thanks for its smart contracts.

But why would you want to do that in the first place? To get the best of both worlds. Bitcoin is the largest crypto currency by far, and people want to hold it as a store of value, similar to gold. But Bitcoin’s blockchain technology is very outdated at this point: It’s slow, and very expensive to operate. And we haven’t even talked about the climate impact yet!

That’s why the investors of Wrapped Bitcoin thought: What if we can trade Bitcoin on Ethereum, allowing us to own Bitcoin without dealing with its old technology. And it seems like that was a good idea - about 1.5% of Bitcoin are wrapped, a current total of $13bn dollars.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Binance USD (BUSD) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 132 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 30, 2022

What makes Binance USD (BUSD) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take a look at yet another stablecoin, Binance USD.

Binance USD is the third largest stablecoin on the market with almost $20 billion US dollar exchanged for it. The price of Binance USD is linked to the US Dollar, making it yet another potential candidate to use for everyday payments as that gets rid of price volatility of traditional crypto.

Fans of this podcast will know that we’ve spent a few episodes on stable coins already - how they work, and analyzing just how stable they really are – or are not. So what makes Binance USD special next to the others we have talked about, like USDC and Tether?

Binance USD is actually very similar to USDC, as it is fully audited and regulated by a government. In this case, the New York State Department of Financial Services has given its seal of approval.

And also just like USDC, Binance USD is 100% backed by real dollars: When you buy one BUSD, the company puts aside that one US Dollar you purchased it with, meaning you can always exchange USDC back fully. Remember! That isn’t always the case for stablecoins, Tether for example is notoriously intransparent about its backing.

One notable difference that BUSD has going for itself is that it can operate on the Binance smart chain, which is cheap and fast. USDC in contrast, when used over the Ethereum blockchain, suffers from high transaction costs that reach $20-30 dollars easily.

And that is it on Binance USD! We hope you enjoyed this episode. Learn more and come see us for a first glimpse into cryptohunt at beta.cryptohunt.it.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Near (NEAR) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 131 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 29, 2022

What makes Near (NEAR) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about NEAR.

The Near protocol is a blockchain that allows developers to build products and services on top of it, similar to how they might use Amazon's or Google's servers to create a website.

Near brands itself as a community as well as a platform, bringing together community members who maintain the network and developers who use it to build. It's a little bit like a community garden - there is something to do for everyone.

But besides the technical advantages of high speed and lower transaction costs than it's biggest competitor Ethereum, Near also wants to solve other problems a real-world user might not want to deal with.

First, it gets rid of those cryptic wallet addresses nobody can remember and replaces them with something much more useful. Those Near addresses look very similar to websites addresses, for example jonsmith.near. That makes them easy to remember and share. You might remember: Celo is another blockchain with the same idea, but they use phone numbers or emails instead.

Second, Near makes a deliberate effort to be a green blockchain and it is carbon neutral certified. Their approach is two-fold: They constantly look at their software to eliminate any wasteful code, and they offset carbon emissions by donating to the planting of trees.

And that is Near, another example of a blockchain that is trying to solve not only technical challenges, but also the human side of being able to use it, and use it responsibly.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes HEX special? - Episode 130 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 28, 2022

What makes HEX special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take a closer look at HEX, a crypto token that is specially designed to perform lending and borrowing.

The makers of HEX took a look at the traditional financial markets and realized that there is a very popular form of borrowing and lending, called a certificate of deposit. In short also called CD, its idea is really simple: A bank would pay you a higher interest rate on cash that you deposit for a fixed amount of time. That’s because it helps the banks plan ahead better, something worth a premium to them. They take the money out of your account, and you get the CD. It simply says: The bank now owes me money and I’ll get it back at a set point.

HEX does all of that, but without banks in the middle. You can put money into Hex by buying it, and when you lock it up for a period of time, it starts paying additional Hex in interest.

Interestingly, that is the only use case it has: To buy and hold, like digital gold. That is why many critics say Hex is essentially a big ponzi scheme - it can only continue to grow in value if more people buy in. Proponents, on the other hand, liken it more to Bitcoin as an investment vehicle, but with built in interest.

And that’s it on Hex – what do you think? 30 billion dollars invested well, or just a big ponzi scheme?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 5: How Ethereum almost died because of a hack - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 129 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 25, 2022

The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 5: How Ethereum almost died because of a hack

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day on crypto and its history. In plain english.

Today's episode is about another kind of hack, one that targeted weaknesses in blockchain technology to steal a lot of Ethereum.

It started with an ambitious idea in 2016. A group of coders from Germany came up with the idea of the DAO, a decentralized organization that would act like a venture capital firm, but without employees. Instead, anyone who sent Ethereum to the DAO would in turn get partial ownership of it, and voting rights to determine which investments were to be made.

And it exploded. Over just a month, the DAO raised $150 million dollars from over 11,000 investors. The creators were proud, especially because most money came from a bunch of smaller investors, truly democratizing venture capital.

The DAO’s operation was controlled by computer code, meaning the rules are set in stone and in theory nobody could mess with that. Unfortunately, the code had bugs though, and hackers were able to siphon off $40m of the funds.

The entire young Ethereum community was fighting over what to do. In the end, two sides existed: One which wanted to just move on, and the other, which wanted to roll back the history of the blockchain, restart from before the incident, and operate in that alternative reality.

The fight was so strong that Ethereum almost fell apart. In the end, two Ethereums came out of it: The one we know today altered the blockchain’s history. The other, called Ethereum Classic, kept history as it was and moved on.

And there you have it – many hacks can come from within. Blockchains are just computer programs, and they can have problems too.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 4: How Bitconnect’s ponzi scheme turned out to be a $4.5 billion dollar scam - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 128 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 24, 2022

The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 4: How Bitconnect’s ponzi scheme turned out to be a $4.5 billion dollar scam

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day on crypto and its history. In plain english.

Today's episode is another cautionary tale: When things sound too good to be true, and scammers hope you don’t fully understand how a system works, bad things will happen.

Bitconnect itself was a cryptocurrency released in 2016. Remember, this was when crypto had its first bull run, and everyone wanted to get in on it.

That context is important to understand Bitconnect. You could buy it for Bitcoin and were promised a daily interest of around 1% from a secret algorithmic trading bot, 50x more than the stock market.

On Bitconnects exchange, you could then swap between Bitcoin and Bitconnect. But the bot wasn’t actually doing anything, it was made up. And that meant that the system only worked as long as more people bought into it than cashed out. It’s called a Ponzi Scheme - that means those buying in pay for those exiting the system. When government agencies took note in 2018, Bitconnect shut down and the token plummeted in value by over 90% in a single day. Investors lost over $4bn dollars.

This story is a great reminder, because crypto is not easy to understand. People want to invest, because they see others make money, but ignore that they don’t know why. Especially crypto, which is complicated with few resources that make it easier to understand, is susceptible to those frauds.

But we hope that this podcast is changing that for you, and bit by bit, you learn the building blocks to make up your own mind. Check out cryptohunt.it as well, where you can read reviews on every project soon.

And next time: How Ethereum almost died because of a hack.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 3: Drug dealers, black markets, Secret Service Agents, and a ton of stolen Bitcoin - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 127 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 23, 2022

The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 3: Drug dealers, black markets, Secret Service Agents, and a ton of stolen Bitcoin

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day on crypto and its history. In plain english.

Today's episode is wild: Get ready for a story about drug dealers, black markets, Secret Service Agents, and a ton of stolen Bitcoin.

It all started with Silk Road, the infamous online drug marketplace operating in the dark shadows of the internet. Operated by Texas native Ross Ulbricht between 2013 and 2015, Silk Road connected drug dealers with over 100,000 buyers.

The kicker? Payments were in Bitcoin, a fact that still gives the crypto currency a bad reputation to this day.

A joint task force eventually found and arrested Ulbricht. And over years of meticulous detective work, they got their hands on over $1 billion worth of Bitcoin connected to Silk Road.

But soon after Ulbricht’s arrest, another suspicion cropped up: It seemed as if some of the sized funds were suddenly missing. And in fact, 1500 Bitcoin, today worth over $60 million, were removed from some wallets. How did this happen with Ulbricht in prison?

Turns out: The government had a bad apple within their own ranks: Secret Service Special Agent Shaun Bridges had transferred the crypto to his own wallets, presumably thinking that nobody would notice the comparatively small amount.

Bridges got sentenced to jail time after trying to flee the country. But it doesn't stop there. Prosecutors uncovered that he actually tried to steal even more Bitcoin after his first sentencing.

What Bridges probably didn't think about: It's hard to hide your tracks, if all the evidence is on the public blockchain. But the damage is long done: The argument that crypto is only for criminals can be heard everywhere. We'll let you be the judge on that one. ;)

And tomorrow: How a fake public offering turned into a $4 billion scam.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 2: How investors put $4bn into OneCoin, a coin that didn’t even exist - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 126 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 22, 2022

The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 2: How investors put $4bn into OneCoin, a coin that didn’t even exist

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

This week we will take a look at the fascinating stories behind some of the largest crypto hacks and scams.

Today, let's investigate OneCoin – a coin that never even existed. Nonetheless, investors lost over $4bn dollars in the scheme.

OneCoin was founded by Dr. Ruja Ignatova, who is still running from the authorities, and Sebastian Greenwood, who's now in jail in the United States.

The promise was simple: OneCoin was a new, revolutionary crypto currency that could initially only be minted by insiders, potentially making them very rich. To become an insider though, you'd have to become an affiliate and the more new affiliates you bring in yourself, the more extra tokens you can mint.

The company armed its affiliates with marketing material and even created an internal exchange where tokens could be swapped for cash with other members. In order to use the exchange though, you'd have to buy a higher level of membership.

Smells like fraud to you? Not to many others, as the scheme was going on for years. In the end, and in hindsight obviously, there was no cryptocurrency and the two founders ran away with all the money.

The sad thing is: Where there is money, there are scams. And the promise of getting rich quickly blinds a lot of people's common sense. Keep your eyes open and always ask yourself: Why does someone want my money before I see anything in return for it? If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

And tomorrow: The case of a Secret Service Special Agent, who stole millions from an online drug marketplace.

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The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 1: How Mt. Gox lost $50bn in a Bitcoin hack - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 125 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 21, 2022

The craziest crypto scams and hacks: Part 1: How Mt. Gox lost $50bn in a Bitcoin hack

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

This week we will take a look at the fascinating stories behind some of the largest crypto hacks and scams.

Today, let's talk about one of the craziest of them all: How Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox lost almost 7% of all Bitcoins, which would be over $54 billion US dollars today.

It all started harmlessly. In 2006, Jed McCaleb, who later become the cofounder of both Ripple and Stellar, created a website to exchange online fantasy game cards. He called it Mt. Gox. The project never went anywhere, but after getting interested in Bitcoin in 2010, he repurposed the domain and created one of the first crypto exchanges, allowing users to buy and sell Bitcoin online.

McCaleb soon sold the site, citing a lack of time to make it better. The new owner, a french developer by the name of Mark Karpelès, saw the potential and quickly turned it into the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world. At one point, a whopping 70% of all Bitcoins changed hands through Mt. Gox.

And that's where the troubles started. One security breach after the next eventually forced Mt. Gox out of business in 2014, and the system was so vulnerable, that the company lost 850,000 (!) Bitcoins in total. Many users never got their money back, and Karpelès was found guilty on several charges in Japan, where Mt. Gox operated.

So, what was the problem and could this happen again? For the most part, Mt. Gox held all funds in so-called hot wallets. Those wallets are connected to the internet and therefore more accessible by hackers. And while hackers are of course still a concern, nowadays many exchanges like Coinbase are holding over 90% of all funds in cold wallets to minimize your risk. But it is still a good reminder: always consider who you trust with the keys to your holdings!

And next time – how investors lost $4 billion on a coin that didn't even exist.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Does the world need crypto? Part 4: The ingredients of the perfect blockchain - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 124 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 18, 2022

Does the world need crypto? Part 4: The ingredients of the perfect blockchain

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Welcome back to our mini-series on: Does the world need crypto? This is the final part, so make sure you start from the beginning.

By now you know: Bitcoin was born out of idealism – but it's taken a very long time for crypto to finally catch up with real-world use cases. And still, Bitcoin is limited in functionality, slow, and a planet-killer. Ethereum could do it all, but is expensive to operate and slow.

So, today: Let's talk about the making of a perfect blockchain, one that solves real problems, and solves them efficiently.

First: speed and throughput. Just VISA alone can process around 10,000 transactions per second. The true amount of times money changes hands every day is impossible to estimate, but for context: Ethereum currently processes only about 15.

Second: Decentralization - is a blockchain really free from the influence of a few? While many claim they are decentralized, they are actually under the control of a few who hold a lot of voting power. And others like Ethereum have the opposite problem: They can't seem to adapt quickly, because there are so many moving pieces.

Third: Is it easy to use? Can you imagine paying with crypto at the gas station, if you have to exchange things and then fumble for a strange wallet ID? Of course not. How blockchains think about the end user experience will determine how popular they become.

And last: Does it accomplish all of this while doing good? We here at cryptohunt are very critical about Bitcoin and Ethereum's energy usage, when faster carbon neutral or even negative alternatives already exist. Is it limited in growth because it only helps rich people trade expensive NFTs or does it enable billions of small payments in places where people don't have fair access to bank accounts?

All these should give you a great starting point to do your own research into what may succeed in the long run. And of course it is no coincidence we care about that - you'll find answers to all of these on cryptohunt.it when we launch next week!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Does the world need crypto? 123 – Part 3: DeFi to the rescue? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 123 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 17, 2022

Does the world need crypto? 123 – Part 3: DeFi to the rescue?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english. Let’s continue our mini-series on: Does the world need crypto? This is part 3, so make sure you start from the beginning.

In the past two episodes, we've discussed how anger about banks and governments started the crypto trend. Yet, crypto hasn't gone mainstream and Bitcoin itself has become what it wanted to prevent in the first place: Another speculative asset with zero consumer protection.

But Bitcoin can also be seen as an outdated proof-of-concept. A great first idea, with as many flaws as promises. But all that changed with Ethereum, which aims to take crypto from just one use – in Bitcoin's case being a payment method – to virtually any finance application you can think of.

So: Is Ethereum finally solving real problems then? Crypto is actually useful?

Arguably, yes, we are seeing some real uses. Stable coins for example, like Tether and USDC. By being pegged to a real currency, they fix the price fluctuation issue of Bitcoin. The complicated logic behind stabilizing them can only exist on a programmable blockchain like Ethereum. And they are being used – Ukraine's call for donations is a great example. While traditional banks are slow and charge high fees to send money across borders, people could suddenly help quickly and efficiently with crypto.

Other uses exist too, like lending and borrowing money, or using crypto as an alternative to bank accounts. You may not realize this, but most of our world is "underbanked", meaning people don't have fair access to bank accounts and stable currencies, making their life a mix of uncertainty and high fees. Crypto projects like Celo are already in wide use there, leapfrogging inefficient governments or traditional finance systems.

You see: The world does need crypto. Slowly, the technology is catching up with real needs. It just took a really, really long time. And suddenly, does it seem unrealistic that Visa and Mastercard will also be disrupted by crypto?

But we are not there yet. Even Ethereum and many others are flawed. So, tomorrow we'll look into what makes a perfect blockchain, one that could disrupt them all.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Does the world need crypto? Part 2: Replacing the banking system - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 122 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 16, 2022

Does the world need crypto? Part 2: Replacing the banking system

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Welcome back to our mini-series on: Does the world need crypto? This is part 2, so make sure you start from the beginning.

Last time, we learned about the history of Bitcoin, and how it was born out of the 2008 financial crisis as a digital currency that is not centrally controlled by a government, with wallets that are like bank accounts without having banks involved.

The content of the bank account, of course, is crypto and not real money... and do we really need all that?

And it does sound like a compelling argument: Cut out the government and the banks, who all messed up in 2008 and didn't protect us enough in the first place.

But it has been 14 years since then and Bitcoin has only turned into a speculative asset, and ironically has almost no practical use as a currency. Structural problems, like slow speed and high energy consumption make it suited at most as a store of value, not a real payment method.

Meanwhile, Visa, Mastercard and co are still charging multiple percent from every person buying something, and Bitcoin didn't address the problems with financial institutions themselves. You still have a regular bank account and tolerate the outrageous fees without complaints.

So, where are the real-world use cases of crypto helping us avoid the next financial crisis?

Enter Ethereum, and the power of decentralized finance, a world of applications that aim to replicate what only banks are able to do. And they promise to perform it transparently on the blockchain, for everyone to participate.

Will they be the real breakout case for crypto? Let's dive into it next time and see what is already happening and where defi still falls short.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Does the world need crypto? Part 1: Decentralization - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 121 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 15, 2022

Does the world need crypto? Part 1: Decentralization

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

The reason Bitcoin exists in the first place is widely assumed to be Satoshi Nakamoto’s disagreement with fiscal policies around the 2008 crash.

This week, let's have a brief look at history and the discussions around crypto: Is it really necessary?

The 2008 crash was a direct consequence of big banks placing increasingly risky bets on ever rising housing prices. When the bubble popped, most of them got bailed out by governments which printed massive amounts of money to do so, causing inflation.

Many people were unhappy with this; they found it unfair that these banks would get saved at the expense of everyone else; after all they caused the mess.

Bitcoin attempted to change the game by creating a system of money that is decentralized, meaning no single player has the power to change it. It, in fact, was even built to be deflationary: There can never be more than 21 million Bitcoins, meaning nobody can print it.

But do we really need such a self-policing system?

Critics will argue that governments' ability to react to market conditions is a great thing. This way we can proactively step in and help the economy.

And they will rightfully argue that we have replaced something simple and effective - a centralized system, with something complicated that only insiders understand. While a company like VISA can run the world’s payments out of a single data center, we burn through a household's energy just for a few Bitcoin transactions.

You see, what it comes down to is this: Do you think the financial system as it is has been serving society well? Or do you think power should shift away from governments and big corporations so everyone can participate at their own risk?

Next time we'll look into those questions in more depth. Until then – happy learning!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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cryptohunt is launching! How to get a spot - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 120 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 14, 2022

cryptohunt is launching! How to get a spot.

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we have something exciting to cover. After a long time of building cryptohunt, we are finally launching into beta by the end of March.

So, what is cryptohunt in the first place? Fair question! We have been hard at work building a website where you can learn from the ground up about crypto and all the projects that exist.

Don't know anything about crypto yet? Come on in, we are making it easy for you to get started. Already deep into it? Go ahead and read our opinions on many of the existing cryptocurrencies to help you make up your mind.

Cryptohunt is going to be the place where you will review, discuss, and explain what it is really about.

But we need your help in the beginning, and that is why we are launching in closed beta on the 25th of March. The rules are simple: If you want to start learning and even making some money with the classes we offer, we ask you to give us feedback in return.

So... Join the waitlist at cryptohunt.it. That'll get you a place in line. We can't wait to hear from you.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a 51% Attack? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 119 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 11, 2022

What is a 51% Attack?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s dig into the topic of 51% attacks.

Remember: One of the core ideas of blockchains is to get rid of a central authority for checking payments for fraud. This is different from traditional finance, like credit card company VISA, where a single organization controls the entire flow of money, and thus can easily check every transaction.

But how exactly do you decentralize such a system? It's easy actually: You have many actors who validate independently.

Say you write the word "cryptohunt" on 20 pieces of paper, which you then distribute to 20 people in a room. Someone could walk into that room and ask any honest person for the word, and they'd get the right answer. But what happens if someone starts to mess with your guests, and tells them the wrong word on purpose?

Blockchains like Bitcoin have a simple rule for this: At least 50% of the people in the room have to confirm the word, otherwise you can't trust it.

And that's where the 51% attack comes in. What if more than half of the people in our room conspired to change the word? Then their fake truth becomes the real truth.

In crypto, what's validated are of course transactions and account balances, and the people are computers. But there is always a fear that someone could get enough computers together to take over a blockchain – this is the 51% attack.

In reality though, that has never happened for Bitcoin and co, thanks to proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. We highly recommend to listen to those episodes to dig a little deeper.

And next time we talk about cryptohunt's upcoming launch and how you can get exclusive early access.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Dash special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 118 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 10, 2022

What makes Dash special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about Dash, another crypto currency that was built with privacy in mind.

Dash was invented as an alternative to Bitcoin and Litecoin, and is based on a modification of their original computer program. The name Dash is a word mix of “digital” and “cash”. Live since early 2014, it is one of the oldest altcoins.

To ensure privacy, dash uses a mechanism that is often referred to as a “tumbler”.

Imagine your friend wants to pay you $5 dollars, and she drops the amount into a bucket, but does that by first putting $2 dollars in, and a few minutes later $3 dollars.

Meanwhile, other people have also put money into the bucket for their own transactions. Now, you pull out your $5 dollars, but at five separate times for $1 each. At this point, the money has been mixed up with everyone else's: It has been tumbled.

If there are enough transactions, it becomes impossible to say who sent what to whom and how much exactly, thus making the system more private – and that’s exactly how Dash works.

But Dash isn’t just used for privacy reasons. Despite being an older altcoin, it’s actually quite useful in real life. The makers have an app, for example, where you can get discounts at a ton of big retailers. It works by buying a discounted gift card with Dash first, and then using that at the counter. A little clunky :), but it works with thousands of stores and still beats most other cryptocurrencies that have near zero real-world application.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes ZCash special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 117 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 09, 2022

What makes ZCash special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

A common misperception about crypto is that all blockchains provide perfect anonymity. Because wallets are only identified by a cryptic key, owners assume it is easy to hide their real identities.

But in practice, everyone leaves traces behind when using crypto. And with that, scientists, hackers, and governments alike have demonstrated that re-identifying people is much easier than often assumed, especially with big data and ever increasing computing power.

That brings us to ZCash! ZCash was founded by researchers who saw these anonymity problems as a fundamental flaw of Bitcoin, and they improved its code to be privacy focused.

While Bitcoin, like most other blockchains, keeps a public, easily readable record of all transactions, ZCash does not. Instead, it encrypts the transaction details, and only the owner of that transaction can decrypt it.

Think of it like giving a friend a key to your house in case you lock yourself out. With ZCash, you would put that key in a lockbox, pick a code only you know, and only then hand it over. When you need to get into your house, only you can get the contents of the lockbox in the first place.

ZCash comes with drawbacks though. Because it is based on Bitcoin, a now arguably outdated technology, it is also slower and less planet friendly than newer blockchains. In addition, the creators pay themselves an automatic 20% of all new mined coins, which some think is unfair.

That’s ZCash! Next up tomorrow: Dash!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Monero special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 116 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 08, 2022

What makes Monero special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you’ve listened to our explanation of what a blockchain is, and remember from last episode that every transaction and account balance on a blockchain are public, then you probably think: What about privacy then? I don’t have to tell my neighbor how much is in my real bank account either.

That’s where so-called privacy coins come in, and today’s episode is about Monero, a popular one.

Monero attempts to make that public record less useful for those trying to trace back the history of it. It has a few tricks up its sleeve to do that.

First, it uses a “stealth address” for each public transaction. Think of it similar to creating many temporary email addresses that all forward to your real inbox. If you never used the same temporary email twice, to the outsider it would be very hard to summarize what you actually sent and received.

Another clever mechanism is called “ring signature”. Imagine you had a bunch of friends, and you all send around a bunch of different amounts of money, carefully making sure that in the end everyone retained their exact wallet balance. Just by looking at all the transactions, you could never tell which ones were intentional, and which ones were just made to obfuscate things. Monero does this all the time, by design.

And it is actually quite effective at solving the anonymity issue this way. Because strictly speaking, all transactions are publicly visible because that’s how blockchains just work - but just can’t make much sense of them because of the way Monero obfuscates them. In fact, it is so effective that US tax authorities put out a bounty to whoever can crack the system.

But, of course privacy is not just for people who want to hide things, privacy is an expectation you have, just like your neighbor has no business knowing how much money you have. That’s why there are more of those privacy coins, and next time, let’s look at another example called ZCash!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Can anyone see what’s in my crypto wallet? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 115 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 07, 2022

Can anyone see what’s in my crypto wallet?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

One of the features of blockchains is that all transactions are recorded publicly - that way, the system is very hard to cheat because there are thousands of copies of its history on thousands of computers that can be compared for accuracy.

But did you know: This also means that you can easily see what anyone has sent, to whom, and even how much money is in their wallet?

So how does it work?

Every wallet has an address, which is like your bank account number. The blockchain is like a long diary, recording transactions between wallets and their balances every time they happen. You can see this yourself with just your web browser, by going to pages like blockstream.info for Bitcoin or etherscan.io for Ethereum. They contain the entire history of those blockchains, readily searchable.

Of course, you may not know who’s behind these addresses, but true anonymity is impossible by design. Whoever knows your wallet address can also see everything else.

But whatever you think about that, it’s also useful. For example , you’ll always know if someone got the money you sent for example. Or you can see how much an NFT sold for. Or if your donations have been used or are just sitting unused in an account.

And next time, we talk about Monero, a blockchain that tries to bring anonymity back to virtual money.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Celo and what makes it special? (Part 2 of 2) - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 114 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 04, 2022

What is Celo and what makes it special? (Part 2 of 2)

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, welcome to part two of our two part series on Celo, a blockchain near to our heart as they are investors in cryptohunt.

To recap – Celo tries to solve two problems: Reduce the technical knowledge typically needed to use crypto, and avoid crypto’s strong value fluctuations. And it does all that while being carbon negative.

Last time, we explained how Celo uses your phone number or email to make sending money much easier than is usually the case with crypto.

But what good is that if you have to pay with a currency that gains or loses value every day, like non-stable coins such as Bitcoin do? Imagine getting paid for work one week and the next week your groceries are twice as expensive.

Celo powers a couple of stable coins, currently one tied to the US Dollar, one tied to the Euro, and one tied to Brazil’s Real. One Celo USD is always worth one real US Dollar, for example. Same idea with the Euro and Real varieties.

That allows users to pay for things without having to worry about the fluctuating value of their crypto wallet.

And in case you were wondering, yes there is also CELO itself, the native currency that does fluctuate in value and rewards those who validate the transactions. That means: If the Celo blockchain becomes more popular, the CELO token increases in price too.

And lastly, but important to many of us, Celo offsets more carbon emissions than it causes, making it one of the few carbon negative blockchains. It uses a method of validating transactions that doesn’t need a lot of computing power. For comparison: Bitcoin only processes 2 transactions per ton of CO2, while Celo crunches up to 7 million. And even then, the Celo Foundation is making regular contributions to Project Wren, which plants trees to offset carbon emissions.

Those features have led to CELOs adoption across the world. Even Kickstarter announced in 2021 that they will pivot to a blockchain powered company and build on CELO. It currently ranks in the top 75 blockchains by market cap and has attracted large investments from Andreessen Horowitz, T-Mobile, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey among many others.

And that’s it on Celo! We hope you enjoyed our two part series!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Celo and what makes it special? (Part 1 of 2) - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 113 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 03, 2022

What is Celo and what makes it special? (Part 1 of 2)

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, welcome to part one of our two part series on Celo, a blockchain near to our heart as they are investors in cryptohunt.

The name Celo means "purpose" in Esperanto, and hints at the project's bigger vision. Launched publicly in 2020 after four years of development, the blockchain wants to bring digital money to everyone, regardless of the tech they use or the sophistication of the banking system they live in.

For that, Celo tries to solve two problems: Reduce the technical knowledge typically needed to use crypto, and avoid crypto’s strong value fluctuations. And it does all that while being carbon negative.

So how does it work?

To make Celo easier to use it does something unique: Instead of those complicated wallet addresses and keys you may have seen, wallets on Celo are simply tied to phone numbers or email addresses. Through their app Valora, you can even send money to someone who isn’t on Celo yet by using their phone number and they can claim it later.

Celo’s idea here is: Nobody wants to use something complicated. But If crypto is as easy as Venmo, it’ll reach wide adoption. And it seems to work: There are currently over 600k wallets that use Celo every month.

And that was part one - stay tuned for tomorrow, where we’ll talk about how Celo solves the strong price fluctuations of crypto and why it’s a green alternative to those many energy-hungry blockchains.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why crypto is great for donations - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 112 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 02, 2022

Why crypto is great for donations

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

You may have seen the Ukrainian government tweeting out wallet addresses for donations, and at the time of recording receiving over $34m dollars worth of contributions within a few days.

So why is crypto so useful in this case?

First, sending money internationally is a huge pain through traditional banks. It is complicated, takes a long time to arrive, and the fees are outrageous. Crypto, on the other hand, is instant and cheap, and you don’t have to worry about local currency conversion.

Second, there is a lot of money in crypto and people may feel more generous since they already made good returns. Gavin Wood for example, former co-founder of Ethereum and creator of the blockchain Polkadot, donated almost $6 million dollars to the Ukrainian government.

And last, and this is something you probably don’t think about much, it’s easy to audit. Everything is visible on the blockchain - so you can see how much was sent and how much was withdrawn.

So, next time you donate to something, maybe it is in crypto. Just make sure you verify the receiving address really belongs to the correct recipient as there are scams everywhere.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Can you really trust stablecoins? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 111 - by cryptohunt.it Mar 01, 2022

Can you really trust stablecoins?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take another look at stablecoins – and why you shouldn’t trust all of them with your money.

Remember the concept of stable coins: One coin is always worth the equivalent of one real currency. So, for example, 1 stablecoin would be worth $1.

This is achieved by something called collateral. It’s very similar to getting a mortgage - your house is the collateral. The bank knows that if you can’t pay your debt, they can always take the house.

When you buy a stable coin from the creator, they take your money and put that aside as collateral. In the best case, it just sits in a savings account and whenever you want to exchange it back, the whole exchange happens in reverse.

The problem is that many stable coins don’t actually put your dollar into savings. Some of them invest your money in other crypto currencies, some of them only save part of the money and pay themselves with the rest. All this becomes a problem as soon as more people want to exchange their stable coins back than there is collateral left to pay them.

Two great examples are Tether, which we covered last time, and USDC. Tether, on one hand, is intransparent about what your money actually gets invested in. USDC, on the other hand, has 100% of the money parked in Dollars in an account, is government licensed in the US, and gets audited every month.

And that’s why you can’t trust every stable coin. Some are audited and 100% collateralized, and some are not. Always do your research before you assume that your money is safe.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Is Tether as stable as they claim? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 110 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 28, 2022

Is Tether as stable as they claim?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take a critical look at Tether, the largest stablecoin. Or at least that’s what it is marketed as - but what’s behind those claims?

Remember that stable coins are usually backed by a real world asset. That means, for example, that for each stable token worth $1 Dollar, there should be a reserve of real money worth the same. This way, if all stable tokens are exchanged back for cash, everyone would get their money back.

In reality though, stable coins are never fully exchanged back at any given point, and that allows operators to get away with backing them only partially without having liquidity problems in most scenarios. And that’s what Tether did.

The problem is that nobody really knows how much money is actually in their reserve. That is because Tether simply doesn’t give details. And you’d be surprised that after getting sued by the US government, the company had to admit that only 3% of reserves are in actual cash, and almost all of it is in what they call “commercial paper”, which critics say can’t be audited properly.

How’s that a problem? Consider a case where 10% of Tether owners suddenly want to withdraw for cash. The company may not be able to sell their “commercial paper” fast enough, or might not even have enough in the first place.

So, next time you need to use a stable coin, consider what it is backed by. There are fully government audited alternatives, like USDC – so you have the peace of mind to know what is actually keeping them stable.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why do crypto people say “to the moon”? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 109 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 25, 2022

Why do crypto people say “to the moon”?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

What exactly does it mean when crypto people say "to the moon"? It's simply an expression of confidence that their coin of choice will see astronomical gains in value.

It's not entirely clear where the phrase comes from, but it likely originates from a 1950s sitcom called The Honeymooners, where it was often used.

In crypto, it has even taken on a literal meaning. The Dogecoin community raised money for Elon Musk's SpaceX to send a satellite called DOGE-1 towards the Moon. Besides scientific equipment, it'll also carry one Dogecoin aboard. No exact date is set for when it's flying "to the moon" just yet, but since Musk is involved... that isn't all too surprising.

But back to planet earth – always take things with a grain of salt. In pursuit of profit, people will say anything to pump their coin. So: take “to the moon” as a fun meme, not investment advice.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a “crypto whale”? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 108 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 24, 2022

What is a “crypto whale”?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's talk about those so-called "crypto whales": What they are and the dangerous influence they can have.

Crypto whales are holders of large amounts of a cryptocurrency's supply. They could be institutional investors - meaning banks and other investment funds - or individuals. But they all have the same in common: They hold enough crypto to influence markets with their decisions.

And that's where the term comes from too. Think of an actual whale letting their gigantic tale dance - the ripples created from the large creature can be felt by all the smaller fishes.

And that's what worries those small fish, which are the smaller investors. They fear that whales pump a market for their own gain, and then suddenly dump everything and leave everyone else with prices that are in free fall. That is because of the supply those whales control, they are able to manipulate prices quite easily. A whale starting to sell large amounts could cause price collapses for example.

But however YOU feel about crypto whales, looking at their actions closely is always a good thing to know what's going on in the market.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What does “HODL” mean? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 107 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 23, 2022

What does “HODL” mean?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Let’s take a look into those strange terms that crypto fans often use. Today's word? HODL - spelled H-O-D-L.

To "hodl" means nothing other than to hold a crypto currency, especially during a downturn when the market is selling off.

The term originated on a Bitcoin forum in late 2013, when a user simply made a typo. They wrote "I am hodling" during one of the earlier Bitcoin bear markets, likely hoping to inspire others to do the same to stop the price from going down further.

The word “hodling” stuck around as a joke - first at the expense of the original author, later in general crypto culture. Eventually, it started to refer to the strategy of buying and holding, no matter what, in hopes for crypto’s takeover of traditional finance.

Although it may have started as a joke at the expense of someone who simply mistyped something way back in 2013, who's got the last laugh now? At the time, Bitcoin was only $600. We hope they "hodled" indeed, because at its peak it was more than 100 times more valuable.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What do you really own with an NFT? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 106 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 22, 2022

What do you really own with an NFT?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's look at what exactly you get when you purchase digital artwork on the blockchain.

Because it is strange – paying for something you can just have for free. The New York Times turned existing articles into an NFT. Jack Dorsey sold one of his first tweets. And everyone can simply download the digital artwork behind any NFT. So what exactly is the point of buying one?

Besides bragging rights, the point is legal ownership of an asset you want to use – say as a profile photo, or just because you think it’s a good investment. Purchasing an NFT means that you become the owner of it.

Think of it like owning an expensive painting, like the Mona Lisa. You own the original, but anyone can print a copy of it, and you can give it to a museum to display. NFTs are not that different, only that the internet is the museum.

And you may also get other rights, meaning a say in who can reproduce your painting or make money off it. While that differs from legal system to legal system, generally speaking the owner of an NFT has the right to make those decisions, just as you would be able to forbid people to make money with copies of your Mona Lisa. You can download any cryptopunk, but it is likely illegal to use someone else's as your Twitter profile picture, for example.

Lastly, a few special NFTs give you access to perks. The Bored Ape Yacht Club comes with exclusive access to a members-only community and NFT airdrops.

Still find the concept strange? You are not alone, but at least now you know what exactly people get with NFT ownership.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Can Ethereum survive? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 101 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 21, 2022

Can Ethereum survive?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we'll look at another flip side of the crypto world - and talk about Ethereum, so you can get the full picture.

Ethereum is almost half as big as Bitcoin in market capitalization, which is in large parts because it allows people to build an entire financial system on the blockchain. It’s seemingly endless ability to program anything into it, has created the most vivid ecosystem in the space.

But Ethereum is also incredibly expensive. Anything, like simply sending money or just bidding on an NFT costs hundreds of dollars. How come? Well, it uses "proof of work", an arguably outdated validation method, that requires energy intensive computation for simple transactions.

The cost problem is so bad, that buying anything in a reasonable price range is pointless – why buy a $10 dollar NFT if your fees are $200 dollars? Might as well go to cheaper blockchains, like Solana.

Ethereum, in fact, has started to transition to Ethereum 2.0 to solve this very issue by switching validation methods. But due to the blockchains size, the process is moving so slowly that it will take years, because everyone will have to move their money and applications over. And when the next problem comes along, critics worry it'll take years again to solve that, eventually making Ethereum impractical.

So – can Ethereum survive because of its massive size? Or because it'll overcome slow progress? Your guess is as good as ours, but it never hurts to know about the downsides of things!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What's wrong with Bitcoin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 104 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 18, 2022

What's wrong with Bitcoin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we'll look at another flip side of the crypto world - and talk about what's wrong with Bitcoin. We think the pros and cons matter – so you can make up your own mind.

Bitcoin! The most famous cryptocurrency and also the oldest kid on the block. Almost 1 trillion US dollars are invested in it right now, an amount larger than the values of Facebook, Tesla, or Visa.

So all that money can't be wrong then, right? Well, let's take a critical look.

First - functionality. While Bitcoin paved the road for blockchains in general, its use is strictly limited to sending payments around. It can't do more and can't be expanded in functionality. Ethereum, on the other hand, runs circles around Bitcoin, powering an entire virtual financial system.

Second - its impact on the planet. While using energy-consuming computations to prevent fraud, many eco-conscious critics rightfully point out, that it has a huge negative effect on the environment. It uses almost $200 worth of power for a single transaction, all of which is generated somewhere blasting smoke into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, technology has solved the computation problem, and some blockchains are actually carbon negative.

Third - adoption in general. 13 years into its existence, and yet you can't pay with it anywhere with some very obscure exceptions. It is simply too slow and too expensive to compete with Credit Cards.

Of course, proponents always point to Bitcoin as a store of value, or digital gold, and it has a lot of good things going for it. But having the full picture is always best to make your own decisions!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How NFTs can actually hurt artists - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 103 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 17, 2022

How NFTs can actually hurt artists

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Buckle up! We'll be spending the next few episodes analyzing the downsides of this new crypto world, starting with NFTs.

But wait – didn't we say they can be great for artists? After all, it gives them access to a worldwide audience and a whole lot of newly made crypto wealth.

And while that is true, where there is money, there are scams. One of them in particular is making life for legitimate artists very annoying.

It's very simple and goes like this: A scammer wants to create and sell an NFT, but they are not an artist. In fact, they are lazy and simply download another person's art from somewhere. Then that gets uploaded to NFT auction sites like OpenSea, and the unsuspecting buyer pays for something that wasn't the sellers' to sell in the first place.

It is so bad that online art gallery Deviant Art has started to scan the web and sent out more than 100,000 notices to their members about art that was plagiarized from them.

You could, of course, argue: Those marketplaces should not allow stolen art, NFT or not! And you'd be right, but since NFT fraud is as easy as copy-and-paste, computer programs have taken over. One NFT gets taken down, another one gets created in its place.

Keep that in mind when you look at NFTs next time, and stay tuned for the flip side of Bitcoin in tomorrow's episode.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Did someone draw every single one of the 10000 cryptopunks? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 102 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 16, 2022

Did someone draw every single one of the 10000 cryptopunks?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Have you ever asked yourself how it is possible that there are 10,000 cryptopunks, or 10,000 bored apes? Is there someone out there, creating every single NFT, day in day out, until they are finally done?

Welcome to the strange new world of NFTs, where the traditional rules of art creation are challenged constantly.

You might have already guessed, but the answer is: Of course not. That would be an awful lot of work, even for just 100 of them.

Your keen eye will have noticed something though: These cryptopunks all look strangely similar. And that’s right! The secret method used by NFT artists is called permutation, where a computer program mixes various different parts of the artwork in many combinations.

Let’s say you wanted to dress differently for an entire week. Strictly spelling, all you would need, are two different t-shirts, two sets of pants, and a pair of glasses. But how is that possible? Those are only five items and anyway, you can’t just wear your t-shirt as pants!

The key is in combining them uniquely. Monday: Blue pants, white shirt. Tuesday, blue pants, blue shirt. Wednesday, blue pants, blue shirt, glasses. And so on. You can actually squeeze eight combinations out of those original 5 items. Add an extra shirt, and it’s 12. Another set of pants, 24.

In NFTs, the pants or shirts are called traits. All traits combined can be mixed into a full picture: For example: mustache or no mustache. Different pants. Zombie head or normal head, various hairstyles.

A simple computer program overlays all of these, and the more traits you have, the easier it is to get to 10000 or even way more NFTs in no time. All it takes then is the click of a button and a few seconds.

Mind blown? Add three pairs of shoes to our example – how many combinations do we get? Send us an email to podcast@cryptohunt.it and we’ll send 100,000 Lizard Coins to the first correct answer.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who builds cryptohunt? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 101 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 15, 2022

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you have just a minute or two, save this episode for your next run because this is a 10 min special. This is our 101st episode and today, we’ll tell you the story of what we are working on.

In the last 100 episodes our goal was to introduce you to the world of crypto and give you the knowledge to dig deeper and make your own decisions, regardless of how much you already know or how technical you are.

And that's what cryptohunt is going to be about, so today, we are going to introduce it to you in more in depth.

Arndt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arndtvoges/

Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianbyza/

Sign up on our waitlist: https://www.cryptohunt.it/?grsf=mup9my

Please consider reviewing our podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crypto-in-plain-english-by-cryptohunt-it/id1588763088

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is cryptohunt? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 100 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 14, 2022

What is cryptohunt?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto – and can you believe this is already episode 100?

Today, to celebrate the milestone, we’ll talk about a crypto project that is near and dear to our hearts – our very own cryptohunt! What is it, and who is behind it?

My name is Christian Byza, and together with my co-founder Arndt Voges and the team, we are trying to make crypto accessible for everyone.

But why? Like most of you, we always felt that getting started with crypto is really hard: All those technical descriptions meant nothing to us, and most information isn’t simply in one place - in fact, searching the web for understandable content is a pain.

At the same time, there are amazing projects out there that have the potential to change the world. But they have a hard time telling everyone about it - because they don’t have a good place to reach you and us, and because they struggle expressing what makes them special in a way that we all understand.

That’s why we are building cryptohunt, and we are almost ready to show it to everyone. It’ll be a website where every crypto project is explained, ranked, and reviewed by us and the community. And to make easy learning a priority, we’ll also offer small courses about the great currencies and tokens out there, teaching you what makes each of them special. And if you ace a mini quiz, you’ll even earn a few dollars in their tokens.

So, what’s next? First, we are launching with limited access to learn from early feedback. If you want to participate, join our waitlist at cryptohunt.it. We hope to see you there!

And tomorrow, we we release our first interview between my cofounder Arndt and myself - so you get to know us a little better - and we do an exception and will speak more than just a minute.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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NFT Deep Dive: What does minting an NFT mean? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 99 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 11, 2022

NFT Deep Dive: What does minting an NFT mean?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Welcome to our last episode in the mini series on NFTs. Today, we’ll explain what minting an NFT means and how you can do it too.

Minting means nothing more than creating an NFT. The word stems from old German and means making a coin - and in fact, central banks use it to describe the process of literally printing money.

When an NFT is minted, it is simply created on the blockchain. Nothing complicated: it just includes a link to the original JPG or GIF and other optional information, such as residuals that you, the creator, might get from every subsequent sale.

So, you have that amazing idea and some clever art that’ll make for a hopefully very successful NFT collection? The easiest way to get started as a creator is to use a marketplace like OpenSea.com to mint your NFTs and list them for sale.

It is almost as easy as posting on Twitter, and each marketplace has great tutorials. But there is one caveat that is not intuitive: some blockchains have very high fees, and those also apply to minting NFTs. Ethereum is the current standard, but transaction costs of hundreds of dollars per NFT may make it useless for your project.

Luckily there are alternatives. OpenSea itself let’s you choose Polygon as an alternative with no fees. And Solsea.io or Solanart.io operate on Solana, which will only cost you cents in minting fees.

And with that we say: Best of luck! Let us know if this inspired you to create the next cryptopunks, we’d love to podcast about it!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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NFT Deep Dive: How did some NFTs become so crazy expensive? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 98 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 10, 2022

NFT Deep Dive: How did some NFTs become so crazy expensive?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today we look at the reasons that some NFTs have become so crazy expensive, with the example of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is an NFT collection created by four founders going by the synonyms of Gargamel, Gordon Goner, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and No Sass. The collection contains 10,000 NFTs of cartoon apes and is valued at almost $4bn in total.

But how did that even happen? It’s all about the right concept, the right timing, and great marketing.

The creators realized that the world was suddenly full of people who got rich through early investments in crypto currencies, called “apes” among insiders. And those so-called apes were sitting there, ready to invest in something new. Hence the name “Bored Apes”.

And so the concept was born. Combine that with an exclusive online community for members, and you have the perfect status symbol for the rich.

But things didn’t take off immediately - first apes sold for less than $200 a piece. But over time, famous people started to buy them, among them Eminem and Jimmy Fallon. And at that point things started exploding, and you can’t get one for under $250,000 anymore.

And now that you know how some NFTs have become so popular, maybe it’s time to make your own for fun? Next time we’ll walk you through that process, called minting.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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NFT Deep Dive: What are NFT collections and how are they created? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 97 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 09, 2022

NFT Deep Dive: What are NFT collections and how are they created?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Bored Ape Yacht Club or Cryptopunks: You might have heard these collection names in the news. But what exactly are those and how do they work?

Welcome to the strange new world of NFTs which we'll cover in more depth in this week's mini series.

NFT collections are a group of digital artworks based on the same concept, with each of them distinguished by specific traits. Let’s unpack that!

It helps to look at traditional art. Picasso and Warhol for example, two of the most influential modern artists, created collections long before NFTs were a thing. They created a series of paintings in one run, all focused around a specific subject. Or a series of numbered prints, where things like colors varied from piece to piece.

NFT collections are like that too, but they accomplish it with computer aided design, cranking out not 10, but often thousands of slightly different art pieces per collection. Cryptopunks, for example, are all pixelated images of cartoon faces. But when they were created, variations were made with a computer program: There are zombie faces for example, ear rings, hair styles, and many more. And because that scales easier than painting by hand, the program could spit out 10,000 cryptopunks into the collection.

Once minted, those are all on the blockchain, you can actually compare those so-called traits within a collection - how many have a Zombie face for example, and how rare one with a hat is. And the more rare the combination, the more collectible they tend to be.

So collectible in fact, that those Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs combined are worth $3.6bn dollars right now, and the Cryptopunks $2.4 billion.

And next time we take a deeper look at the history of how they became so expensive.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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NFT Deep Dive: Where do I browse and buy NFTs? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 96 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 08, 2022

NFT Deep Dive: Where do I browse and buy NFTs?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

By now, you’ve probably asked yourself: Everyone’s talking non-stop about NFTs, but where can I actually see one with my own eyes?

Welcome to the strange new world of NFTs which we'll cover in more depth in this week's mini series.

A great place to start are NFT marketplaces. You’ll see what’s popular, and can sort by price, just for fun. The largest of the marketplaces is “OpenSea.com”, “sea” spelled like the ocean. There, NFTs are usually organized by collections of similar artwork from the same creators.

Spend some time on it and you’ll notice a couple of strange things – because NFTs are publicly accessible, an NFT doesn’t have to be listed for sale to get bids. For example, you can see all 10,000 cryptopunks, and if you have the spare change, even try and snag one.

Before you do that though, notice the little diamonds in front of the prices? That’s right - the prices are in Ethereum, not Dollar… And each Ethereum is worth over $3000 right now.

But even if you found something affordable you like – keep in mind every bid costs you a few hundred dollars in Ethereum transaction fees, whether you win or lose that bid.

That’s why buying NFTs on Ethereum is only useful for very expensive items, where a few hundred for fees don’t matter. Other blockchains are more efficient. For example, take a look at Solsea.io, a similar marketplace for Solana-based digital artwork.

With that – happy NFT browsing! And stay tuned for the next episode tomorrow, where we dig deeper into NFTs.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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NFT Deep Dive: Why pay millions for a simple JPG that anyone can just download? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 95 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 07, 2022

NFT Deep Dive: Why pay millions for a simple JPG that anyone can just download?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you are new to the world of NFTs, you have likely asked yourself: Why does anyone even pay for something they don’t physically own? And why even pay at all, when anyone can just download the same JPG for free and look at it all they want?

Welcome to the strange new world of NFTs which we'll cover in more depth in this week's mini series.

There are of course the obvious reasons to pay for an NFT that we touched upon before, like investment speculation and wanting to support artists. But there is more to it, and to understand that we have to look at a shift away from physical to digital ownership.

While previous generations wanted to own houses, cars, and boats, the younger tech-natives tend to care less about those. Instead, they live their social life increasingly online, and status symbols are moving there too.

Owning an NFT in itself is what creates the pleasure, and the ability to share it with the world is a big bonus. An expensive cryptopunk NFT for example makes for the perfect bragging rights on Twitter. It's like owning your own Picasso, but instead of hiding it in a vault, you can safely and proudly show it to the entire world.

And that's what matters to a new generation, many of whom have made very good money in the crypto market. Showing off ownership is important, exclusive access is not. And with that much crypto money floating around, you can see how NFTs have filled that void.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Facebook’s crypto currency Libra and what happened to it? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 94 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 04, 2022

What is Facebook’s crypto currency Libra and what happened to it?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Did you know that Facebook was working on their own crypto currency? Let’s dive deeper into that project and the reason why it is now shut down.

The project was initially launched in 2017 with the goal to bring digital payments with very low fees to everyone, especially the underbanked. Depending on where you are tuning in from, you may not be aware: But many people do not have access to dependable bank accounts and have to waste billions of dollars in fees on services like Western Union.

Facebook, together with a consortium of payment providers such as Square and Visa and large merchants such as the Bookings group, set out to change that.

Libra, or Diem as it was rebranded to, had the goal of creating a digital stable coin backed by real world currency to guarantee its value. For every Diem you would exchange, the operators would buy a real world asset of that value.

To keep complexity low, the decision was made to centralized control. While Diem was technically supposed to be on a blockchain, only a few approved partners would be able to mine it… and pocket the transaction fees.

The project was troubled from the beginning though. Very quickly, the largest partners all left the consortium. The US government was also getting worried about Facebook's market power in creating an unregulated de facto US dollar alternative.

Under the pressure, Facebook eventually scrapped the plans earlier in 2022, citing regulatory hurdles.

But that doesn’t mean nobody is solving the original problem though. Stablecoins like USDC already exist, and blockchains like Celo are tackling the problems of the unbanked world, and in a decentralized way as well.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Will quantum computing break crypto? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 93 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 03, 2022

Will quantum computing break crypto?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll take a deeper look at an existential threat to blockchains called quantum computing.

Quantum computing is an experimental, fundamentally different way of building the brains of computers. These machines promise to solve complicated math problems in fractions of seconds, when even currently available supercomputers would take decades.

Quantum computers also happen to be really good at solving the kind of puzzles that cryptography is based on. And that’s a real problem for blockchains and many other applications.

Remember that losing the private keys to your crypto wallet will result in you never having a chance to reuse that wallet? The reason is that it would take hundreds of thousands of years for a traditional supercomputer to try all possible combinations. Quantum computers promise to do that in an instant, meaning nobody’s wallets would be safe anymore.

Should we be worried? Not yet at least. While very basic quantum computers have been proven to work in well-funded labs, it’ll take years until they have the scale they need to crack your wallet. And in the meantime, everyone is racing to develop quantum computing safe crypto methods, and blockchains like Ethereum already have their use on the long term roadmap.

Also: Realize that these machines would cause far more damage than just to blockchains. Your browser connection wouldn’t be safe anymore, and neither would be your bank login, among basically every other form of encrypted communication. So rest assured that smart people will work very hard to find ways around this problem while we still can.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the dark web and what does crypto have to do with it? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 92 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 02, 2022

What is the dark web and what does crypto have to do with it?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today’s episode explains what the dark web is, and what crypto can possibly have to do with it.

Dark web - that sounds dangerous and mysterious! What it really refers to is the part of the internet that search engines like Google don’t easily reach. That means getting a peek into them is much harder.

Oftentimes this could simply be because Google can’t see it all. One example are websites that need you to log in as a user to see the content, which is something Google can’t do with their computers that analyze a page. Lots of Facebook could be considered the dark web for example, despite it being just a social network.

But there are also dark web pages that want search engines to stay out. A famous example is the illegal drug marketplace Silk Road, where one was able to buy drugs in exchange for crypto currency.

So, what does crypto have to do with it? Well, in some peoples’ opinion, crypto is the payment method of choice for criminals, and by that logic the dark web must be powered by it. According to Coinbase though, less than a percent of crypto transactions have actually been found to be illegal though, which makes it much cleaner than good old fashioned cash.

And because crypto has a transaction trail that everyone can see, only dumb criminals should prefer it over cash, since the latter is mostly untraceable.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What happened to Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 91 - by cryptohunt.it Feb 01, 2022

What happened to Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today’s episode about Satoshi Nakamoto sounds like a mystery novel - but it really happened. And stay tuned until the end for some interesting numbers on how rich they would be today.

We don’t actually know much about the inventor of Bitcoin, only that she or he went by the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. They anonymously proposed the idea of Bitcoin in 2009. After its release, they went on to be the first to use and mine it.

What happens after is like an unsolved detective story. The first person known to use Bitcoin was a cryptography programmer called Hal Finney. He had email contact with Nakamoto and became the first recipient of Bitcoin. Although suspected to be them, he denied it until his tragic death from ALS in 2014.

After many years of speculation, a reporter found that a man named Dorian Satoshi Nokamoto lived in the same town as Finney. Case closed? Far from it. He also denied the connection vehemently, saying it was a coincidence.

To this day, the real identity of the inventor of Bitcoin is still unknown, and many more people have been suspected of it. What is fact though, is that they never withdrew a single Bitcoin from their numerous wallets, which at the peak would have made them the 15th richest person in the world with over $70 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin. Wow!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a crypto winter? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 90 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 31, 2022

What is a crypto winter?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we explain what insiders mean when they speak of a crypto winter.

Surely, you have heard the term a lot lately, and that is no coincidence. It refers to a prolonged period of time during which prices across the wider crypto market drop significantly and stay at much lower levels than they used to be.

The first real crypto winter happened after Bitcoins ran up to $20,000 dollars in December 2017.To put that in perspective, just a year earlier it was still under $1000. After all the way down to $3500, it took Bitcoin a full 3 years to get back to the previous record.

And the winter was definitely over, followed by prices going over $60,000 frequently until recently. Then in January 2022, Bitcoin halved in price and investors are still worried about a crypto winter.

But should you? It’s impossible to predict the future, but keep in mind that Bitcoin recovered last time too, it only took a really long time. And maybe a crypto winter isn’t the worst thing, so innovators focus on bringing crypto to the mainstream instead of making a quick buck.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is cold storage? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 89 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 28, 2022

What is cold storage?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Last time, we discussed how moving crypto keys into a hardware wallet can provide additional protection against hackers. A term commonly used for that practice is cold storage… but what does that actually mean?

Cold storage originally referred to the practice of freezing something, with the goal of preserving it for a very long time.

In crypto, the goal is the same. By storing the password to a wallet offline, the risk of its exposure through a hack is greatly reduced.

Do people print out passwords and put them in the freezer then? Probably not, but they do get pretty clever!

Hardware wallets are just one way to do it. But the hardware can malfunction. Printing is another way, but paper isn't protecting well against the elements. That's where products like the Cryptotag come in: it is a bulletproof titanium plate that you inscribe with a special tool for forever storage.

Interestingly, large exchanges such as Coinbase say that 98% of all customer funds are actually stored offline in cold storage. They only keep on hand what they actually need to operate with, while the rest is tucked away safely. How? They won't say for security reasons, but maybe there is a secret underground vault somewhere under the Arctic with a ton of titanium plates in it.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a crypto hardware wallet and should I have one? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 88 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 27, 2022

What is a crypto hardware wallet and should I have one?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s understand what a crypto hardware wallet is and who should have one.

Remember, that in order to have control over your crypto wallet, you need a so-called private key. Just like your house key, it unlocks everything inside. Unlike your house key though, it’s quite clunky to use because it is usually a long string of characters and numbers nobody can remember.

If you’ve traded crypto on places such as Coinbase or Robinhood, your funds get managed by them directly and you never even have to think about that private key. They are called “custodial” wallets, because they have custody over your funds, not you.

That’s easy for beginners, but you are placing all your trust in the company’s ability to secure and protect your holdings.

In comes the hardware wallet. At the core, all it does is save your wallet address and private keys on the device. But unlike your computer for example, it is entirely disconnected from the internet when unused, requiring anyone to have physical access to it. And unlike a simple USB stick, it is also hardware protected with an access code you have to enter on the device.

Hardware wallets like the Ledger or Trezor even have an intuitive interface to manage your crypto which can connect to your smartphone for ease of use. They also support almost 2000 crypto currencies and provide secure cloud backups should you lose it.

So what are the downsides? If you actively trade crypto, it is inconvenient to move funds between your exchange and the hardware wallet, and high transaction fees may apply depending on the blockchain. But if you are in it for the long haul, consider a hardware wallet and find a very safe place for it, just don’t forget your password.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How many Bitcoins have been lost forever (and where did they go)? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 87 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 26, 2022

How many Bitcoins have been lost forever (and where did they go)?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about lost Bitcoins – how many have been lost, who lost them, and why most people can never get them back.

You’ve probably seen news articles about some of those unfortunate cases: Someone invested a few dollars into Bitcoin early on, not thinking much about it, and fast forward a few years and they are suddenly millionaires. On paper only though, because they can’t find the keys to their wallet.

Researchers estimate that a whopping 25% of total Bitcoins, which is little under 5 million of them, may have gone lost that way. That would equal roughly 200 billion dollars, 70% of which is estimated to belong to early adopters such as the infamous Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto himself who never cashed out a single Bitcoin, despite sitting on 40 billion dollars worth of them.

So, what’s actually going on here? The problem is that Bitcoins, and most other cryptocurrencies, can only be moved with the key to the wallet that holds them. That key is a cryptographic code, a long string of random numbers and letters, which is impossible to remember. Most people don’t even know they have one, because their apps or wallets take care of those in the background.

And that’s the reason most people lost them in the first place. The early wallets and keys were all stored on the owners’ computers, and those old hard drives have long gone bad or went to the trash. And guessing a lost key is impossible due to the amount of possible combinations to try.

Frustratingly, all those lost Bitcoins have actually gone nowhere. They still sit in the same wallets, for everyone to see but no one to claim. Let that be a lesson: No matter how little you think your crypto investments are worth today, make sure you have them in a safe place.

Next time, we’ll talk about such a thing: Hardware wallets and how they work.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why does every blockchain need its own token? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 86 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 25, 2022

Why does every blockchain need its own token?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Have you always been curious why every blockchain has their own token, often called the “native token”, governance token, or rewards token?

You’ve probably seen it in many places: Ethereum has Ether, Polygon has Matic, Celo had Celo Gold but renamed it to Celo. But why?

The reason lies in the way it all works. A decentralized blockchain needs to operate across a large network of independently operated computers, known as nodes. These nodes perform all the work that keeps the blockchains going: They validate transactions, record their history, and execute smart contracts.

But all of that isn’t free. There are people who buy those computers, hook them up to the internet, and pay the power bills. That’s why fees exist, usually called transaction fees or gas fees. Whoever wants to do something on the blockchain has to pay those fees with each transaction. Want to buy an NFT on OpenSea? Pay the price plus fees. Send someone some Lizard Coin? Pay a little in fees.

And that’s exactly what those native tokens like Ether are for. They are a universal currency within that blockchain to pay fees to others for doing the work for you. Using a single such currency for fees keeps things simple across all participants.

So next time someone says they own Ethereum, feel free to correct them. Because really what they own is Ether, Ethereum’s native token.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why do crypto markets crash? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 85 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 24, 2022

What causes crypto markets to crash?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Recently, you probably asked yourself - why are crypto markets so volatile and what causes the price crashes when they happen?

To understand in more detail what is going on, we need to understand two things: Why crypto markets are more volatile in general, even in good times, and secondly, what triggers the bad times.

So, first: Why is crypto one of the most volatile assets? While not always the case, it tends to move up and down in price more extremely than other investments, such as stock. The reason is because it’s a purely speculative investment - crypto is still not adopted widely in real life, and investors simply hope for its future success. That means any doubt in crypto has big impacts. Contrast that with an investment in a company like Microsoft, that makes real products, owns real stuff, and has an established business - their price moves less because there is at least some guaranteed value there.

So, now that we understand that crypto generally swings more wildly in price, what actually causes the bigger crashes? Usually that is driven by the larger economy. When the stock market has a bad day, investors will generally try to sell things they own. And since crypto is the riskiest investments they have, it’ll usually go first. Combine lots of sellers with few buyers and things go down quickly.

And there you have it - when things are not well with crypto prices, take a look at the general economy. It’s likely the culprit.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What blockchains are eco-friendly? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 84 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 21, 2022

What blockchains are actually eco-friendly?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Do you like the idea of blockchains, but love the planet too?

Well, it’s true what you’ve heard. Bitcoin uses an incredible amount of energy, and Ethereum isn’t much better.

If you’ve followed this podcast, you know the problem is their method of transaction validation, called proof of work. It forces validators to waste resources.

Good news, green blockchains are possible. Among the more popular are Solana, Algorand, and Avalanche, for example. But the list is led by IOTA, which consumes very little energy.

And some take it even further by actively donating towards green causes. Algorand and Celo for example don’t JUST use a couple of million times LESS energy than Bitcoin, but they donate towards causes like planting trees, which makes their impact carbon negative - and net positive for our environment.

See? It is possible to have it all: blockchains and a healthy planet. We cross our fingers to see many more pop up in the near future.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What can you actually buy with Bitcoin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 83 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 20, 2022

What can you actually buy with Bitcoin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take a quick look at all the things you can actually buy with Bitcoin.

First, understand that accepting Bitcoin is complicated for merchants as its value fluctuates so much and as a result the list of things you can buy with Bitcoin is actually very short - but let’s dive in!

Overstock, an online furniture retailer, has been accepting Bitcoin for a while. It makes sense – allowing it for payments attracts wealthy early adopters, who are a great audience for more expensive items like furniture.

Another example are VPN services. They allow users to anonymously browse the internet. It seems obvious then that ExpressVPN, one of the largest providers, lets users pay anonymously with Bitcoin.

You can even buy a Domino’s pizza that way, but you have to go through a third party called Lightning Pizza. You send crypto to them, and they will then place an order on your behalf. Not exactly convenient, but it supposedly works!

Other famous examples include the claim that Tesla also accepts Bitcoin. That’s not true though - although publicly announced, it never happened, and Tesla backtracked and sold all of their Bitcoin holdings if Elon Musk’s tweets are to be believed.

But hope is on the horizon for this list to get larger. Paypal already allows you to buy and hold crypto through their app, and they promised that you will soon be able to use your Bitcoin balance anywhere Paypal is accepted.

But the real question is: Should you use Bitcoin to pay for things? Definitely a “no” if you care about the planet: Every Bitcoin transaction consumes the equivalent of two entire months of energy of a US household.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 82 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 19, 2022

Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Have you come across the claim that crypto is just a Ponzi scheme meant to make the creators rich? What is behind that and is it true?

A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment fraud where someone promises you certain returns, but instead of generating them through a legitimate strategy like stock trading, pays you with the money of future investors until the scheme collapses.

Let’s take Bitcoin as an example and see if it is such a scheme.

First, owning Bitcoin – like any other speculative asset – does not guarantee returns. There is no single authority controlling it and making promises. It's volatility is high and many people have lost money.

US authorities classify it as a commodity, similar to Gold. Bitcoin’s value can only rise further if more people buy into it and hold, like a savings account. Unlike other commodities such as oil, which powers engines, it functions mostly as a store of value because it has not reached mass adoption as a payments system. The investment assumption is that people hold on to it for savings.

Other blockchains, such as Ethereum, are a little more complex. They hope to provide massive utility in the future - replace today’s payment systems, or even the entire financial system. They are more like stock, where you speculate on the potential utility of your investment.

You probably see that legitimate crypto projects like Bitcoin don’t look like a ponzi scheme, they are simply not built to steal your money. Everything is transparent on the blockchain and determined by supply and demand.

But just because hype around an investment is not fraud, you need to keep in mind that crypto is one of the riskiest investments you can make. It’s an unregulated market, big market participants can easily affect the price, and fraud is a real problem, especially with lesser known coins. So do your homework, every time.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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A brief history of cryptocurrencies - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 81 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 18, 2022

A brief history of cryptocurrencies

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s take a brief look at the history of crypto, why it was invented, and how it evolved.

It all started in 1983, when a researcher called David Chaum imagined digital money, and his idea slowly started to resonate with the cypherpunks movement. This group was interested in ways to preserve anonymity through cryptography in the early days of the internet, and an anonymous digital payments system was eventually outlined by one member, Wei Dai, in 1998.

But the internet was young, and that idea remained dormant until 2009, when an anonymous programmer under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin.

In the first transaction ever, Satoshi referenced an article about a bank being bailed out by the British government after the 2008 financial crisis, leading people to believe that Bitcoin was a protest against government controlled financial systems.

Bitcoin became popular quickly and in May 2010 someone made the first real world transaction – he paid another person 10,000 Bitcoins in exchange for two pizzas. It may sound silly in retrospect, but this was significant: Bitcoin suddenly had a value.

The year after, the first major alternative blockchain was launched: Litecoin was a Bitcoin clone, aimed at improving upon it. Many more so-called altcoins followed it.

At this point, crypto was only used to store value or send money around. But a young computer programmer called Vitalik Buterin wanted to replace the entire financial system: Smart contracts would turn crypto into programmable money with infinite potential.

His vision was called Ethereum and caught the attention of Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder, who gave him $100,000 dollars to drop out of college and pursue the idea. Ethereum was launched in 2015 and took the world by storm. By mid 2017 it already overtook Bitcoin in transactions per day.

Later that year, Bitcoin itself touched $20000 - making that original pizza purchase worth $200 million dollars.

The markets pulled back, and Bitcoin dropped to around $4000 before starting a meteoric rise again in 2020. Today, there are almost 10000 traded tokens, and Bitcoin is still the largest cryptocurrency.

We hope you liked this brief trip down memory lane. And next time we discuss the claim that crypto is really just a ponzi scheme.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are the differences between Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Ethereum 2.0? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 80 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 17, 2022

What are the differences between Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Ethereum 2.0?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s dig into the history of Ethereum and understand why there are several different versions of it.

At first, there was only one Ethereum - the original blockchain that is able to execute smart contracts. But it suffered a very costly hack in 2016: About $50m dollars worth of Ethereum were stolen by a single hacker.

The Ethereum community was looking at two paths forward at the time: Just move on and accept the hack, or roll back the blockchain to revert it. Think of it as going back in time in your bank account history, as if nothing new happened.

Ultimately, both options happened simultaneously in a so-called “fork”. The original Ethereum lived on after rolling back and restoring the balances to before the hack, and a copy was split off that did not roll back. That copy is known as Ethereum Classic, and the modified original is today’s well-known Ethereum. They have operated completely separately since the split despite their shared origin.

That brings us to Ethereum 2. It is an upcoming, major update to Ethereum, which will bring much faster and more affordable transactions to the blockchain. And again, the blockchain will split in two - Ethereum and Ethereum 2. The creators assume though that most, if not all, participants will simply transition over to Ethereum 2, this time without fighting over the future.

And next time we take a brief look at the entire history of crypto.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Litecoin and what makes it special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 79 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 14, 2022

What is Litecoin and what makes it special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about Litecoin, one of the earliest altcoins.

Litecoin was developed in 2011 by a Google Engineer. At the time, Bitcoin was the only established blockchain and just started getting recognition among insiders. But already, some people saw its disadvantages in scaling to real-world usage and started thinking about alternatives.

Litecoin is one of those first altcoins. The developer, Charlie Lee, took Bitcoin’s open source code and modified it to make Litecoin more usable for every-day transactions.

While it still uses the same fundamental working principles, Litecoin has a few advantages over Bitcoin: It is much faster and the fees are so low, that it can be used for small transactions. It also made Litecoin less vulnerable to hacking attacks.

And indeed, when Litecoin launched, it quickly became very popular but never actually ended up taking over Bitcoin despite its improvements upon it. But it still sits in the top 25 cryptocurrencies and has remarkably wide adoption: It is one of the very few coins actually used in the real world: Thousands or merchants accept it and even Paypal lets users pay with it – making it the only other coin besides Bitcoin and Ethereum to have that honor.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Are Bitcoin’s best days over? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 78 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 13, 2022

Are Bitcoin’s best days over?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's talk about the future of Bitcoin – is it outdated and will soon make room for a modern successor, or will it forever stay the number 1 cryptocurrency by market capitalization?

Surely you know by now that everything started with Bitcoin. It has revolutionized the way we think about digital money and the entire financial system. But it is also the oldest technology and the vision of crypto has expanded a lot since then. So what does that mean for its future?

First, we need to understand that there are two different ways to think about Bitcoin – to some people, it is simply a great store of value, like digital gold. And with a limited supply by design, people like it as an alternative to savings in traditional currency, because that can be printed and de-valued by governments as they please.

On the other hand you have those who want to use crypto as digital money. They pump money into crypto to bet that it will someday be the only way we send currency around, pay for things, and invest. And arguably Bitcoin just can’t handle real-world use. The amount of transactions it can process at a time – which is currently just 7 per second – and how quickly it takes for them to be confirmed - which is around 10 minutes – is a real problem. Imagine buying ice cream like that - it would be impossible.

That’s why newer technologies have popped up, like Ethereum which still has similar problems but is fully programmable, and more recently Solana, Avalanche, Celo, etc. And they start to eat away at Bitcoin. But who knows - real Gold still has the highest market cap of all assets, with almost 12 trillion dollars it is worth 4x more than Apple, the most expensive company in the world. Never underestimate the potential of digital gold.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Bitcoin Cash and what makes it special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 77 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 12, 2022

What is Bitcoin Cash and what makes it special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let's talk about one of the first altcoins, Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin Cash is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies and goes all the way back to 2017. At the time, it became clear that Bitcoin itself could not handle high transaction volumes and the crypto community started fighting over its future.

There were two factions: Those that saw Bitcoin purely as a store of value – such as Gold – were happy. But those that saw it as a means to send payments around, noticed that Bitcoin was hitting its limits. But to make Bitcoin handle more transactions required deep technical changes and so the decision was made to go separate paths and create Bitcoin Cash as an alternative and keep the original Bitcoin running as a separate blockchain.

Bitcoin Cash improves upon Bitcoin by allowing miners to validate many more transactions in one computation. Remember that mining is the process of validating recent payments, and in order to qualify for doing that, each computer has to solve a very complicated puzzle first, which takes time before the work can even start. With Bitcoin cash, more transactions can be validated together after each puzzle, and the complexity of the puzzle can be lowered if there is high demand.

The effort was only a partial success though: Bitcoin Cash just wasn’t adopted widely as an alternative. Today, years after the separation, Bitcoin’s market capitalization is over 100 times larger than BitCoin Cash’s… and the gap is growing.

And next time we stay on the topic and discuss if Bitcoin’s best times are over - see you then!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Worldcoin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 76 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 11, 2022

What is Worldcoin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about a crypto project that has gotten a lot of attention lately: Worldcoin.

The idea behind Worldcoin is to get a majority of the world population to use cryptocurrencies. According to the project’s estimates, only 3% have used a cryptocurrency so far, and it aims to change that by distributing its Worldcoin to billions of people, giving everyone an initial amount.

No small task, especially considering that not everyone has access to smartphones and the internet. And how the company plans to do this is where things get really interesting.

Faced with the challenge of letting people own and use Worldcoin without specific technology, they invented a device called “the Orb”. Operators, people who travel around with those Orbs, use it to scan a person’s eye to convert the data into a unique code. From that point forward, your eye becomes your key to your Worldcoin.

This also attempts to solve the challenge of fraudulent claims: The problem with giving away a set amount of free Worldcoin to each person is that someone will always try to game the system and get more. And since a human’s eye is unique, the Orb device will prevent that in theory.

But so far, this is all just an ambitious idea with a lot of funding. A few Orbs are allegedly already being tested in the field, but the project admits that it needs to build at least 50000 per year to scan enough people. And you should know that the creators and investors plan on keeping 10% of all Worldcoin to reward themselves.

And that is Worldcoin! And next time we’ll continue our series on fascinating new crypto currencies.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are crypto games? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 75 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 10, 2022

What are crypto games?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about crypto gaming: what it is and why it has become so popular recently.

In short, crypto gaming tends to be a combination of online gaming and speculating on crypto currencies.

Let’s unpack those two things one at a time.

Online gaming can take many forms, such as apps like FarmVille where you have to make sure your farm is running well, to world of warcraft, which is a virtual reality game where you build your character over a long time and explore a massive world with thousands of other people.

Traditionally these games have their own economies, so you pay the actual company directly for in-game things like extra water for your crop or new items for your avatar.

And that’s where crypto comes in. Crypto games also have these economies, but they are crypto currency based. Instead of paying a company to play, you buy into the game’s token, and might even make money participating. Some games even have such vivid economies that people turn gaming into a full time job. An example of that is Axie Infinity, a game where you can battle against other players’ creatures. It has 2 million active users, and each player has spent roughly $400 to get started.

But it’s always a speculation on the game’s cryptocurrency retaining its value - because if it doesn’t, many players may turn around and play something different.

And that is crypto gaming. And next episode we will continue our deep dive on interesting crypto currencies.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How you can make money by learning about crypto - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 74 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 07, 2022

How you can make money by learning about crypto

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll talk about the world of Learn and Earn, where you can make crypto money just by learning about new projects.

Remember from last episode, that many crypto projects – for example new blockchains or tokens – have a cold start problem. It means that they have a hard time finding people at first, who want to buy in.

That works out to your advantage though, because there are small learning courses that try to solve this problem. Since many legitimate new projects have an interesting way to solve existing problems, they bet that if you know about it, you are interested in investing. So they are actually willing to give you some of their crypto currency in exchange for your time.

How do you find those classes. The two largest exchanges for example, Binance and Coinbase, let you take those courses for a handful of projects. It’s as simple as signing up and navigating to the tab, and if you pay attention and get the answers right, you get a few dollars in the respective currency.

We hope you like those courses and learn a thing or two that’ll make you crypto smarter. We certainly do, and that’s why we’ll have a lot of those classes on cryptohunt.it shortly after we launch. Head on over to join the waitlist.

And next time, we’ll talk about crypto games: What they are and how people even make money with them.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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The crypto cold start problem: How new projects gain traction - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 73 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 06, 2022

The crypto cold start problem: How new projects gain traction

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll talk about the cold start problem all crypto projects face: How to grow even the most promising project when nobody knows about it yet.

Imagine the situation: You just created the first version of an incredible blockchain. It solves all the problems, and it should take the world by storm. But then you realize that there are over 8000 traded cryptocurrencies, and you are not one of them.

So, how do blockchains like yours do to get attention then? First, they set aside a large amount of their coins to give away. They create airdrops, for example, to distribute them to early fans, and they give them to partners to help spread the word in return. If enough people like the coin, they might buy more, and the price increases from zero to something.

But establishing value beyond market dynamics is the second, and most important step. And this is where it gets interesting – many coins also act as rewards on their blockchain, such as validating transactions. Ethereum is a good example - after people saw the value in the technology and built dapps on it, they were willing to pay for Ether so that they can pay for transactions. Or take a freelance marketplace that uses their own coin as currency - a job that has a real dollar value suddenly has an equivalent value in the marketplace’s coins and they become interchangeable.

And that’s why it is easy to create a token, but very difficult to make it worth something unless it has real application value and a user base.

And next time, we’ll talk about how Learning about blockchains can make you free money. Stay tuned!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How does crypto trading work and who determines prices? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 72 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 05, 2022

How does crypto trading work and who determines prices?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll talk about the primary mechanism that drives pricing in just about any market, including stocks and crypto: The “auction” You’d be surprised, but it actually originated on real markets thousands of years ago.

So-called market makers, like the New York Stock Exchange or crypto exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, bring together supply and demand – meaning those who want to sell and those who want to buy.

When you click the buy button on your brokerage or crypto account, you submit what is called an order. It states what you want to buy, how much of it, and at what price. On the other side are sellers - they do the same - what they sell, how much, and what price.

The exchange knows all open orders and matches the two of you, but only when your buy price works out for the other seller. Say you are willing to buy a coin for up to $5 per coin, and a seller submits a wish to sell for $4.99. The exchange will then make the trade between you happen at $4.99 and both parties are happy. That becomes the new official price until a new trade gets made.

And because for popular crypto, there may be many orders active at any given time, making trades happen multiple times a second, which leads to the price changing just as quickly.

There you have it – this is how crypto trading usually works and how prices get set. And next time, we talk about the cold-start problem: How cryptos that are not yet traded on exchanges gain traction and how you can find them before they blow up.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Who or what sets the price for crypto currencies - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 71 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 04, 2022

Who or what sets the price for crypto currencies

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Have you ever asked yourself how Bitcoin prices get set? How is it possible that they follow seemingly random patterns - up and down and impossible to predict? Is it a conversation between a few secretive people, smoking cigars behind closed doors? Is it all random?

Of course not 😃, so today, let’s talk about why crypto has value in the first place.

But before we dive in, let’s look at the bigger picture. How does anything get value at all? That only happens through trust we have in those things to be freely exchangeable. Take a dollar bill for example, the paper alone is not worth the money it represents, yet we believe in its value. And that is, because we can take that bill into any store and can exchange it for something else.

Let’s take that concept one step further: Stocks in publicly traded companies represent a percentage of ownership. Yet, if you divided only the measurable value of a company – like real estate, money in the bank, products on shelves – between all shareholders, that wouldn’t come even close to actual stock prices. What explains the difference is our belief in the future value of those shares – if I believe Apple will continue to grow in the future, I am willing to pay more today.

Crypto works the same way. Investors believe in its future potential. And they believe in it so much that they are excited about the prospects of replacing the entire financial system. And that’s why cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are worth a lot of money, yet they don’t actually do much yet.

And next time, we’ll talk about how crypto markets work, the mechanisms that set prices using supply and demand so that we don’t need those people smoking cigars behind closed doors.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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A beginners guide to investing your first $10 in crypto - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 70 - by cryptohunt.it Jan 03, 2022

A beginners guide to investing your first $10 in crypto

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s go step by step through the process of putting your first $10 into crypto. But before we start, as always, this is not investment advice. Only invest what you can afford to lose.

But if you have decided that you want to dabble in crypto… how do you actually start?

First, understand that you’ll need to go through a few steps – those are exchanging real money into crypto, finding a wallet to keep that, tracking your investment, and eventually selling it if you want.

The easiest way to solve all of these problems is to trade through a public exchange, the largest two being Binance and Coinbase, but there are many more. Those handle all of the steps above in one simple app.

But which exchange is right for you? Generally consider that the larger ones tend to be more reliable, but also see if they operate where you live. There is also a difference between the cryptocurrencies each supports. Ask your friends too - often they can generate a referral link for you, and you both get something for free.

Once you’ve chosen your exchange, simply download their app, open it, and create an account. It will very likely want to see a government ID or other things to prove your identity, so be prepared for that.

Inside the app, you’ll also need to connect a bank account or another form of payment. Keep in mind that buying crypto with credit cards is usually more expensive due to fees.

And lastly, you’ll need to make your crypto purchase right from the app. And voila! In just a few minutes, you’ve become a proud owner of crypto and can see the value of your portfolio right there in your app.

And next time, we’ll talk about who or what actually sets the price for crypto currencies.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the difference between public and private keys in crypto? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 69 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 31, 2021

What is the difference between public and private keys in crypto?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about crypto keys. More specifically, what public and private keys are and why you should absolutely know about them if you have any crypto.

Let’s take the example of sending old school mail, where you have a mailbox outside your house.

The public key is like your mailbox address. Anyone can send you a letter to your address, the postal service will put it through the slot, and it sits there safely until you retrieve it. It works the same for crypto. You can safely share your address with anyone, as they can only send you something, and never take something.

The private key is the one you need to guard closely. Like your mailbox key unlocks your mailbox, the private key unlocks your wallet and allows you to take the money out of it. If you have your own wallet, for example Metamask, the wallet will make sure to manage that key for you. If you are using an exchange like Coinbase, they will manage the key in the background and you’ll actually never see it nor would you need to.

But regardless of where the private key is, don’t give it to anyone. Whoever is asking, the only reason they need it is to transfer money out of your account. And don’t lose it either, because that’ll lock you out of your wallet forever.

And now that you know what public and private keys are, next time we’ll talk about how to invest your first $10 in crypto. End to end, in about a minute.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is ERC-20? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 68 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 30, 2021

What is ERC-20?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s learn about a powerful, yet technical concept that makes Ethereum so special, called ERC-20. You probably heard it and wondered what it is. It might sound intimidating, but don’t worry, we’ll break it down for you!

ERC-20 is simply the blueprint that makes all coins and tokens work on Ethereum. But how does that work and why is it important?

Standardizing how tokens work is important because it allows third parties to build wallets and other programs that can send, receive, and keep a balance of any token based on Ethereum. That is as important to crypto as inventing the credit card was for traditional money. Think about it: By defining the size and shape of the card, and how the magnetic stripe works, anyone with a reader can accept it.

ERC-20 does exactly that. It creates standardized ways in which tokens are created, sent between wallets, and how balances are reported. It’s a basic rulebook that let’s developers define what has to happen in each of these standardized events.

And while that sounds like engineering talk at first, it is what allows wallets like Metamask to exist, and let’s you transfer Ethereum based coins seamlessly between your various exchanges or among friends. Just like we have agreed on a system to mail letters – put them in a standard envelope, put postage and address in opposite corners, and drop them into the mailbox, ERC-20 does this for sending all kinds of money around.

And next time, we’ll talk about what public and private keys are.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Lizard Coin (LIZ$) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 67 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 29, 2021

What makes Lizard Coin (LIZ$) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about Lizard Coin!

Never heard of it? You are not alone… That’s because we created Lizard Coin to prove that anybody can make up a crypto project, and it is hard to find the few projects that have good intentions AND future potential.

But what is Lizard Coin actually? It’s just a simple cryptocurrency that allows you to hold and transfer so-called LIZ dollars between wallets. It’s basically like Bitcoin, but without any users, value, or fame.

So what makes it special? In fact, nothing. And it took us just a few minutes and a few dollars to create. The lesson: Always consider that anyone can create something similar, and indeed many coins out there are just created to make the developer some money. Learn from Lizard Coin that taking your time to research a project is well worth it.

And when we launch cryptohunt.it, that research will become much easier. We predict that Lizard Coin won’t get great reviews, and we won’t be mad about it.

Until then, go grab some free Lizard Coin for fun. Just email us at lizard@cryptohunt.it and we’ll send you instructions.

And next time we’ll talk about ERC-20, the blueprint for decentralized finance.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes SHIBA INU (SHIB) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 66 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 28, 2021

What makes SHIBA INU (SHIB) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll talk about yet another dog themed coin, Shiba Inu.

Shiba Inu, with its ticker SHIB, was created as a Dogecoin equivalent on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s a great example of a meme coin that doesn’t have much of a special purpose.

Created by anonymous people in late 2020, the coin gained popularity as Elon Musk’s Tweet about the bigger brother Dogecoin drove attention to dog-themed crypto currencies. It has been riding that wave of investor enthusiasm and speculation ever since, exploding in value and making a lot of people very rich.

So, why did all those people buy Shiba Inu in the first place? Most likely because those who missed out on the meteoric rise of Dogecoin were hoping for another similar coin to do the same. And they got lucky! Despite having very little practical use over other coins and blockchains, SHIB sits in the top 15 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization today.

And that’s Shiba Inu! And next time, we’ll get back to blockchains with actual innovation as a goal and talk about Polygon.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Dogecoin (DOGE) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 65 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 27, 2021

What makes Dogecoin (DOGE) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s dive into the phenomenon of Dogecoin – how it started, why it’s so popular, and if it has any real world use.

Dogecoin was released in 2013 as a project to poke fun at the very technical crypto scene back then. The two founders felt that crypto insiders were taking themselves too seriously, and scaring non-technical people away. To get everyone else interested, they created a coin themed like a Shiba Inu dog, hoping to break down some of those barriers.

And indeed, a vivid community of hundreds of thousands of DOGE fans has formed on Reddit, where great posts get rewarded with Dogecoins between members. That community is known to be welcoming and happy to explain crypto to newcomers.

Dogecoin itself was simply created as a clone of LiteCoin with little extra development effort at first. But thanks to its roots, it is actually relatively usable in comparison to Bitcoin - transactions are decently fast and cheap, and an unlimited supply of Dogecoin helps its value to be relatively stable.

There aren’t many real-world examples of Dogecoin use though. But for unknown reasons, Tesla founder Elon Musk has hyped the coin many times, and has recently announced that Tesla will accept it as a payment method… for swag only.

And that’s Dogecoin, the best known meme coin. Next time, we’ll talk about its recent offspring, Shiba Inu.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Polkadot (DOT) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 64 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 24, 2021

What makes Polkadot (DOT) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll talk about Polkadot, a technology introduced in 2020 to make creating entirely new blockchains easier.

You’ll start seeing a theme here: Polkadot ist yet another crypto project aiming at solving the problems with Ethereum. In fact, Polkadot is co-founded by Ethereum’s old Chief Technology Officer.

Think of Ethereum as a single highway; and of the transaction fees as tolls. Every time any transaction happens on Ethereum, it gets put on the same road – this could be someone sending a token, the sale of an NFT, or the creation of a new smart contract. Quickly, that highway gets congested, tolls go way up, and there is just not enough space for everyone to get to their destination.

Polkadot takes a novel approach to solving this problem. Instead of creating more lanes on that freeway, which is a common solution other blockchains try, it allows for the creation of entirely new, separate freeways. In other words, it allows the creation of new blockchains. Those can be used separately with less congestion, and can be built for a special purpose. And there are also ramps connecting those freeways, so exchanges are possible.

All that has led to Polkadot being a scalable, and fully customizable alternative to Ethereum.

And next time, we’ll talk about the opposite of a purposeful blockchain: The popular meme coin Dogecoin.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Avalanche (AVAX) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 63 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 23, 2021

What makes Avalanche (AVAX) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we talk about Avalanche, a relatively new blockchain technology that launched in late 2020 and has already made it into the top 10 earlier this year.

Like other projects, Avalanche’s main goal is to provide the same capabilities as Ethereum, but solve its main problems. If you’ve listened to this podcast, you will recognize them quickly: Ethereum allows for the creation of an entirely digital financial system through smart contracts, but can’t currently handle a lot of transactions and the fees are very high.

Avalanche tries to solve this problem in a couple of ways. First, it splits the three core jobs – transaction validation, exchanging money, and executing smart contracts – and operates three separate computer networks to run them. This allows it to process thousands of transactions per second as opposed to around 17 for Ethereum, and Avalanche has fees that can be thousands of times lower.

The other way Avalanche attempts to replace Ethereum is by simply being compatible with it. Computer code written to build smart contracts on Ethereum can be reused on Avalanche. That means, programmers can move over very quickly and take advantage of fast, cheap transactions, which has helped Avalanche gain rapid adoption since it’s launch.

And that’s why Avalanche is becoming so popular and starting to compete with Ethereum. And next time, we’ll talk about Polkadot.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Terra (Luna) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 62 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 22, 2021

What makes Terra (Luna) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we talk about Terra, a blockchain that aims to make payments as easy as Paypal or Venmo for a worldwide audience.

Terra has only been around since 2019 and was created specifically with stable coins in mind. The idea is to provide numerous such stable coins, one for each major real world currency to make online payments easy. Those stable coins are all exchangeable on the blockchain, making buying something in one of the other stablecoins very simple without having to exchange currencies manually.

The Terra founders have the larger vision of making online payments with crypto extremely easy. Having started very large e-commerce websites in Asia, their hope is to get people to turn Terra into a widely accepted alternative payment method online. For that vision to come true, the Terra team created payment apps for mobile and desktop and are giving their Luna token to people for using it.

Another interesting feature of Terra is also how it creates stable coins. Instead of holding a reserve – like most stable coins – they algorithmically create and destroy coins to keep the market price balanced. In other words, the stable coins themselves adjust supply and demand.

And that’s Terra. And next time, we’ll talk about Avalanche.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Ripple (XRP) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 61 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 21, 2021

What makes Ripple (XRP) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we dive into Ripple, one of the earliest cryptocurrencies out there.

Ripple is a virtual currency that targets banks and payment networks as clients. The idea behind Ripple is to replace the antiquated inter-bank payments systems. It is not designed for consumers like us.

And that differentiation makes it one of the most adopted crypto projects out there. Major commercial banks like Santander use the technology to move money around for example.

But note how we haven’t said a word about blockchains yet? That’s because Ripple doesn’t operate on blockchain technology. Instead, the Ripple company provides validation of transactions, meaning Ripple isn’t decentralized and the company is the sole entity that has full control over its future. There is still a permanent record of all transactions though, much like Bitcoin. All that makes Ripple extremely fast with very low fees for those banks.

Another thing to know about Ripple is that major exchanges in the US have halted trading of its token. That is because Ripple is currently being sued by the security exchange commission, the US agency that oversees the stock market. They allege that Ripple sold their tokens illegally to the public. So if you decide to trade Ripple, just understand it might be hard to sell in the US.

And that’s Ripple! And next time, we’ll talk about Terra Luna.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What make Cardano (ADA) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 60 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 20, 2021

What make Cardano (ADA) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we talk about Cardano, one of the most popular blockchains out there.

Cardano was created in 2017 by a former founding member of the Ethereum team and it aims to solve the problems that Ethereum has with low transaction volumes and high transaction prices.

From a technological point of view, Cardano is not unlike other projects who have the same goal. It does, however, have a couple of unique ideas.

First, changes to the blockchain don’t just get voted on, they also get peer-reviewed. The idea of peer reviews comes from the science community, where ideas can only get published if they have been reviewed in detail by other scientists. The founder of Cardano, who happens to be a mathematician, hopes that peer-reviews will bring a more solid long-term approach to the blockchain’s development.

Second, Cardano also separates the basic layer of sending and receiving money from the smart contract layer. Think of it like going to the DMV to pay for the renewal of your car registration. Instead of waiting in line with everyone else until your number is called, there is an express lane for payments and you are in and out in no time. That also means that when major functional updates happen, the transaction layer of Cardano can keep working without interruptions.

And that’s what makes Cardano special! And tomorrow, we’ll talk about Ripple.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the Blockchain Trilemma? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 59 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 17, 2021

What is the Blockchain Trilemma?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll talk about the three big problems every blockchain tries to solve at the same time. This is also called the “Blockchain Trilemma”. Knowing about this concept is important, because it’ll help you evaluate a blockchain’s future potential.

The three problems in the Trilemma are security, scalability, and decentralization. Achieving all of them at the same time is the holy grail that no technology has fully achieved today. Let’s take a look at why that is.

Security is the first problem, and in this context it simply means making sure that nobody can fake transactions.

Scalability is a blockchain’s ability to cheaply process so many transactions at the same time that it could replace everything from credit cards to banking – and that’s a lot.

Decentralization is about making sure that no single actor has control over the entire system, so that it is not influenced by an individual or an organization alone.

The problem is that each of those creates a tradeoff. For example, security for Bitcoin is ensured through proof-of-work, a process that slows things down deliberately, making Bitcoin too slow for real world use.

Ethereum is fully decentralized and secure, but transactions are slow and cost hundreds of dollars.

The Binance Smart chain is fast and cheap, because the company behind it chooses the few actors who can validate, but that also violates the principles of decentralization.

So you see where this is going.

But what does that mean for you? Simply use the Blockchain Trilemma to evaluate any blockchain you are researching - that’ll be a very good way of checking if something has future potential.

And next time, we’ll talk about popular blockchains again, taking a deeper look at Cardano.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How safe are stable coins actually? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 58 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 16, 2021

How safe are stable coins actually?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll talk about how stable those Stable Coins actually are.

Remember from previous episodes: Stable coins are cryptocurrencies that track a real world currency in value, for example the US Dollar. That means 1 stable coin is always traded for 1 US Dollar. That protects the holder against the wild market swings in crypto like Bitcoin.

But how safe is your money in stablecoins like Tether or USDC actually? To get to the bottom of that question, first we need to understand how stablecoins work.

Imagine you collect shells on the beach. They are worthless by themselves. But let’s say you offer your friends a deal: Buy a shell from me for 1 dollar and I guarantee that I will always exchange that shell back for a dollar. In theory your friends could now buy bread with those shells, if the baker is willing to exchange them back for real dollars with you.

That’s how stable coins work too. You buy them from the issuer, and in theory the issuer creates a reserve of real currency, guaranteeing the value.

Ok! Back to your shells. Now, what happens if you had spent the money your friends gave you and suddenly they all come back, trying to exchange their shells? You wouldn’t be able to pay them. Good luck to them, finding someone on the open market to buy some useless shells.

And that’s the risk with stable coins too. Some don’t have enough reserve to cover a major exchange back to dollars. Tether for example was sued by the US government because it allegedly made misleading claims about the amount of reserve they hold. USDC went the other way and created a fully audited and regulated reserve to create trust.

So be careful and do your research. Some tokens may be less stable than you think.

And next time we will talk about the Blockchain Trilemma, the three big problems all blockchains struggle to solve.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes USD Coin (USDC) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 57 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 15, 2021

What makes USD Coin (USDC) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today is about yet another popular stable coin: USD Coin, also called USDC.

If you are just tuning into our podcast now: Stablecoins are special types of crypto currencies that follow a real world currency in value. USDC is just like that, and it follows the US Dollar, making 1 USDC always worth 1 actual US dollar. That makes it, like other stablecoins, very usable for real-life transactions.

What makes USDC special is not the technology, but who backs it and how they do it.

USDC was created in a joint venture of Coinbase, the popular crypto exchange, and Circle, a finance company based in Boston. Coinbase is a publicly traded and officially regulated exchange, Circle’ backers include big institutions, like Goldman Sachs.

Knowing that, you can easily see that credibility is the main goal here with those big names behind USDC. But the way it is backed also aims to create trust in the cryptocurrency: Every dollar of USDC in circulation is backed by the equivalent of real dollars in a reserve. And that reserve is officially regulated by the US government, and audited by a top 10 accounting firm.

So what are the downsides? Mostly transaction costs, as USDC is built on top of Ethereum. But that should be solved soon, as support is planned for competing blockchains like Algorand, Stellar and Solana.

And since we are on the topic, next time we’ll take a break from new coins and will talk a little more about how stable those stable coins actually are.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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056 - What makes Solana (SOL) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 56 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 15, 2021

What makes Solana (SOL) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about Solana!

Solana is a blockchain technology that allows developers to build so-called decentralized apps, or financial systems, on its infrastructure. That could be anything from currencies, to loans, to NFTs. As such, it has very similar goals to Ethereum and Binance Coin, which we’ve discussed in previous episodes.

So what makes Solana special then? Founded in 2017, but only recently released in 2020, Solana has the goal to handle massive transaction volumes without compromising security and decentralization. In other words, it wants to replace Ethereum with none of the bottlenecks.

And to achieve that, Solana invented a few unique tricks. But the primary innovation is a process called “proof of history”. This allows for many computers in its network to validate blocks, which are groups of transactions, in parallel. In contrast, Bitcoin for example, can only validate one block at a time before all the computers have to communicate and catch up on the latest data again.

And in fact, Solana has been tested with up to 100,000 transactions per second, and transactions cost a fraction of a cent. Compare that to the roughly ten thousand transactions per second going through traditional Credit Cards, all of which cost a few percent in fees, and you see why people think Solana could be a leading technology in the future.

And that’s Solana! And tomorrow, we’ll talk about USD Coin.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes Tether (USDT) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 55 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 13, 2021

What makes Tether (USDT) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Before we start today, we want to share some exciting news. We just closed a financing round with amazing investors like Coinbase Ventures to bring you cryptohunt.it, a website where we’ll make crypto learning and discovering easy for everyone. Stay tuned and share the news and this podcast with your friends if you want to help us out!

Now, let’s get to it and talk about Tether, specifically USDT. Tether is a stable coin, meaning that its value closely follows that of a real-world currency. That means 1 Tether is always worth 1 US Dollar. This makes it a very useful crypto currency to do everyday transactions with, because it doesn’t fluctuate in price.

Tether achieves that by holding the real-world money equivalent of all Tethers combined in a reserve, and guaranteeing the value of a Tether through that. In other words, the company will always buy a Tether back for one Dollar, and in doing so, creates a stable price.

But Tether is not the only stable coin, so what made it so popular that it currently is the fourth largest crypto currency? It is the ability to operate on multiple different blockchains at the same time, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. That means it has a much larger potential user base and payments work between blockchains. It’s like sending money directly from your Paypal to a friend’s Venmo.

And before we close, it is worth noting that Tether has been sued by multiple US government agencies for allegedly misrepresenting how much they actually hold in reserve. If true, that would mean the company could run out of money if many people want to withdraw Tether.

And that’s Tether! And next time we talk about Nr. 5 on the list: Solana!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes the Binance Coin (BNB) special? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 54 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 10, 2021

What makes the Binance Coin (BNB) special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

We talked about Bitcoin and Ethereum, number 1 and 2 in market cap, extensively. Let’s spend some time exploring the rest of them! Today: Binance Coin, which currently is number 3 in market capitalization!

Binance Coin is a token that was originally issued as an alternative payment method on the parent company’s crypto exchange. The Binance exchange simply offered lower transaction costs to anyone using their token.

As Binance grew into one of the largest exchanges in the world, the vision for the token expanded. It eventually morphed into an alternative to Ethereum, meaning that it lets developers build Decentralized Finance products – short: DeFi – with smart contracts. Make sure to check out our episodes on Defi and Smart Contracts.

While both have the same goal, the Binance blockchain wants to solve the key problems that Ethereum still faces: Low transaction volume and high transaction costs. And it does so in a unique, and sometimes criticized way: It centralizes control.

The company itself chooses who gets to validate transactions, giving that privilege to only a handful few. That makes transactions fast and cheap in theory. In fact, they are about a whopping 80 times cheaper than Ethereum right now. In addition, Binance also has the power of blocking smart contracts to decrease fraud.

But is it too risky to trust a single company with managing almost 100 bn dollars in circulation? We’ll leave that judgement up to you. But it certainly makes Binance Coin unique among many others.

And next time, we’ll talk about Tether, which currently sits at #4 in market capitalization.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are the economics of mining Bitcoin? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 53 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 09, 2021

What are the economics of mining Bitcoin?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about what it takes to make money mining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

You have probably heard of those large warehouses, filled with computers, that do nothing else than mine Bitcoin all day long. How do they actually make money?

Remember, mining is like making computers solve very, very complicated puzzles. With that in mind, consider three factors: The cost of computers, the cost of energy, and the price of the cryptocurrency they get rewarded with.

Sounds easy, but it’s actually quite difficult to even get started with mining. You will need special power-efficient computers to make it work. Those “ASICs” – short for “application specific integrated circuits” – are expensive and hard to get because of high demand and chip shortages.

Once you have the hardware, the next thing to consider is the cost of energy. A single block of Bitcoin, for example, uses the equivalent of a US household’s annual power bill.

And lastly, mining rewards get paid in the blockchains’ native crypto currency, for example Bitcoin. That works in a miner’s favor when prices are up, but when they suddenly drop, they are stuck with an expensive machine that doesn’t make enough money.

So, how much does a single mining machine make? It obviously depends, but can currently be up to $200 per day after paying for power bills. But that’s on a machine that’ll set you back over 75,000 dollars used on eBay right now, meaning it’ll take a year to turn a profit with no room for price drops.

And that’s how people make, or lose, money with mining. And next time we’ll start talking about a specific cryptocurrency per episode to discuss what makes each of them special.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Coin Burning? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 52 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 08, 2021

What is Coin Burning?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

In the last two episodes we explained how halving slows down the rate at which new Bitcoins get put into circulation.

Halving, however, is very specific to just a few blockchains, the most popular ones are Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin.

Other blockchains use a mechanism called burning to achieve the same: It takes coins of circulation. But how do they do that and why?

Many crypto currencies are built with the idea of deflation in mind. Deflation simply means that the supply of available currency decreases over time which can in turn increase the value of those coins by creating scarcity over time.

Deflation could be by design for currencies that are explicitly set up to do this, or by personal motivations of large holders.

Burning is one way to achieve deflation. While it sounds dramatic, in most cases coins just get sent to a special wallet that doesn’t have an owner. Nobody has the key to it, so they can never be used again.

Who burns these tokens? Often, burning is built into the protocol of a blockchain itself. Set in code, it happens whenever the conditions are met. Ethereum for example burns some of the fees whenever a transaction happens.

In other instances, developers behind the tokens, or just owners decide to burn their holdings. The inventor of Ethereum famously burned almost $7bn in Shiba Inu, which he got sent without being asked for permission, because he felt it was unfair to have that many.

And that’s it on Burning and Deflation! And next time we’ll talk about the economics of mining Bitcoin!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Is Bitcoin Halving a good thing? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 51 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 07, 2021

Is Bitcoin Halving a good thing?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk more about Bitcoin Halving: Why it was likely made part of Bitcoin, and if it is a good thing. But listen to our previous episode first for an explanation of halving.

Now we know that Halving is necessary because there can only ever be 21 million bitcoins. All currently unmined Bitcoins go to miners as rewards and they would be gone quickly if those rewards didn’t get cut in half every so often.

But why is there a hard limit on the amount of Bitcoins in the first place? We can’t know for certain, but it looks to be a response to the 2008 financial crisis. Governments print their own money as they see fit, and did so heavily back then, causing inflation. Bitcoin is designed to be the opposite, with money getting created at decreasing speeds thanks to Halving.

So, is Halving a good thing then? Depends on who you ask.

Now, for those people who hold Bitcoins, Halving means that less newly mined Bitcoins are coming into circulation over a certain period of time, and lower supply generally means higher prices. And in fact, anticipation of Halving has driven up Bitcoin prices a ton whenever it happened in the past.

But consider things from a miner’s perspective - suddenly you get half the rewards for the same amount of power used and hardware operated. That will only make sense, if the price increase of your Bitcoin rewards makes up for it.

But maybe that’s actually a good thing, forcing everyone to use more energy efficient-ways to mine. We can only hope!

And next time: Do other blockchains also use Halving?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Bitcoin Halving? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 50 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 06, 2021

What is Bitcoin Halving?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about Halving of Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin Halving” refers to specific events where the reward for mining Bitcoins is cut in half. Let’s unpack that a bit.

Transacting with Bitcoin is only possible, because so-called miners run complicated computer algorithms to validate every transaction. This process is called proof of work, and we recommend you listen to our episode on that. But in summary, you need to understand that it takes a lot of energy and hardware to mine Bitcoin. That’s why the system has to pay rewards to miners. Those rewards currently pay 6.25 Bitcoins for validating a chunk of transactions, also called a block.

When halving happens, the reward per block gets cut in half. At that point it will be half of the current 6.25 Bitcoins, dropping it to 3.125 Bitcoins, hence the name. Halving happens every 210,000 mined blocks, meaning the next halving will happen sometime in 2024.

So, why is Halving built into Bitcoin? Because, by design, the blockchain has a total amount of 21 million Bitcoins that can ever be created. But not all of those are in circulation, currently about 2 million are still set aside for mining rewards. Now, imagine you would keep giving miners the same rewards forever - eventually you’d run out of rewards. Halfing slows this process down.

And that’s halving! And in the next episode we’ll talk about why Bitcoin was designed that way and if halving is a good or a bad thing.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Layer 2? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 49 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 03, 2021

What is Layer 2?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s understand what Layer 2 is.

Layer 2 refers to blockchains that build on top of an existing one to improve them without having to replace them.

To understand why that is necessary, let’s take a look at Ethereum: It is the most popular blockchain supporting Smart Contracts - or “programmable money”. But transaction costs are often in the hundreds of dollars and it still only does less than 50 transactions per second. That makes it impractical for smaller purchases, for example a 10 dollar NFT.

At the same time though, it’s great to have everything happening inside the Ethereum ecosystem itself - tokens are easily exchangeable and once you buy into it, your money can move around freely. But it does so slowly and expensively.

That’s where Layer 2 comes in. Those blockchains operate “off-chain” by processing transactions more efficiently thanks to more modern concepts. To do that, they transact using their own tokens. But you can freely exchange those tokens back into Ethereum as well, because that’s what they are built and traded on. It gives you the latest technology, all while money can easily be swapped back to the token of an established blockchain.

It’s kind of like a decentralized version of putting money into your Venmo account. Once it’s there, you can send it around between Venmo users for free. And if you choose to, you can also pull it back out and send it back to your bank account.

And next time, we’ll talk about Halving and why that is a big deal for Bitcoin.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What’s different between investing in crypto versus investing in stock? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 48 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 02, 2021

What’s different between investing in crypto versus investing in stock?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about the big differences between crypto and stock investing. But before we dive into that, please take a moment to understand that this is not investment advice, we are only explaining the concepts behind crypto. Always do your own research!

So, you’ve been asking yourself what the differences are between crypto and stock trading. Both go up and down, people make money or lose money.

So, let’s talk about three main differences: Accessibility, backing, and volatility.

Accessibility is an obvious one: Creating a Robinhood account is very easy, and the app gives you access to thousands of stocks and options right away. With crypto, things are still much harder - oftentimes you have to go through multiple steps to buy the lesser known coins.

Backing, so what’s behind your investment, is also important. When you buy Apple stock for example, you own part of the company with all of its assets: Those include buildings, real money, inventory, patents, and more. And Apple produces real goods that generate revenue. Crypto on the other hand is mostly a bet on the future - blockchains that people speculate will take over the world. In most cases, there are no hard assets behind them and things could fall apart entirely in a black swan event.

Lastly, consider volatility. That term refers to the amount of swings the price goes through. Established, big companies that are exchange traded have a much LESS volatile price than crypto. In contrast, it’s common to lose a lot of money in a crypto trading day, and then gain it back the next. But things are never guaranteed, and the higher the volatility, the higher the risk of getting burned.

We hope those are some good insights to consider when comparing stocks to crypto. And next time, we’ll talk about what Layer 2 is.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is Miami Coin and why was it created? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 47 - by cryptohunt.it Dec 01, 2021

What is Miami Coin and why was it created?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about Miami Coin: What it is and why the city created it.

The city of Miami has long been trying to position itself as a major hub for crypto innovation. It hosted a huge blockchain conference and creating Miami Coin has surely helped to keep Miami in the news. But what is it?

The coin, which has the ticker MIA, is a token that was created and sold by the city of Miami. Its value was simply set by supply and demand, with people hoping to be part of an experiment that would make them money.

What’s particularly interesting about Miami coin are two aspects though: It is one of the first official government uses of a crypto currency, and it creates a stream of income for the city as well as the owners of the coin.

You can generate money through Miami Coin by mining or staking it – meaning you help run computers to validate transactions, for which you’ll get additional Miami Coins. But only 70% of those rewards go to you, and this is where it gets interesting. 30% goes to the city, which has already made them over 20 million real dollars. The city is now deciding what to use the money for.

And while this all sounds like a great new idea, critics point out serious flaws: First, the value of Miami Coin is based entirely on the speculation of buyers and sellers. Aside from mining it, there isn’t a whole lot of things you can actually do with it for now - like paying for things at the supermarket for example.

The other problem is that its value isn’t stable when compared to the US Dollar. Things might crash tomorrow and Miami Coin owners may lose a majority of their investment.

That’s Miami Coin! And next time, we’ll talk about the differences between investing in crypto versus stocks.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Is crypto going to replace real money? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 46 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 30, 2021

Is crypto going to replace real money?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we discuss if crypto will ever replace traditional money like the US dollar. Listen to episode 45 first, where we highlight the differences between both.

There are two ways that crypto can replace traditional money: Either by governments making it their official currency, or by crypto simply overtaking traditional money in terms of usage. So, how likely is either scenario?

In some countries, like Venezuela, crypto is already officially adopted. But will larger economies like the United States ever change over to crypto? Interestingly, some cities are paving the way - Miami recently launched its own Miami Coin for example. If that trend continues, it is very possible that the United States would move the traditional Dollar to the blockchain – but it will likely still be fully controlled by the US government, making it a mix of both worlds: New technology, but old ways to centrally manage it.

Now, let’s say the government sticks with the traditional US dollar: in that case, will we ever see a fully decentralized blockchain take over anyhow? Probably, but it may take a while. The advantages of lower transaction costs over Credit Cards may be enough to convince people to mostly use crypto. Or it could be the ability to build entire financial systems without having to pay the bankers on Wall Street handsome salaries. But it will take a clear regulatory framework that outlines what can and can’t be done, so developers can build with confidence.

And next time, we talk about Miami Coin – what it is and why the city created it.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the difference between crypto currencies and real money? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 45 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 29, 2021

What is the difference between crypto currencies and real money?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we point out the biggest differences between crypto and real currencies.

Let’s ignore the short-term challenges like blockchain transaction costs and lack of ways to pay with crypto in real life, because those will be solved eventually. But there are actually a number of inherent differences, and real money still has big advantages. Let’s dig in!

One important difference is that a currency like the US Dollar is backed by the entire power of the US government. The government has massive buying power, in turn creating a high degree of stability that is backed by the world's largest reserve.

Crypto currencies on the other hand, even stablecoins, are not backed by a system with that much power. It’s easier for those currencies to lose backing and collapse, and there is no central force to actively help avoid that should it become reality.

Another fundamental difference is how quickly decisions can be made. By design, the US Dollar is controlled by the US government, and it can decide what to do with it in somewhat arbitrary ways. But that power means that it can make quick decisions to react to real world scenarios like inflation or a weak economy because it has central control.

Crypto currencies on the other hand are decentralized, and their operating principles are set in code. Scenarios that were not foreseen by their makers could be impossible to respond to and cause economic trouble.

So there you have it. And with all that in mind, next time we’ll ask ourselves: Is crypto ever going to replace real money for good?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Is crypto just for criminals? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 44 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 26, 2021

Is crypto just for criminals?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

So you talked about crypto with someone and they scoffed at you and said: That’s only good for criminals – drug deals, money laundry, and tax evasion.

Today, let's debunk that myth and in the process learn about the power of a permanent, public record of transactions.

Put yourself into the mindset of a criminal - money is best kept hidden from the authorities. If they don't know what was sent, where it was sent, and to whom it was sent, your life becomes much easier.

And there lies the problem with crypto for most criminal activity. Let's take Bitcoin as an example. A permanent record of every Bitcoin transaction, also called the ledger, is saved on millions of computers. Everyone can see it, and nobody can fake it. Tracing back transactions is as easy as it could possibly be for law enforcement, even easier than tracing traditional wire transfers because the information is available publicly without the need for formal requests. And yes, people can hide behind anonymous Bitcoin wallets, but turning crypto into real cash almost always requires an exchange that is highly regulated and verifies your identity.

And that's why you should not listen to people saying crypto is just for criminals, in fact it is pretty useless for them. Instead, help your friends understand the great impact crypto already has: Helping people access higher returns on their investments, creating stable currencies that anyone can use where those didn’t exist before, sending money across borders, and many, many more.

And while we are on the topic: Next time we will explain what the difference between real money and crypto actually is.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are smart contracts? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 43 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 25, 2021

What are Smart Contracts?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we talk about Smart Contracts: What they are and how they work.

Remember that blockchains like Ethereum are “programmable money”. They allow makers to create their own financial instruments, for example crypto currencies.

Smart contracts are the blockchain equivalent to real world laws, but they are impossible to violate.

In order to achieve that, these blockchains define what the functional building blocks are, so that the computers executing them are all talking the same language. Think of it like Lego: You can build anything with it, but the Lego company provides you with a bunch of literal blocks that you can put together any way you want.

A smart contract takes these building blocks and builds with them whatever the developers want to achieve. That could be simply moving money around between wallets, or also creating new money, or destroying some. A smart contract defines exactly how a crypto currency or any other financial instrument work.

And because the smart contract is executed on the blockchain, all instructions it carries are public and readable by anyone. They are also set in stone by design, meaning that everyone executing a transaction on a specific smart contract can expect the correct outcome.

So, that’s what a smart contract does. And next time we’ll debunk the myth that crypto is great for criminals, and you might be surprised to hear why.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are gas fees and why are they sometimes so high? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 42 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 24, 2021

What are gas fees and why are they sometimes so high?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you’ve followed this podcast, you’ll know by now that crypto has the potential to improve the efficiency of our financial system by a lot – so why are there transaction fees, and why are they so high for some blockchains, like Ethereum?

First, let’s revisit why we will always need transaction fees, regardless of how advanced blockchain technology becomes. We need independent participants to verify transactions to ensure that none can be faked. Those people operate computers, and those computers cost money and eat energy.

Many networks pay for those validation costs with so-called “gas fees”, which is crypto talk for an extra fee on top of every transaction that those operators earn.

Ok, you say. So far, so good – pay a little money for a few seconds of some computer operating somewhere. But why does it cost over $200 sometimes to do just about anything on Ethereum for example?

There are two reasons: Blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin have to solve complicated puzzles in a process called proof-of-work. Check out our episode on that topic, but it means that a simple task now needs a lot more energy to compute.

But the main problem is another one... demand. The more gas fees someone is willing to pay, the faster their transaction gets validated. You can essentially pay to jump the queue. And when people are willing to pay millions of dollars for a single NFT, they don’t really care to bid a few hundred over average gas fees to get the deal done asap.

That’s why there are many projects that focus specifically on making transactions fast, and affordable.

And next time, we will talk about smart contracts and how they work.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Real world use cases for blockchains - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 41 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 23, 2021

Real world use cases for blockchains

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s stop exploring the theory, and instead talk about ways that blockchain technology is already used to solve real problems.

But first, remember what blockchain technologies actually do very well: They create a decentralized system of record, one that can not be falsified or altered without consent.

Arguably the most popular use cases are NFTs. Those non-fungible tokens are used to sell ownership of digital art. Without the need for commission-hungry art galleries or auction houses, artists get access to a worldwide audience to sell their art. Talented teenagers make life-changing money, and known artists expand their audience.

Another great use of blockchains are stablecoins. Those crypto currencies are tied to the price of a stable currency, for example the US dollar, and are already being used as payment methods in places where people don’t have easy access to bank accounts, and will likely never need those either thanks to crypto.

Those stablecoins are also really practical if you need to pay someone abroad. Before crypto, it required high transaction fees and an complicated wire transfers to send money to a worker or family member in a different country. Now, things are instant with almost zero fees.

And there are tons of other uses - hundreds of billions of dollars are tied to lending and financing on the blockchain for example. So! Next time, someone tells you there are no real world uses for crypto, you have some examples to share.

And next time we dive deeper into gas fees and why there are still some transaction fees when you use crypto.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the metaverse and why could it become the killer use case for crypto? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 40 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 22, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s explore what a “metaverse” actually is and how it could become the killer use case for crypto.

Remember the movie “The Matrix”? In it, protagonist Neo discovers that he had been living in a computer simulation his entire life – a fake, but incredibly realistic world made up by evil machines to keep humans alive to harvest their energy.

That Matrix is the movie depiction of a metaverse, which is a virtual reality you immerse yourself in, interact with others, and you can do whatever that world allows you to.

Sounds futuristic? It is. But Virtual Reality – or VR – is getting better every day. You can already take a rollercoaster ride with a VR headset that is so realistic that you’ll scream in fear. Pilots train in VR and auto makers design cars with it. And because technology is advancing so quickly, companies like Facebook are betting that we will spend most of our time in VR in the not so distant future. They want YOU to escape reality and use THEIR metaverse.

Let’s say that reality becomes true. Why would that be good for crypto? Because in an entirely digital world, blockchains are ideal for payments, to document ownership of digital items, and to keep a permanent record of anything. We simply can’t use a real dollar bill in a virtual world. And if you spend most of your time in VR, you spend most of your money there too, creating huge potential for crypto.

And next time, we are stepping back into reality, showing you real world uses of crypto.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is an ICO? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 39 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 19, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: What are ICOs and what are they used for?

An ICO, which is short for “Initial Coin Offering”, is a way to raise financing for a crypto project.

You may already be familiar with IPOs - “initial public offerings”. This is when companies issue shares to be traded in public stock exchanges like Wall Street. In contrast, In an ICO, instead of shares, companies issue tokens as a representation of partial ownership.

Why do they do that? To raise good, old-fashioned, hard cash. Remember: Just creating a token or coin is easy and doesn’t do much by itself. The creators have to convince the public that their project has value in the first place, and get the tokens into peoples’ hands so that they can establish a market.

An ICO accomplishes just that. By putting their token up for sale publicly, those creators allow investors to buy a stake of their token in return for real money. If investors buy those tokens, the creators get to keep that money to work with. If things go well, it could be lucrative for investors to have gone in early, as they could potentially sell their holdings for gain.

But be careful, because the potential for abuse is high. With speculators rushing into crypto, hoping to ride a wave, lots of ICOs are just a scam. The creators never intended to build a real product and just take the money and run. Always do your own research and don’t trust any single resource.

And next time we’ll talk about what a Metaverse is and how it could become the killer use case for crypto.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is DeFi? Part 2 of 2 - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 38 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 18, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

This is the second of our two episodes on decentralized finance, or just “DeFI” in short.

If you are just jumping in here, we recommend you listen to the previous episode where we explain why traditional financial products are nothing more than contracts traded and executed through banks.

DeFi gets rid of those banks, who act as a powerful middleman. But how does that work? Let’s dig in.

Remember that blockchains like Ethereum are “programmable money”. Crypto developers can just write any financial contract in computer code. That’s called a “smart contract”.

That could be a simple financial instrument like stock or options. And there are real advantages to doing it on a blockchain: First, since the contract is written in plain code and stored on the blockchain, anyone with the skills can read it, which creates full transparency.

Second, and most importantly, you don’t need banks facilitating these contracts anymore. Two parties can enter into those contracts directly through the power of a decentralized blockchain.

So, what are some popular examples? Take lending: You could lend someone Ethereum, and the smart contract determines how much interest you get, when you get the money back, and gives you a token in return that represents what you lent so ownership is documented.

Or ownership in a company: If you own what’s called a “governance token”, which represents a stake in the company or project that issued it, you have verifiable ownership, and may even get voting rights. It’s just like real stock, but on the blockchain.

And next time, we’ll spend more time on the subject of stock on the blockchain, and will explain what an ICO is!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is DeFi? Part 1 of 2 - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 37 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 17, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today and tomorrow, we’ll dive into the world of DeFI, short for “decentralized finance”, where blockchains are used to replace the world of traditional banking.

In this episode, we’ll explain how the world of traditional finance works, so you understand where things are coming from.

Imagine sitting on the busy trade floor of an investment bank. What is actually going on here? People are busy on the phones, looking at screens, taking orders and placing orders on behalf of clients everywhere.

It might sound crazy simple, but those financial instruments being traded are all just contracts: Promises to get or give something in return for a payment, often at a specific date. Take stocks for example. If you buy one Apple stock for $150 dollar, in return you get to vote on shareholder proposals - it’s nothing more than a controlling interest in a company. It just happens to fluctuate in price, so you might make money holding it.

Or take options as another example: Those are contracts to agree to buy or sell stock for a predetermined price at a later date. It’s essentially a gamble on the future value of that stock.

Those traders on the trade floor, what do they do? They sit in the middle, matching buyers with sellers, to make transactions happen, and then collect a fee. In other words, they are a centralized institution.

And that’s the whole point of DeFi, to create a decentralized system that can do all of that, cheaper and better. And next time, we’ll explain how traditional contracts work in the DeFi world.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What are Crypto ETFs? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 36 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 16, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: What are crypto ETFs?

You always know that things are going more mainstream when the media talks about it. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about those “crypto ETFs”. But what are they?

In simple terms, crypto ETFs make crypto investing possible through a regular stock portfolio. To understand how that works, we first need to understand how ETFs work.

ETF means “exchange traded fund”. ETFs have been around since the seventies. They are financial instruments that are traded just like stock. They have a price, a ticker, and you buy them through your traditional brokerage account.

But instead of representing a direct investment in just one company, ETFs allow you to invest in a portfolio. ETF managers buy and sell several individual stocks, balancing out their portfolio constantly, and you don’t have to worry about trading each of these yourself. Are you familiar with popular funds like Vanguard tracking the SP500 here in the US, or the DAX index in Germany? Those are ETFs.

Bitcoin and crypto ETFs give you the same convenience, but instead of investing in publicly traded companies, the funds invest your money in – you guessed it – crypto.

There are a few reasons why that’s useful: First, it’s much easier to get crypto exposure through your existing portfolio than having to set up a separate crypto exchange account. Second, some ETFs track a portfolio of different crypto, meaning you just have to buy one ETF and they do the work for you. And third, without those ETFs you might not be able to trade crypto directly sometimes, say through a retirement account that only allows you to trade traditional equities.

And now that we have talked about the bridge between the old and the new trading world, next episode we’ll talk about financial innovation that happens entirely in the world of DeFi and what that means.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How do crypto scams work? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 35 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 15, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: How do crypto scams work?

Whenever there is money involved, scammers are not far away. In crypto, people use the term “rug pulled” - which means someone pulled the rug from under you and your investment tanked. But how does that work?

It’s easy to create your own coin and hype it. In fact, don’t trust anyone promoting a crypto currency on TikTok and the like – people pay tens of thousands of dollars to those influencers to create a fake image of popularity for a specific coin. It works like this: Scammers buy a large amount of a very low value coin for next to nothing. Then they pump a ton of money into promotions, and if people start buying into the scam, prices shoot up. Suddenly the scammers' holdings are worth a lot more than they spent on promotions and they will sell it all. And because they own so much, the minute they sell it, your value plummets.

That’s called a “pump and dump”. So be on the lookout for anything that looks fishy and only trust third party resources. Anyone can create a coin, a website, and pay influencers.

It’s tempting to make a quick buck and seemingly everyone does these days. But always ask yourself: Does that all actually make any sense?

And next time we’ll explain what Crypto ETFs are.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How do you know if a token is a good investment? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 34 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 12, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: How do you know if a token is a good investment

First things first! This is not investment advice, and crypto is massively volatile. Do not invest what you can’t afford to lose entirely. Always do your own research. In fact, today, we’ll talk about some of the things you might want to look for when doing exactly that.

So, you’ve found this coin and consider investing some money. What should you take into consideration?

We would ask ourselves two things: Is this a legitimate project with good intentions? And does the technology have future potential?

The first is pretty clear: There are a lot of scams out there and we’ll talk about them in more depth next time. But there are warning signs you can listen to: How much is owned by just a few people? How long has a project been around? What do people say about it in forums? Are decisions made through the community or by an anonymous few?

Also important: Market capitalization, meaning how much money is invested in a coin. While getting in early may pay off, consider that a young token with little money behind it is more likely to be a scam.

Secondly: Does this solve any problems that existing technologies don’t? The fundamentals are that transactions are fast and cheap, and a blockchain can handle many of them at the same time. But also consider if it solves a new use case that could make it very popular. A good way to think about it is: Will a lot of people likely still use this in 10 years?

That’s just a small list and you will add your own ideas to it over time. And next time we’ll talk about the making of bitcoin scams, so you can spot those from a mile away.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How to learn more about Crypto - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 33 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 11, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: How to learn even more about crypto.

This is episode 33 of “Crypto in plain English” and if you’ve followed us this far, congratulations! You have a very solid crypto knowledge now. And don’t worry, we are going to produce many more episodes, but you are ready now to learn about the resources the professionals use.

The first thing we recommend is to sign up for crypto newsletters. Here at cryptohunt, we really like reading “Bankless”, which can be found at Banklesshq.com. It’ll try and trick you into a paid subscription - so make sure you click on the free version on the left to get started.

Ready to dive deeper? Welcome to the world of Discords. Discord is a chat app similar to Slack that almost every crypto project uses. Once you’ve identified projects you want to do more research on, find their Discord and join it. We know, it’s pretty intimidating at first and noisy in there, but right now that is your best bet to dive deep.

And because we agree that the world of crypto learning is such a pain to deal with, we are working to make cryptohunt the one hub you’ll need for all the insights with none of the noise. But until then, dive a little deeper with those resources we just mentioned.

And next time we will talk about things to look out for when researching crypto projects.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a fork? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 32 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 10, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today we tell you what a fork is.

You might have heard the term “fork” recently, especially since Ethereum is about to undergo such a “fork” to Ethereum 2.

But what does that actually mean?

Just like reaching a literal fork in a road, from which your path could go into two totally separate directions, a crypto fork splits a blockchain into two versions going forward - the original one and the new fork. This is necessary, because blockchain technology evolves, and sometimes does so to the extent that it is not backwards compatible anymore.

In the case of Ethereum 2, it switches to proof of stake, which is a different form of transaction validation. Any computer that validated the original Ethereum transactions will no longer be able to apply the same logic to Ethereum 2. The owners will have to decide whether to stick with the old, or move to the new.

When that fork happens in 2022, Ethereum 1 and 2 will coexist. They are, however, different blockchains at that point and the aspiration is to make Ethereum 2 the new standard and slowly reduce reliance on the old one.

But forks don’t have to be that disruptive. There are many blockchains, like Celo for example, which started with the Ethereum open source code, forked it, improved it, and launched their own blockchain, and in doing so, brought innovation to the ecosystem.

And in the next episode we talk about other great sources for crypto knowledge.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a Crypto Faucet? - Crypto in Plain English - Episode 31 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 09, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we explain crypto faucets.

Crypto faucets are wallets that automatically give away small amounts of a token for free. You simply plug in your address and they'll send you some.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, there is a reason.

Most blockchains have transaction costs, so-called "gas fees". Those fees pay the people who run the infrastructure to validate transactions.

But when a blockchain is young, and getting a token through an exchange isn't easy, it's very hard to get started. Say you want to create a token, it will cost you gas fees you don't have. Or you want to create an NFT, same problem.

That's why many blockchains start out giving their currency to anyone who wants it. They put a little money in your pocket, so you can build on top of them.

On cryptohunt, we'll include public faucets so you don't have to stumble through the web to find them.

Now you know what faucets do. And next time we'll explain forks!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is an Airdrop? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 30 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 08, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we explain airdrops.

It's quite literal - airdrops happen when owners of a token distribute it for free to a larger number of recipients.

But why would anyone do that? Well, there are several reasons. Let's dig in.

First, the owners of a token might simply want to get it into circulation. It is no good to them if nobody owns it, puts a price on it, and trades it.

Second, they might want to incentivize their community. Compound, a crypto lending platform, has recently given away a lot of their token supply to early active users, having made some quite rich in the process.

And third, it might be by design. Imagine you create a product and you want it to be owned and controlled by the users - you'd find a set of rules under which you airdrop all of it fairly.

And because airdrops can happen for any reason, we'll include an upcoming airdrops section on cryptohunt when we launch.

And next time: Another way to get free crypto - so called "faucets".

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a DAO? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 29 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 05, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today we explain what a DAO ("D-A-O") is.

You may remember our episode on Web 3 and its core promise to give control over the web back to its users.

A DAO - short for "Decentralized Autonomous Organization" is what makes that possible.

Traditional companies make decisions in arbitrary ways - maybe the boss didn't like a certain person and fired them, or the agency wanted to change the logo.

In a DAO however, rules about who makes decisions and how they are being voted on are set in computer code and executed on the blockchain. Usually, there are no hierarchies nor bosses.

In fact, users are in control. They hold a product's token and are thus part of its DAO. They all have the right to bring forth proposals and vote on them. Those decisions are then transparently recorded on the blockchain. And everyone has an incentive to make good decisions – because the value of their token goes up if they do and make a product better.

That's DAOs in a nutshell. And next time we talk about how to get in on DAOs by explaining Airdrops.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Yield Farming - or how to generate passive crypto income - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 28 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 04, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today we explain what Yield Farming is or how to generate passive income with crypto.

Yield farming is a popular term these days, and it simply means trying to maximize passive income from crypto.

But what ways to generate interest with crypto are there to begin with?

First, there is “staking”, which we talked about in a previous episode. In summary, you get a return for locking your token into a blockchain to validate transactions.

Then there are “liquidity pools”, where you provide tokens for others to enable swapping, and get a cut of the transaction fee. We explained that last time.

And then there is simple “lending”, where you lend someone else your crypto for an interest rate.

Yield farmers will try to use all these methods to squeeze out maximum profit. They constantly move tokens around to where returns are the highest, or even combine methods. For example, you could add tokens to a liquidity pool, get the pool’s token in exchange, and lend that to others.

Now that you understand yield farming, always remember: This may sound tempting, but do your own research. This is not investment advice.

And next time we’ll talk about what a DAO is.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What the heck is staking? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 27 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 03, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: What the heck is staking?

Staking is the process of locking up tokens you own within a blockchain network, and getting rewards in return. It's an easy way to generate passive income with your crypto holdings.

Staking is similar to putting money into a savings account and earning interest.

The concept is crucial in blockchains that use "proof of stake", because only participants with staked tokens are trusted to validate transactions, and then allowed to collect the associated rewards.

If you don't want to run a validator yourself, which often involves installing software on a server, you can delegate your tokens to those who are. In return, you'll still get proportional interest payments.

But there is risk! You often have to stake your tokens for a specific amount of time, which means you can't take them out to sell or swap. If the token price decreases while you are staking, you might end up losing more money due to that, than the interest can make up for. On the flip side, if you intended to hold the token, that may not be a problem for you.

And next time we'll give you an overview of the most popular ways to create more passive income with crypto.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a Liquidity Pool? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 26 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 02, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: We explain liquidity pools.

If you want to exchange one token for another, you have to have a market, meaning you'll have to find another person to swap you at the rate you both agree to.

Remember: Centralized exchanges like Binance have enough users to match them directly when they want to swap – for a fee.

Liquidity pools take this concept and decentralize it, so that you don't need a massive amount of users on centralized exchanges anymore.

For that to work, people who hold both tokens of a pair you'd like to swap, send those to a liquidity pool. The tokens then disappear from their wallet and get transferred over to that pool, and in exchange they get a third token that proves ownership over the amount they committed. They can exchange that back at any time.

That's how the pool is getting filled.

But back to you: if you want to exchange two tokens and the corresponding liquidity pool is full enough to fulfill your swap, it'll do that using those tokens that are already in it. You exchange for the token you wanted and pay a fee. That fee is then distributed to the people who originally funded the pool, letting their money work for them. And those rewards can add up quickly if a pool has a lot of activity.

And next we explain staking - in plain English, like always. Hear you then!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How does swapping tokens actually work? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 25 - by cryptohunt.it Nov 01, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: How you exchange one token for another.

Let’s say you own a significant amount of one coin, and want to swap some of it for another coin – for example exchange Ethereum for Bitcoin.

How does that actually work?

Think of it like trying to swap Amazon Gift cards for Apple Gift cards – you will have to find someone on the other end of that trade who's interested in it.

That's what large exchanges help with. They have so many users that a lot of those swaps – called “trade pairs” by the insiders – are possible, because there is always someone interested in any of the many different combinations. What exchanges do here is called "market making" - they bring people together to facilitate a swap.

But what if you want to trade a very exotic pair, say Lizard Coin for Doge Coin? Then your best bet is to go through "fiat", meaning real currency or well-known crypto. First, you'll have to exchange Lizard Coin for US Dollar or Bitcoin, and then take those and exchange them for Doge Coin. That's what we call an imperfect market and the two step process is often more expensive.

And now that you know the basics of how markets are made, we'll talk about liquidity pools next time.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a dApp? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 24 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 29, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we explain dApps (“d-a-p-p-s”), short for decentralized apps.

Unlike traditional apps that run on your smartphone or a web server somewhere, decentralized apps run on the networks that power blockchains. They are decentralized, because each of these networks can have many so-called nodes, which are computers running these dapps. Remove one of them, and the blockchain with its dapps is still fully functional.

But what exactly does a dapp do? It’s just a small computer program, often called smart contract, that executes in the background on these nodes when a transaction happens. Say, for example, you send someone Ethereum. The Ether dApp will run, check your wallet balance, remove the amount, and add it to the receiving wallet balance.

But the clever thing is that these dapps can do anything you can program a computer to do. Say you want 5% of that transaction to go to charity, you would program your smart contract to do that. Or you want an NFT to only be able to sell once? Same thing.

And that’s how a single blockchain like Ethereum can power so many different tokens - they are all just dapps, implementing many different ideas.

And next time we talk about swapping – how it’s possible to exchange one token for another and where to do it.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a blockchain? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 23 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 28, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we’ll explain what blockchains are.

Blockchains are the underlying concept of all cryptocurrencies and tokens. It’s actually as easy to understand as it is useful: Think of a blockchain as an electronic book that records every transaction that ever happened in chronological order, without ever missing one.

Now, each page in that book is called a block, and each block contains several transactions. That is because it is more efficient for computers to crunch multiple transactions in a block rather than one at a time.

So there you have it - a chain of blocks, or pages in a public book, are what makes a blockchain.

And that concept is very useful: An up-to-date copy of a blockchain is saved on millions of computers, that’s why we call blockchains decentralized. It can’t be deleted, and is openly accessible to everyone to see the entire history of transactions. In fact, you can still look up the very first time Bitcoin changed hands.

And next time we’ll talk about what dApps are.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What’s the difference between crypto and credit card payments? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 22 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 27, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

You’ve probably asked yourself - now that you understand crypto, how does “old school” credit card money actually work differently?

Let’s look behind the scenes of credit card payments. When you swipe your card buying something, your card info gets transmitted to the “network” - for example VISA - which in turn communicates with your issuing bank to check that you have money. This happens on closed channels only they have access to. When the payment processes, everyone in that chain takes a fee - usually close to 3%, and the merchant has to pay for that. Credit card companies can charge that, because they have no competition. And they can change their terms whenever they want to: Higher annual fees, or more interest - it’s outside of your control.

You see: While crypto has the potential to remove the middle man, save everyone a bunch of high fees, and create a fair system where you set the rules, Credit Cards - at least in many developed countries are still often the better or easier alternative because they are accepted everywhere and can process thousands of transactions per second, something most blockchains still struggle with.

But that’s also why we are building cryptohunt.it - to help everyone understand crypto, and for crypto to become mainstream.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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The Pros and Cons of “Proof of work” and “Proof of Stake” - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 21 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 26, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today we talk about the pros and cons of ““Proof of work” and “Proof of Stake”

There are a few things that you’d want from a payment method and amongst them are quick processing, and low transaction costs.

Imagine buying a coffee on your break and the line is out the door, because everybody has to wait at the counter for 5 minutes before their credit card transaction goes through. And when it goes through, you end up paying 60 dollars in processing fees for a 3 dollar coffee.

The disadvantage of “proof of work” is exactly that. The network is less likely to handle lots of transactions at the same time, because those math puzzles require time and energy to solve. Currently, Bitcoin can only process 7 transactions per second for example, and likewise paying 50 dollars for one on Ethereum isn’t unusual.

“Proof of work” solves that. No puzzles to solve means just crunching transactions, and computers are really good at that because it is so simple. The only downside here is that you won’t be able to mine coins – meaning validate in this case – if you don’t have a substantial amount in your holding already.

And next time, we’ll talk about these differences between paying with crypto and your good old Credit Card.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is “Proof Of Stake”? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 20 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 25, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Last time, we explained how time-consuming puzzles are one way to solve the problem of cheating on the blockchain. That was called “proof of work”.

Today, we talk about “Proof of stake”, the other way that crypto technologies solve fraud.

Remember: Multiple computers on a blockchain validate one transaction, and if they agree, the transaction gets approved. But that also means: in theory, it would be easy to spin up thousands of fake validators and take over a network.

So how DO you make sure you trust the computers in the network? With “proof of stake” that simply happens by trusting those who actually own a lot of the token itself.

That’s like trusting a veterinarian who has 5 dogs, and not trusting another who doesn’t have any.

This makes cheating very expensive, because you’d have to hold a large portion of tokens to do so. And even if you try, other validators still have to agree with your results of the transaction, making it almost impossible for you to trick the system because they will see that your numbers are different. And to deter you even more, in many blockchains, you may lose some of your tokens if you produce wrong results.

And next time, we talk about the pros and cons of “Proof of work” and “proof of stake”.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is “Proof Of Work”? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 19 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 22, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today we explain how “Proof of Work” works.

First, remember that cryptocurrencies validate transactions by checking each transaction with multiple decentralized computers. And if enough of those all come to the same conclusion, they move on to the next transaction.

This is like asking a room filled with accountants to check your credit card statements. If they all have the same final balance, you trust the result.

But there is one problem - because things are decentralized, anyone can mine a blockchain, or become an accountant. Say I send a bunch of friends into your room and tell them all to cheat on the numbers, then you wouldn’t know which result to trust.

Proof of Work reduces the incentive to do that. Here, the accountants all have to solve the same math puzzle and the quickest of them gets to work on my credit card statements and collect a reward for doing so. But if someone cheated, the results wouldn’t add up, they would have wasted a lot of time on the puzzle, and everybody has to start over without getting a reward. What was a simple cheat before, now becomes so time consuming that I can’t convince my friends to help.

And that’s how proof of work also works in cryptocurrencies, only that the accountants are computers, the puzzle is an algorithm, and the statements are transactions.

And next time, we’ll talk about “Proof of Stake” in more detail, which is the alternative to “proof of work”.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How crypto wallets work and which one is best for you - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 18 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 21, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: How crypto wallets work and which one is best for you.

Although they are called wallets, crypto wallets are more like your bank account. And like that bank account, they allow you to accept transactions from anyone using the same blockchain, meaning you will need a different wallet for Bitcoin than Ethereum and so on.

Let’s understand what these wallets actually do: They are essentially nothing more than what is called a public address and a private key. Think of those as the same as your account number, and your online banking password: People can send money to your address or account number without your permission, but in order for funds to leave your account, you’ll need your private key or password.

Ever heard of those people who lost Bitcoins worth a fortune? You guessed it: They lost their wallet, and in it their private key.

So how do you choose a wallet you can’t lose? There are many options.

You could simply print out your address and private key and put it into a safe location - that’s called a paper wallet, but isn’t very practical for most people and the information is easy to steal if you leave it out in the open.

A variation of the paper wallet is a hardware wallet: A little USB device that saves those keys, but can be locked with a password or fingerprint. But you have to carry that with you wherever you want to use it.

Another option is a little program, such as Metamask, that works directly in your browser. It’s a good middle-ground: Operated by you, but on your computer and ready to use when you need it.

And lastly, the most popular wallet is the online wallet, often provided by an exchange. They will create and operate your wallet on their servers. That’s very convenient, but the risk is that they can get hacked, or even just take your money and run.

And now you know more about wallets: Just make sure you don’t lose them!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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The dark (climate) side of crypto - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 17 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 21, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: Crypto’s impact on climate change.

Blockchain technologies – to the enthusiasts, they promise endless financial freedom and the ability to finally take part in the web economy. But does all that come at the expense of our environment?

Yes, for some blockchains, it really does. Bitcoin is probably the largest offender. Never built with energy efficiency in mind, a single transaction on the largest cryptocurrency uses as much power as 700 thousand Visa card transactions or 55 thousand hours of watching Youtube. And that won’t change, because Bitcoin’s technology is locked in place.

And similarly, an Ethereum transaction is estimated to use a week’s worth of energy for an average US household.

But not all is lost. The problem is that those two examples use “proof of work” - meaning the solving of complex computer problems - as a way to validate transactions. Climate-friendly approaches favor “proof of stake” - meaning that owning a large stake gives validators the power to approve transactions nearly instantly.

Ethereum will actually switch to “proof of stake” in early 2022, likely reducing energy consumption by 99% in the process. Called Ethereum 2, this update is the most important it has ever gone through.

And now you know why crypto can be bad for the planet if done wrong.

And tomorrow, we’ll talk about what a wallet is and how it works.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How to create your own Web 3 product - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 16 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 19, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: Together, we are creating our own fictional Web 3 product

An example teaches more than a thousand words! So – let’s say you decided to create a new social network called BetterBook, and it will be Web 3, decentralized and inclusive. How would that look like?

First, you’ll likely create your own token, which will do two things: It’ll give people an ownership stake in BetterBook, and they also get the right to vote on what you should build or change.

Then you’ll set out to build the initial product and attract a whopping 1000 people in the first few days. Things are going well and you give them tokens for joining early.

Someone in the user community then has the idea to give tokens to everyone who invites new users - clever! They submit their proposal visible for everyone and the token holders can vote to implement it.

A few months later it turns out: That was an amazing idea. BetterBook has millions of users now, all have some sort of ownership in the company, and the token started trading and gaining value. Now users are actually making money by growing the community. People buy BetterBook tokens to become part of setting the direction. Users who don’t agree sell, keeping the power in balance.

And that’s how you would build a Web 3 product - one that works for everyone, not just the company itself and has the potential to outlast Web 2 companies.

And tomorrow: We’ll take a deeper look at the dark side of crypto: Energy Consumption and Environmental Impact.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is the web 3 movement about? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 15 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 18, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: We explain why everyone is excited about Web 3

To understand Web 3, let’s first talk about what got us here: Web 1 and Web 2

Web 1 refers to the early “read-only” web. Sites like Yahoo that served static content to you or businesses like Amazon that moved physical businesses to a web page.

Web 2 was when users like you started interacting with sites, creating content. These were entirely new business concepts, like Facebook.

But there are problems: Companies need to make money for their shareholders and suddenly, you BECOME the product. They own YOUR content, and YOUR data, and can decide what they want to do with it. They have centralized control, even though YOU made them happen.

Web 3 turns that idea on its head: It DEcentralizes ownership and control. Imagine a new kind of Facebook: That project could issue a token instead of shares and users earn it for participating. Also that token gives them the rights to vote on future plans. If things are going well, more people will buy that token, driving the price up. And if they decide it’s going the wrong way, they can just sell, driving the price down.

And because everything is on the blockchain, every decision and vote are public and fully transparent.

We just scratched the surface here, but we hope that gives you a general idea of Web 3 and why people are excited about it.

And tomorrow: We’ll go through an example together for a deeper dive.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why everyone has their own token - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 14 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 15, 2021

014 Why everyone and their grandma have their own token

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: We explain why there are thousands of different coins and tokens.

You have heard of Bitcoin and Ethereum, but there are 8000 others listed on Coinmarketcap alone. Why are they there? Let’s dive into the three reasons.

First – functionality. When Bitcoin couldn’t be changed to do more than just transfer money in a very specific way, Ethereum – the programmable money we created an episode about – came about. And then, building on Ethereum and other networks, many more were created to cater to different use cases.

Second – a token could be used to power a specific community. Imagine a social network that, instead of selling your data to advertisers, rewards you for participating with their own token. It’s like Reddit Karma points, but you can sell them.

Third – greed, scams, and jokes. Sad to say, but look out for those. There is a lot of money in crypto, and that attracts a lot of bad players. Creating a coin is easy, finding a celebrity to hype it too – and often it’s just to make the creator rich.

And now you know why we are building cryptohunt: A place that will help you discover what actual problems projects are solving, and if there are red flags, so you can make up your mind about those 8000 tokens out there.

And tomorrow: We explain the amazing idea behind the Web 3.0 movement.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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The most expensive NFTs sold to this date - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 13 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 14, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: Let’s look at some examples of NFTs that sold for millions and speculate why.

One to make mainstream media news was a digital collage called “Everydays: the First 5000 Days”. Interestingly sold by old-school auction house Christie’s, this piece by digital artist Beeple went for almost 70 million dollars. Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, has since sold a few more NFTs for millions each. He is a well known artist and star in the NFT world, and thus his pieces have become highly collectible. Beeple is bullish on NFTs. He believes artwork will be consumed entirely on screens and NFTs are ideally suited for that.

Now a completely different example: Charity auctions. Edward Snowden’s “Stay Free” sold for about $5.5 million. It is an image showing the text of a court decision ruling that the NSA's mass surveillance violated the law. So what makes that artwork so valuable? People’s willingness to give to a charitable cause. Whistleblower Snowden didn’t pocket the money himself, but gave it to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, of which he is the president.

And - yes, we’ve talked about them before - we can’t end without mentioning those cryptopunks again. With current offers reaching over a 100 million dollars on some, they are one of the most prolific NFT collections ever, attracting speculators who can afford them. Listen to our previous podcast for more details on those.

We hope those examples illustrate a few reasons that NFTs change hands for a lot of money.

And tomorrow we talk about why there are so many different cryptocurrencies and tokens out there instead of just one or two.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Are NFTs actually useful for artists? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 12 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 13, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: Are NFTs just good for speculation, or are they a new way of helping artists?

Last time we discussed how NFTs get so valuable, but we didn’t talk about their real world use. Clearly, you’ve asked yourself: Does this actually solve any problems for artists?

Yes it does! Let’s dive in!

First, selling artwork as NFTs opens up a whole new market for artists who were traditionally constrained to selling locally - through galleries for example, which can also want a big commission. With NFTs, artists can theoretically reach the entire world through websites like OpenSea.

Second, some NFTs also allow artists to make a commission every time their artwork changes hands. Imagine you create a painting, sell it as an NFT for a few bucks, but it takes off - like those cryptopunks. With physical art, you’d never see any money after the initial sale. With NFTs, you could.

Third, NFTs allow artists to sell rights to the same artwork more than once. It’s like Picasso using print techniques to create a series of the same painting – it allows for more people to own and enjoy the same piece, and potentially more revenue for the artist.

And tomorrow we’ll wrap our series on NFTs with a look into the most unique, valuable, and bizarre NFTs that exist out there.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What makes NFTs so valuable? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 11 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 12, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: Why people are spending millions of real dollars on NFTs.

Last episode, we discussed what NFTs are and how they differ from cryptocurrencies. But like us, you have probably also wondered: Why do people spend all that money on them? Let’s dive into the two main reasons: Uniqueness and speculation.

You might have heard of the so-called cryptopunks. They are 10,000 NFTs of the same series of artwork: A pixelated illustration of a person’s head. But while they all share common traits (for example a picture background or hair), the style of that trait can be unique. Orange hair, called “crazy hair” for example, is only worn by 414 of the 10,000. Combine that with the green “Zombie” face, which only exists 88 times, and suddenly that specific cryptopunk is really unique among the others.

It’s just like art in real life. People adjust their price accordingly, comparing NFTs, and giving more unique ones a higher valuation.

But why did someone just offer a staggering amount of 111 million dollars for an alien-headed cryptopunk they can’t do anything special with? Blame speculation. See, that same cryptopunk was sold for $7.5m in March and has since received offers up to 126m. Whoever offers this much money simply hopes to ride the wave and sell even higher.

Cryptopunks are extreme examples of this market, but they show you nicely how NFTs get their value.

And next time: How NFTs can actually be useful for artists.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a NFT? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 10 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 11, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: An easy explanation of NFTs.

To explain NFTs, let’s first remember how cryptocurrencies work: Every Bitcoin has the same value and utility: Meaning I can give you one of my Bitcoins, you give me one of yours in return, and we’d still have the same value. They are completely exchangeable by design. Another word for that is fungible.

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are the opposite. They represent a group of assets that are not all the same. In fact, they are all different and one isn’t just like the other. Let’s take two digital images for example - both unique. They could be traded as an NFT. And just like with Bitcoin, the blockchain would record transfers to verify ownership.

So the difference between cryptocurrencies and NFTs is quite simple: While both can be traded on the blockchain, one represents an exchangeable value like a dollar bill, the other something that is uniquely valuable, like a collectible coin that is valued by its own rareness and unique condition.

If you want an NFT, consider signing up at www.cryptohunt.it where you can win one of 100 when we launch.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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What is a stable coin? - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 9 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 11, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: How crypto becomes usable with stable coins

The biggest problem with making cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin usable as payment methods is that their price fluctuates heavily. Imagine you feel like eating a steak, there is just enough Bitcoin in your wallet, but you fall asleep on the couch. The day after, you walk into the restaurant and all you can get for your bitcoin is a cup of soup.

That’s why stable crypto coins were invented. They are stable relative to a real-world currency. Celo USD is a great example: 1 Celo USD is always very, very close to 1 actual dollar. That means your steak would always have a stable price.

Stable coins actually exist for many currencies and are actively used as payment methods. Celo USD for example allows merchants in sub-saharan Africa to accept payments from anyone, without either party having to have a bank account, which is hard to get.

And on Monday we talk about another blockchain asset type, that is very popular: NFTs.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How to get free Lizard coins into your Metamask - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 8 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 07, 2021

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: Put some Lizard Coin into your Metamask for free

Now that you have Metamask installed, it’s time to learn how to accept Altcoins and hold them there. We created Lizard Coin for fun, which has no monetary value but makes for a really good example to teach you the ropes.

It’s important you understand two concepts: The “network” vs “token” or “asset”. Metamask can be configured to support a large variety of both.

Network refers to the blockchain a specific token is based on. You have likely heard of Ethereum - it has its own network and many tokens build on top of that.

Tokens are that asset on top of the network. For example, Lizard Coin is a token operating on the Avalance network. So you need to add the network to Metamask first, then the token.

Go to Twitter.com/lizard_coin - the first tweet has detailed instructions. Don’t worry if they look technical right now, once you’ve mastered those, you are ready for anything.

And don’t forget to DM our lizard coin twitter with your wallet address so we can give you those sweet coins for free.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why you should know Metamask - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 7 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 06, 2021

007 Why you should know Metamask

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: How you can hold most Tokens in a single wallet and much more

Metamask is a browser extension and mobile app that acts as a wallet for Tokens that are based on Ethereum or compatible protocols. In plain English, that means you can accept, hold, and send almost everything in it.

But what’s even cooler? Many websites, for example Uniswap, directly integrate with it, so as soon as you want to, say, swap a Token, a dialog pops up to connect Metamask. No need to deal with weird addresses.

Set it by going to metamask.io and following the instructions. Make sure you print out your recovery phrase and put it in a safe place - don’t be one of those people who lost their crypto passwords.

If you want to add an altcoin, simply Google its name and metamask and you’ll likely find easy descriptions of how to add support.

Then you could send yourself tokens from your Coinbase account for example, so the wallet is funded. And then the crypto world is your oyster!

And next time we’ll fund your Metamask with some of our own free Lizard Coin, so you learn the basics.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Why you cannot counterfeit Bitcoin - Crypto in Plain English – Episode 6 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 05, 2021

Counterfeit currency has been around for as long as we’ve had money. The Secret Service was famously created to investigate paper money forgery. But with blockchains like Bitcoin, that is no longer necessary. So why is that?

The key is that blockchains validate every transaction in a decentralized way. Every time you send someone else some Bitcoin, they check what your balance was before and what it should be after, and do the same for your recipient. Think of a stadium full of accountants, all checking the same transactions, and only if they are all in agreement on the outcome, it will be marked verified and added to the transaction history of the entire blockchain.

And that’s why it’s impossible to just make up fake account balances and send money you don’t have - your entire history lives on the blockchain and every accountant will see it, validate it, and make sure they are in consensus.

You just learned one of the most important things that make the blockchain a blockchain….

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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Ethereum and why everyone talks about it. Crypto in Plain English – Episode 5 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 04, 2021

Today: Why the world can’t stop talking about Ethereum

Ethereum has recently passed Bitcoin in transaction volume, and that is no surprise to many - it enables a much wider range of uses. But how?

It’s easiest to compare it to Bitcoin. Both are blockchain technologies, but Bitcoin has just one use: A currency you can use to send Bitcoin between wallets. Which is huge in itself, but that’s it.

Ethereum on the other hand is “programmable money”. Insiders call what’s built on top of it dApps - “dee a pee pee as”. What that means is that people can create any type of crypto contract on it, as they can set the terms of how transactions work. Want to make a currency that sends 5% of all transactions to charity? Want to sell the rights to your artwork as an NFT? Want to create an insurance product? All possible.

And that’s why Ethereum is getting all the rage, because it has the potential to disrupt the entire financial system without anyone having central control over the awesome things people will do with it.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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How do I buy altcoins? Crypto in Plain English – Episode 4 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 01, 2021

Today: A guide to buying that obscure altcoin everybody goes crazy about.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Last time we talked about altcoins. Buying those is not always easy, but can be very rewarding. But before we dive in: This is not investment advice and you need to do your own research.

The trick is swapping between tokens. A common method is to buy a well established token on a large exchange with cash, say Ethereum on Coinbase. Then you use a swapping site like uniswap to exchange that into a coin you are interested in.

You also need to make sure you can hold that coin somewhere, a place called a wallet. One of those wallets is called Metamask and is gaining a lot of popularity recently because it supports a wide array of altcoins.

Lastly, make sure you understand that some blockchains like Ethereum have high transaction fees - so you could easily lose $20 just by swapping things. As you start to experiment more, you’ll find the so-called swapping “pairs” that are cheapest.

And next time: We’ll dive much deeper into Metamask.

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What is an Altcoin? Crypto in Plain English – Episode 3 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 01, 2021

Today: What is an Altcoin?

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Altcoins are strictly speaking any coin or token other than Bitcoin. Let’s expand that definition to be more useful though: Altcoins are simply the lesser known coins and tokens.

Some of these are already traded on exchanges like Coinbase, so buying them is as simple as creating an account, connecting your bank, and clicking a button. One such example would be Celo Gold, which is already one of the largest tokens out there, but some may still consider it an altcoin.

But others are much harder to get your hands on. Currently, there are about 7000 of them listed on Coinmarketcap that are traded or swapped somewhere. Some of these have meteoric rises in prices in their early days, but only 100 of them are listed on Coinbase today, so many investors ask themselves: How do I get in on that?

And now that you know what altcoins are, next time we are going to talk about exactly that: how do I buy altcoins?

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What is mining? Crypto in Plain English – Episode 2 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 01, 2021

Today: Mining and why people do it

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

When you mine actual Gold you have to use very complicated and expensive tools and it becomes progressively harder to get more because you exhaust your source. Similar to Gold, Bitcoins also need to be mined, but with very high powered computers that are specialized in solving complicated math problems.

Today, it takes about 86k kWh to produce one bitcoin which is roughly 8x the amount of energy a single family home in the US consumes per year and while these computers are fast, it takes one computer 3 years of calculation for one bitcoin.

That is why the space got very sophisticated with huge bitcoin farms where many computers work in parallel. Energy and hardware cost together result in about $20k per bitcoin - plus miners currently receive 6.25 bitcoins for every new bitcoin mined as a reward.

That’s why at the current bitcoin value of $42k it is still a very profitable business.

And tomorrow we learn what an Altcoin is.

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What is Bitcoin? Crypto in Plain English – Episode 1 - by cryptohunt.it Oct 01, 2021

Cryptohunt.it presents "Crypto in Plain English". Today: Bitcoin.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

The first and today most valuable cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, launched in 2009. Right after the economic recession it was initially created by an anonymous figure or group called Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 but no one knows its real identity. The initial idea was to create a cash alternative to pay each other with digital money without the need for a bank. From day one the supply was set to be a finite number of 21 million bitcoins. Because of that scarcity it is often compared to gold. Bitcoin attracted the crypto-curious investor as a store of value and because its digital nature it can only be stored digitally.

Bitcoin is volatile and the idea to use it as cash failed. Similar to gold, people buy Bitcoin “not because they expect to be able to go to the store and spend it, but because they expect it to hold its value".

Tomorrow we learn how bitcoins are created.

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