Coin News

Within minutes of rumors spreading regarding the SEC’s classification of both bitcoin and ether, the entire crypto market breathed a sigh of relief as everyone enjoyed a nice bounce. Prior to the news, bitcoin saw several days when buyers began to disappear from the market. After bottoming in the low $6,100s, the SEC news spread and a modest rally on relatively low volume ensued:

Figure 1: BTC-USD, 1-Hour Candles, Weak Rally

Although the move was sudden, the overall volume behind the move was poor. You can see on the hourly candles that the volume barely made a noticeable blip on the radar. However, one noteworthy thing occurred during the rally: The price managed to break back into the macro trading range it has been bound by for the last 5-6 months:
Figure 2: BTC-USD, Daily Candles, Macro Trading Range

Part of our previous discussion centered around known support levels and their implications. The first line of support was outlined around the $6,450 values. As you can see, the price temporarily dipped below support on high volume and saw a short closing rally which pushed the price back into the TR. Now, at the time of this article, we are testing the support of the $6,450 range again. If we fail to hold support, we will undoubtedly test the support of the February low ($6,000).

Although we are trending down for now, there is an argument to be made from a macro perspective that we are actually witnessing supply absorption within the context of a large scale Accumulation Trading Range (TR). The volume trend suggests that there is potential supply absorption and we are now heading toward a potential shakeout (sometimes referred to as a “spring”):

Figure 3: BTC-USD, Daily Candles, Potential Accumulation TR

The low-volume, meandering price structure over the last several weeks is very representative of what is known as a “creek” within a TR. A creek is basically meant to grind down investors, bore them, and ultimately demoralize them prior to a shakeout. It’s designed to make the investor think “bitcoin is dead,” essentially.

Granted, the aforementioned accumulation TR argument should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt as this still has several tests it must pass before any degree of confidence can be placed on it.

First, we must see how support holds on the test of the $6,450 and $6,000 levels. Then, we must see how the price reacts to new lows in the event that we break to the downside of this TR. And, even then, it is still very difficult to identify a spring while you are in the middle of it.

So, just use caution when attempting to trade this TR because it is fraught with bull traps, bear traps and every other kind of trap you can think of. For now, we need to just play it day by day and look at the cards as they are dealt.

Summary:

1. Rumors of SEC categorization of bitcoin and ether preceded a modest rally on low volume.
   
2. The low volume indicates that sellers are still reluctant to return to the market.
   
3. We are currently in the process of testing important support levels and we need to keep a skeptical eye as monitor the market and gage the reaction to these new support tests.
   

Trading and investing in digital assets like bitcoin and ether is highly speculative and comes with many risks. This analysis is for informational purposes and should not be considered investment advice. Statements and financial information on Bitcoin Magazine and BTC Media related sites do not necessarily reflect the opinion of BTC Media and should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell or hold. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Jeff Garzik first tuned the world into his latest venture in the fall of 2017. The Bloq co-founder unveiled Metronome (MET), a cryptocurrency he founded alongside Matthew Roszak, at the Las Vegas Money 20/20 conference in late October, and the project caught the attention of Bloomberg and Fortune at the time.

What makes Metronome interesting is that it promises its users cross-chain portability. It also purports to offer a consistent rate of inflation and “no undue influence from founders after launch.” These three promises — Metronome’s mantra of self-governance, reliability and portability — set lofty expectations for the new company; anyone acquainted with Bitcoin and blockchain technology is likely to watch and see if it can deliver.

Garzik has stated in past interviews that he created Metronome as a new beginning, a project that embodies what he would do differently after building on Bitcoin for a number of years. Metronome’s differences seem to suggest that the search for hyper-decentralization was Garzik’s touchstone for starting over. Imagine a coin being so intrinsically opposed to centralization, for instance, that it isn’t beholden to a single blockchain.

Of course, as an ERC20 token, it is fundamentally tied to Ethereum; but the team claims that via smart contracts, users can swap the coin from chain to chain. From the get-go, this transferability will only be open to Ethereum Classic, Rootstock and QTUM. From there, it will be up to community coders to free up avenues to other chains. Keeping with the team’s commitment to zero-to-no influence, Metronome will rely on the volunteer work of disparate developers to expand its offerings and improve its protocol.

As for the rest, there’s little about the coin that speaks to convention. Instead of launching an initial coin offering (ICO), the project is holding a week-long descending-price auction. Unlike the more popular English-style auction, in a descending-price auction, price action descends as the auction progresses. For Metronome’s, the price of 1 MET will start at 2 ether (ETH) and decrease each minute until all of the auction’s 8,000,000 MET are sold or the sale ends.

Since the coin doesn’t have — or, in the future, will separate from — a native chain, it offers no mining rewards. To circulate supply, then, Metronome will feature daily descending-price auctions after its initial token sale. According to the project’s FAQ, “MET is added to MET’s Daily Supply Lots (‘DSL’) every 24 hours, at the rate that is the greater of (i) 2,880 MET per day, or (ii) an annual rate equal to 2.0000%.”

Besides the MET to be sold in the initial and daily auctions, 20 percent will be allocated to what the project calls “authors” — its team and advisors. Of these coins, 25 percent will be available immediately upon release, while the other 75 percent will be unlocked incrementally throughout a 12-quarter period.

Smart contracts control coin supply and issuance, as well as coin migration between chains, and the team has pledged to keep its hands free from directing development or swaying governance. “After its launch,” one Metronome FAQ answer reads, “authors will have no more control over MET than any other member of the MET community.”

We had the opportunity to interview Jeff Garzik to learn more about his latest project.

Bitcoin Magazine: The first thing that stands out is the cross-blockchain portability. Namely, how will this be accomplished, and does it really mean that I’ll be able to swap my MET from Ethereum’s chain to, say, QTUM’s or Stellar’s?

Jeff Garzik: Exporting one’s MET to another blockchain is a process where the owner chooses a target blockchain when initiating the export, and then receives a Merkle root receipt proving they have the MET that they are exporting. The process “burns” or destroys the MET on Blockchain A, and when the owner provides that receipt to the contracts on Blockchain B, they will have the same amount of MET minted for them on that blockchain. The burning of Blockchain A’s MET is to ensure that global supply remains constant.

So, we are careful to not describe it as a “swap,” per se, because it’s actually the opposite of a swap — the asset itself is moving, just as if you were moving gold from one safe to another.

BM: Metronome’s FAQ states, “As the community continues developing MET, it may be compatible with even more blockchains.” Does this mean that community developers will be able to build on the protocol to make it interoperable with other chains?

JG: Regarding ongoing development, Metronome is completely open source, and there is no foundation deciding its trajectory — that responsibility is with the community. Consider Bitcoin: there was no “foundation” in the beginning. Similarly, we don’t want to create enshrined leaders of Metronome, which is what a foundation does. Creating a Metronome author-run foundation at the outset bakes in community dependence on that foundation, which is a centralizing force we wish to avoid.

The community can choose a chain they wish to develop compatibility for and work toward that. In the very near term, you’ll be able to transfer from the Ethereum chain to Ethereum Classic, QTUM or another chain using the Ethereum Virtual Machine. From there? Time will tell.

BM: Is coin migration done automatically through the smart contract? Or does some miner/intermediary manually execute this function for a user?

JG: The answer is key to governance. The user holds and controls that “receipt” received when MET is exported from one blockchain. The user chooses when to export/import and must manually initiate that action.

BM: How is the team ensuring that Metronome’s smart contracts and wallets are going to be stable? There have been so many hacks of wallets and bugs in contracts, especially with ERC20 tokens and Ethereum-based smart contracts.

JG: As to the stability of Metronome’s contracts, they have been rigorously reviewed by four independent auditors. The team has gone the extra mile to ensure that those contracts will be as rock-solid as humanly possible at launch. As to the wallet, being standards-compliant with ERC20 of course means that you inherit all of that standard’s characteristics — mostly favorable in terms of compatibility and interoperability — as well as its limitations and those of the cryptocurrency category in general.

BM: Where did the idea for Metronome come from? What compelled you and Matthew Roszak to migrate to new projects from your current projects?

JG: Two answers: first, I have been in the cryptocurrency space for a long time as one of the first to start contributing to Bitcoin. The ensuing years have given me enough perspective to ask, “Knowing what I now know about cryptocurrencies and how the communities around them operate, how would I redesign a cryptocurrency from scratch that would be enduring and satisfy the most use cases?” With Metronome, we have built a cryptocurrency intended to serve as a store of value, method of exchange, machine-to-machine payment medium and other applications.

The second answer, though, is a bit more philosophical. I’m a big fan of ideas like the Long Now Foundation, which aims to encourage civilizations to think in terms of generational scale rather than months, quarters and years. That kind of spirit inspired the cross-blockchain idea. For a currency to be truly multi-generational in scale, it cannot be tied to a single, native ledger.

BM: Governance and reliability are key to the project, it seems. How will Metronome’s governance protect itself from the control of its authors/founding members?

JG: Once launched, Metronome is completely autonomous. There is no foundation where the proceeds from auctions are hidden away for founders, and there is no centralized group defining Metronome post-launch. Even if the founders wanted to manipulate and control Metronome (we don’t), we simply would not be able to.

Additionally, by rewarding the founding team with tokens (rather than proceeds) and slowly disbursing them according to a mechanical rule, we assure the community that the founding team is properly motivated in Metronome’s early years.

BM: For issuance, what will it do differently to ensure a steady, unmanipulated inflation rate?

JG: Metronome’s issuance is locked in at launch, and any new contracts must accept the issuance logic. (The rate is the greater of 2,880 MET per day or whatever amount necessary to achieve a steady 2 percent annual rate.) Issuance is based on time, not on hash or staking power, since both are subject to fluctuations that create variability over time for circulating supply.

BM: It seems as if Metronome’s modus operandi is its commitment to community control. Is Metronome trying to “fix” decentralization and reintroduce it into a space that continues to grapple with centralizing forces?

JG: Greater decentralization is something we have been fixated on since we started this journey in spring of 2017. The current cryptocurrency landscape (especially when considering new cryptocurrencies) is not all that decentralized. Small groups of developers and foundations largely define the course, scope and goals of a cryptocurrency.

Metronome is looking to return to the original promises of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin, where updates and goals are community driven without too much customary deference to a small group. Metronome does this through a unique take on community governance through self-governance.

BM: In a Medium post, Metronome’s team says that the coin is “being built to last.” What features do you think make this a coin for the long run?

JG: We believe that every aspect of Metronome makes it more durable. Self-governance allows the community to define and build Metronome, not a far-off foundation. A reliable and a highly predictable issuance allows owners and purchasers to calculate supply at any point in the future with high confidence. Portability allows Metronome owners to move their MET to any compatible blockchain for whatever reason they see fit, rather than locking themselves into a set of rules and chain permanence. These characteristics make Metronome both flexible and resilient — two necessary attributes for the long haul.

In sum: we are introducing a wholly new concept — a token that is not tied to a blockchain. Other tokens are tied to a single network, a single technology and a single blockchain. Metronome is something new. We’re very proud of the results and are looking forward to seeing where the crypto and fintech ecosystem takes it.  

Jeff Garzik first tuned the world into his latest venture in the fall of 2017. The Bloq co-founder unveiled Metronome (MET), a cryptocurrency he founded alongside Matthew Roszak, at the Las Vegas Money 20/20 conference in late October, and the project caught the attention of Bloomberg and Fortune at the time.

What makes Metronome interesting is that it promises its users cross-chain portability. It also purports to offer a consistent rate of inflation and “no undue influence from founders after launch.” These three promises — Metronome’s mantra of self-governance, reliability and portability — set lofty expectations for the new company; anyone acquainted with Bitcoin and blockchain technology is likely to watch and see if it can deliver.

Garzik has stated in past interviews that he created Metronome as a new beginning, a project that embodies what he would do differently after building on Bitcoin for a number of years. Metronome’s differences seem to suggest that the search for hyper-decentralization was Garzik’s touchstone for starting over. Imagine a coin being so intrinsically opposed to centralization, for instance, that it isn’t beholden to a single blockchain.

Of course, as an ERC20 token, it is fundamentally tied to Ethereum; but the team claims that via smart contracts, users can swap the coin from chain to chain. From the get-go, this transferability will only be open to Ethereum Classic, Rootstock and QTUM. From there, it will be up to community coders to free up avenues to other chains. Keeping with the team’s commitment to zero-to-no influence, Metronome will rely on the volunteer work of disparate developers to expand its offerings and improve its protocol.

As for the rest, there’s little about the coin that speaks to convention. Instead of launching an initial coin offering (ICO), the project is holding a week-long descending-price auction. Unlike the more popular English-style auction, in a descending-price auction, price action descends as the auction progresses. For Metronome’s, the price of 1 MET will start at 2 ether (ETH) and decrease each minute until all of the auction’s 8,000,000 MET are sold or the sale ends.

Since the coin doesn’t have — or, in the future, will separate from — a native chain, it offers no mining rewards. To circulate supply, then, Metronome will feature daily descending-price auctions after its initial token sale. According to the project’s FAQ, “MET is added to MET’s Daily Supply Lots (‘DSL’) every 24 hours, at the rate that is the greater of (i) 2,880 MET per day, or (ii) an annual rate equal to 2.0000%.”

Besides the MET to be sold in the initial and daily auctions, 20 percent will be allocated to what the project calls “authors” — its team and advisors. Of these coins, 25 percent will be available immediately upon release, while the other 75 percent will be unlocked incrementally throughout a 12-quarter period.

Smart contracts control coin supply and issuance, as well as coin migration between chains, and the team has pledged to keep its hands free from directing development or swaying governance. “After its launch,” one Metronome FAQ answer reads, “authors will have no more control over MET than any other member of the MET community.”

We had the opportunity to interview Jeff Garzik to learn more about his latest project.

Bitcoin Magazine: The first thing that stands out is the cross-blockchain portability. Namely, how will this be accomplished, and does it really mean that I’ll be able to swap my MET from Ethereum’s chain to, say, QTUM’s or Stellar’s?

Jeff Garzik: Exporting one’s MET to another blockchain is a process where the owner chooses a target blockchain when initiating the export, and then receives a Merkle root receipt proving they have the MET that they are exporting. The process “burns” or destroys the MET on Blockchain A, and when the owner provides that receipt to the contracts on Blockchain B, they will have the same amount of MET minted for them on that blockchain. The burning of Blockchain A’s MET is to ensure that global supply remains constant.

So, we are careful to not describe it as a “swap,” per se, because it’s actually the opposite of a swap — the asset itself is moving, just as if you were moving gold from one safe to another.

BM: Metronome’s FAQ states, “As the community continues developing MET, it may be compatible with even more blockchains.” Does this mean that community developers will be able to build on the protocol to make it interoperable with other chains?

JG: Regarding ongoing development, Metronome is completely open source, and there is no foundation deciding its trajectory — that responsibility is with the community. Consider Bitcoin: there was no “foundation” in the beginning. Similarly, we don’t want to create enshrined leaders of Metronome, which is what a foundation does. Creating a Metronome author-run foundation at the outset bakes in community dependence on that foundation, which is a centralizing force we wish to avoid.

The community can choose a chain they wish to develop compatibility for and work toward that. In the very near term, you’ll be able to transfer from the Ethereum chain to Ethereum Classic, QTUM or another chain using the Ethereum Virtual Machine. From there? Time will tell.

BM: Is coin migration done automatically through the smart contract? Or does some miner/intermediary manually execute this function for a user?

JG: The answer is key to governance. The user holds and controls that “receipt” received when MET is exported from one blockchain. The user chooses when to export/import and must manually initiate that action.

BM: How is the team ensuring that Metronome’s smart contracts and wallets are going to be stable? There have been so many hacks of wallets and bugs in contracts, especially with ERC20 tokens and Ethereum-based smart contracts.

JG: As to the stability of Metronome’s contracts, they have been rigorously reviewed by four independent auditors. The team has gone the extra mile to ensure that those contracts will be as rock-solid as humanly possible at launch. As to the wallet, being standards-compliant with ERC20 of course means that you inherit all of that standard’s characteristics — mostly favorable in terms of compatibility and interoperability — as well as its limitations and those of the cryptocurrency category in general.

BM: Where did the idea for Metronome come from? What compelled you and Matthew Roszak to migrate to new projects from your current projects?

JG: Two answers: first, I have been in the cryptocurrency space for a long time as one of the first to start contributing to Bitcoin. The ensuing years have given me enough perspective to ask, “Knowing what I now know about cryptocurrencies and how the communities around them operate, how would I redesign a cryptocurrency from scratch that would be enduring and satisfy the most use cases?” With Metronome, we have built a cryptocurrency intended to serve as a store of value, method of exchange, machine-to-machine payment medium and other applications.

The second answer, though, is a bit more philosophical. I’m a big fan of ideas like the Long Now Foundation, which aims to encourage civilizations to think in terms of generational scale rather than months, quarters and years. That kind of spirit inspired the cross-blockchain idea. For a currency to be truly multi-generational in scale, it cannot be tied to a single, native ledger.

BM: Governance and reliability are key to the project, it seems. How will Metronome’s governance protect itself from the control of its authors/founding members?

JG: Once launched, Metronome is completely autonomous. There is no foundation where the proceeds from auctions are hidden away for founders, and there is no centralized group defining Metronome post-launch. Even if the founders wanted to manipulate and control Metronome (we don’t), we simply would not be able to.

Additionally, by rewarding the founding team with tokens (rather than proceeds) and slowly disbursing them according to a mechanical rule, we assure the community that the founding team is properly motivated in Metronome’s early years.

BM: For issuance, what will it do differently to ensure a steady, unmanipulated inflation rate?

JG: Metronome’s issuance is locked in at launch, and any new contracts must accept the issuance logic. (The rate is the greater of 2,880 MET per day or whatever amount necessary to achieve a steady 2 percent annual rate.) Issuance is based on time, not on hash or staking power, since both are subject to fluctuations that create variability over time for circulating supply.

BM: It seems as if Metronome’s modus operandi is its commitment to community control. Is Metronome trying to “fix” decentralization and reintroduce it into a space that continues to grapple with centralizing forces?

JG: Greater decentralization is something we have been fixated on since we started this journey in spring of 2017. The current cryptocurrency landscape (especially when considering new cryptocurrencies) is not all that decentralized. Small groups of developers and foundations largely define the course, scope and goals of a cryptocurrency.

Metronome is looking to return to the original promises of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin, where updates and goals are community driven without too much customary deference to a small group. Metronome does this through a unique take on community governance through self-governance.

BM: In a Medium post, Metronome’s team says that the coin is “being built to last.” What features do you think make this a coin for the long run?

JG: We believe that every aspect of Metronome makes it more durable. Self-governance allows the community to define and build Metronome, not a far-off foundation. A reliable and a highly predictable issuance allows owners and purchasers to calculate supply at any point in the future with high confidence. Portability allows Metronome owners to move their MET to any compatible blockchain for whatever reason they see fit, rather than locking themselves into a set of rules and chain permanence. These characteristics make Metronome both flexible and resilient — two necessary attributes for the long haul.

In sum: we are introducing a wholly new concept — a token that is not tied to a blockchain. Other tokens are tied to a single network, a single technology and a single blockchain. Metronome is something new. We’re very proud of the results and are looking forward to seeing where the crypto and fintech ecosystem takes it.  

For many, the experience of adding crypto coins to their financial portfolios has proven to be the thrill of a lifetime. As a new type of holding with a unique set of tools and rules, cryptocurrency is wealth with its own wow factor.

But at some point, the giddiness of fiscal discovery should be followed by a sobering reality: life is short. While established roadmaps have long existed for the orderly passing on of most worldly properties, titles, debts, rights and obligations upon a person’s death, the same can’t be said for cryptoassets.

Think ahead to the days right after your last days on earth. How qualified is your will’s executor to manage your balance sheet of bitcoin, ether, Ripple, ZenCash and Ada? Are your loved ones ready to receive your private keys and open your hardware wallet?

Looking Ahead

A recent episode of The Tatiana Show podcast tackled this inconvenient question when co-hosts Tatiana Moroz and Joshua Scigala interviewed Pamela Morgan, Esq., an attorney/educator/entrepreneur/author who’s been working exclusively with Bitcoin and open blockchains since 2014. The impetus for the appearance was the publication of her new book, Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning: A Simple Guide for Owners.

As is the case with most how-to tomes, the inspiration for Morgan’s came from a real-world problem she kept encountering. “I started asking annoying lawyer questions,” Morgan says of her cryptocurrency-holding clients. “Like, ‘If you have a bunch of cryptoassets, can your family access them?’ If you have people who depend on you financially, if you want to have other people in your life, or charities or political causes you like to support, to be able to take advantage of your bitcoin or your other cryptoassets, you have to do something. If you do nothing, [it’s] pretty sure that your assets will not go where you want them to go, if they end up anywhere at all.”

You Can Be SURE

One of the cores to this blueprint for bitcoin-beyond-the-grave is executing what Morgan calls a SURE analysis, which stands for Security, Usability, Resilience and Efficiency.

“Obviously we want your plan to be secure first,” she notes, “but not security at the expense of all of the other things there, because your plan has to be usable, and not by you. We have all this knowledge of cryptocurrency, we know how we’re holding our keys, and so there are these underlying assumptions. We don’t realize that people don’t have the same knowledge that we do.

“So when people try to write it down for their heirs it becomes gibberish,” she continues, “because they don’t know what a private key is. They don’t know what a hardware wallet is — they don’t even know how to plug it in. So the worst case scenario is what do they do? They don’t just sit there. They go to the local Meetup group, Reddit, Facebook, and who’s there to help them? Who’s the greeting committee then?”

One can only imagine the trolls who are already hard at work, cooking up a sinister new industry built on stealing from confused beneficiaries. “People are not going to say, ‘Yes! My loved one is gone, now is the time for me to learn all about bitcoin,’” says Morgan.

It’s an eye-opening point. Currently, cryptocurrency is not like the vast majority of inherited assets for which time-honored legal expertise abounds. Although that general knowledge gap may someday close, today’s reality is that cryptoasset holders need a specific plan to ensure their beneficiaries are sufficiently educated on at least the bare mechanics of those holdings. Beyond that, it’s their additional responsibility to connect them to trusted people and organizations that will help them, not hijack their inheritance.

Get It Together — Together

Morgan suggests that the aforementioned security audit can be undertaken by the will’s creator and a trusted significant other, such as a spouse, side-by-side with that person actually writing the letter of intent for them.

“That way they’re guaranteed they know how to access everything,” she says. “They’re kind of creating this project together.”

As Moroz points out at the podcast’s end, “You never know when it’s time to go.” Unless your own personal deal with the Devil has a precise expiration date, that’s a simple truth to act on immediately. Having cryptoassets requires heretofore unprecedented estate planning — handle it any other way, and that high-tech portfolio is just child’s play.

For many, the experience of adding crypto coins to their financial portfolios has proven to be the thrill of a lifetime. As a new type of holding with a unique set of tools and rules, cryptocurrency is wealth with its own wow factor.

But at some point, the giddiness of fiscal discovery should be followed by a sobering reality: life is short. While established roadmaps have long existed for the orderly passing on of most worldly properties, titles, debts, rights and obligations upon a person’s death, the same can’t be said for cryptoassets.

Think ahead to the days right after your last days on earth. How qualified is your will’s executor to manage your balance sheet of bitcoin, ether, Ripple, ZenCash and Ada? Are your loved ones ready to receive your private keys and open your hardware wallet?

Looking Ahead

A recent episode of The Tatiana Show podcast tackled this inconvenient question when co-hosts Tatiana Moroz and Joshua Scigala interviewed Pamela Morgan, Esq., an attorney/educator/entrepreneur/author who’s been working exclusively with Bitcoin and open blockchains since 2014. The impetus for the appearance was the publication of her new book, Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning: A Simple Guide for Owners.

As is the case with most how-to tomes, the inspiration for Morgan’s came from a real-world problem she kept encountering. “I started asking annoying lawyer questions,” Morgan says of her cryptocurrency-holding clients. “Like, ‘If you have a bunch of cryptoassets, can your family access them?’ If you have people who depend on you financially, if you want to have other people in your life, or charities or political causes you like to support, to be able to take advantage of your bitcoin or your other cryptoassets, you have to do something. If you do nothing, [it’s] pretty sure that your assets will not go where you want them to go, if they end up anywhere at all.”

You Can Be SURE

One of the cores to this blueprint for bitcoin-beyond-the-grave is executing what Morgan calls a SURE analysis, which stands for Security, Usability, Resilience and Efficiency.

“Obviously we want your plan to be secure first,” she notes, “but not security at the expense of all of the other things there, because your plan has to be usable, and not by you. We have all this knowledge of cryptocurrency, we know how we’re holding our keys, and so there are these underlying assumptions. We don’t realize that people don’t have the same knowledge that we do.

“So when people try to write it down for their heirs it becomes gibberish,” she continues, “because they don’t know what a private key is. They don’t know what a hardware wallet is — they don’t even know how to plug it in. So the worst case scenario is what do they do? They don’t just sit there. They go to the local Meetup group, Reddit, Facebook, and who’s there to help them? Who’s the greeting committee then?”

One can only imagine the trolls who are already hard at work, cooking up a sinister new industry built on stealing from confused beneficiaries. “People are not going to say, ‘Yes! My loved one is gone, now is the time for me to learn all about bitcoin,’” says Morgan.

It’s an eye-opening point. Currently, cryptocurrency is not like the vast majority of inherited assets for which time-honored legal expertise abounds. Although that general knowledge gap may someday close, today’s reality is that cryptoasset holders need a specific plan to ensure their beneficiaries are sufficiently educated on at least the bare mechanics of those holdings. Beyond that, it’s their additional responsibility to connect them to trusted people and organizations that will help them, not hijack their inheritance.

Get It Together — Together

Morgan suggests that the aforementioned security audit can be undertaken by the will’s creator and a trusted significant other, such as a spouse, side-by-side with that person actually writing the letter of intent for them.

“That way they’re guaranteed they know how to access everything,” she says. “They’re kind of creating this project together.”

As Moroz points out at the podcast’s end, “You never know when it’s time to go.” Unless your own personal deal with the Devil has a precise expiration date, that’s a simple truth to act on immediately. Having cryptoassets requires heretofore unprecedented estate planning — handle it any other way, and that high-tech portfolio is just child’s play.

The recent announcement that Bittrex will allow investors to buy digital coins with the U.S. dollar is the latest in a string of crypto trading trends to move West from Asia. With Japan and Korea among the first to facilitate an open and active trading ecosystem with fiat pairing, it’s clear that the Asian region is a nexus for global crypto trends.

In a part of the world where trading volume dominates and several countries have taken an “innovation first, regulation second” approach to crypto industry advancement, the impact of the region on the global crypto market — good and bad — is one that is often underestimated. Indeed, while Bittrex is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, currently sitting at 20th by coin market capitalization with a daily trading volume of $85 million, Asia is in fact home to nine of the top 10 exchanges, with a combined daily trading volume of more than $5 billion. Of these exchanges, two offer fiat pairing.

Increased fiat pairing is an obvious cause for celebration among crypto traders, but what about the impact of widespread implementation on the global crypto economy? The growth of fiat pairing could, in fact, have far-reaching implications beyond increased trading volume and opening up the industry to new, mainstream customers who find first generation trading too confusing and time-consuming.

The move could also mean a more seamless integration with the mainstream financial market, paving the way for new financial instruments to be created and made available to consumers. This could also incentivize more financial institutions to enter the market, leading to better transparency, reliability, and financial education and inclusion.

While Asia’s high trading volume alone — with Japan dominating bitcoin trading and Korea driving the altcoin market — makes the global crypto community stand up and take note, fiat pairing is just one of the many ways the region can be considered a global trendsetter.

Faced with regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. and parts of Europe, the blockchain industry has taken solace in Asia’s open-mindedness to technological advancement, despite the region’s latest round of judicial confusion in South Korea. Government agencies, particularly in Japan, have fostered a more liberal, business-friendly approach to test out new initiatives, incentivizing and encouraging self-policing but also allowing a more relaxed environment for ongoing education and a better understanding of this infant industry.

Even with China’s blanket ban and misconception about trading regulations in South Korea, the market itself continues to flourish. Regionally, the focus has always been on targeting the best developers in each country to propel technological advancement, regardless of the latest bumps in the road from the regulatory side on trading. Moreover, Asian markets face similar barriers for growth as the U.S. market: Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering (KYC/AML) processes, taxation and a lack of clear legislation. However, the region’s many champions of blockchain and distributed ledger technology continue to work toward making its potential to transform businesses and improve quality of life a reality.

Lessons learned from Asia are important to acknowledge. These lessons help to assess global market movements and give us glimpses of what might be coming next. Another trend that may make its way from Asia to the U.S. and other Western markets is an increase in retail investors.

Historically, the Asian stock market has been driven by this particular group of traders, while the U.S. market is almost entirely driven by institutions. The U.S. is seeing more institutions enter and dominate the crypto market; meanwhile, the increase in fiat pairing and eventual regulatory clarity, combined with increased education and new technological developments that will make trading easier and bring blockchains into our daily lives, all promise to gradually facilitate opportunities for retail investors to follow Asia and become a force to be reckoned with in the U.S. and Western crypto market.

This is a guest post by Zhuling Chen, co-founder of aelf. Views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

The recent announcement that Bittrex will allow investors to buy digital coins with the U.S. dollar is the latest in a string of crypto trading trends to move West from Asia. With Japan and Korea among the first to facilitate an open and active trading ecosystem with fiat pairing, it’s clear that the Asian region is a nexus for global crypto trends.

In a part of the world where trading volume dominates and several countries have taken an “innovation first, regulation second” approach to crypto industry advancement, the impact of the region on the global crypto market — good and bad — is one that is often underestimated. Indeed, while Bittrex is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, currently sitting at 20th by coin market capitalization with a daily trading volume of $85 million, Asia is in fact home to nine of the top 10 exchanges, with a combined daily trading volume of more than $5 billion. Of these exchanges, two offer fiat pairing.

Increased fiat pairing is an obvious cause for celebration among crypto traders, but what about the impact of widespread implementation on the global crypto economy? The growth of fiat pairing could, in fact, have far-reaching implications beyond increased trading volume and opening up the industry to new, mainstream customers who find first generation trading too confusing and time-consuming.

The move could also mean a more seamless integration with the mainstream financial market, paving the way for new financial instruments to be created and made available to consumers. This could also incentivize more financial institutions to enter the market, leading to better transparency, reliability, and financial education and inclusion.

While Asia’s high trading volume alone — with Japan dominating bitcoin trading and Korea driving the altcoin market — makes the global crypto community stand up and take note, fiat pairing is just one of the many ways the region can be considered a global trendsetter.

Faced with regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. and parts of Europe, the blockchain industry has taken solace in Asia’s open-mindedness to technological advancement, despite the region’s latest round of judicial confusion in South Korea. Government agencies, particularly in Japan, have fostered a more liberal, business-friendly approach to test out new initiatives, incentivizing and encouraging self-policing but also allowing a more relaxed environment for ongoing education and a better understanding of this infant industry.

Even with China’s blanket ban and misconception about trading regulations in South Korea, the market itself continues to flourish. Regionally, the focus has always been on targeting the best developers in each country to propel technological advancement, regardless of the latest bumps in the road from the regulatory side on trading. Moreover, Asian markets face similar barriers for growth as the U.S. market: Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering (KYC/AML) processes, taxation and a lack of clear legislation. However, the region’s many champions of blockchain and distributed ledger technology continue to work toward making its potential to transform businesses and improve quality of life a reality.

Lessons learned from Asia are important to acknowledge. These lessons help to assess global market movements and give us glimpses of what might be coming next. Another trend that may make its way from Asia to the U.S. and other Western markets is an increase in retail investors.

Historically, the Asian stock market has been driven by this particular group of traders, while the U.S. market is almost entirely driven by institutions. The U.S. is seeing more institutions enter and dominate the crypto market; meanwhile, the increase in fiat pairing and eventual regulatory clarity, combined with increased education and new technological developments that will make trading easier and bring blockchains into our daily lives, all promise to gradually facilitate opportunities for retail investors to follow Asia and become a force to be reckoned with in the U.S. and Western crypto market.

This is a guest post by Zhuling Chen, co-founder of aelf. Views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

According to data from EOS Authority, EOS has finally acquired the minimum votes required for its network to go live.

After EOS failed to launch its platform on its projected launch date of June 2, a live-stream vote was called, where users voted “Go” to launch the blockchain network. But while the network got the green light, it couldn’t go live until it was activated with the EOS tokens held by investors.

Things didn’t go as planned as token owners became reluctant to weigh in with the minimum vote required to activate the blockchain. For the EOS blockchain to go live, 15 percent of the total EOS tokens in supply had to be used to elect the network’s 21 EOS block producers.

Votes

Also known as supernodes, block producers operate as part of EOS’s delegated proof of stake (DPoS), where they serve a function similar to Bitcoin miners who secure proof-of-work systems. The candidates for the supernodes include local crypto enthusiasts such as EOS Canada, who is currently leading with just over 42,000,00  token votes at press time, followed by EOS Authority, the entity that started up EOS, in second place with about 39,400,000 votes. Blockchain heavyweight Bitfinex is currently eighth with a bit under 32,000,000 EOS votes, and EOS HuobiPool is in the eleventh spot with just over 30 million token votes.

To vote for the supernodes, token owners have to go through a process of proving ownership, which requires using their private keys.

The most noteworthy voting software is CLEOS, a command-line tool created by Block.one, the creators of EOS. This software requires a lot of programming knowledge, which left non-technical voters with crowdfunded projects like EOS Portal and other desktop tools.

As much as users were eager to activate the mainnet, they were equally nervous that the process might jeopardize their holdings.

EOS’s inability to get the required number of tokens staked led to the mainnet launch being stalled for days. There were also some reports that a general, widespread distrust in third-party software available to owners, coupled with the complexity of the voting process, led to voter apathy.

Vulnerabilities

Despite the success of its ICO, the EOS team has not been able to find a lasting solution to the vulnerabilities that have riddled it from the start. Some weeks back, Chinese internet research firm Qihoo 360 discovered a vulnerability that could be used by hackers to remotely manage codes on nodes and attack any cryptocurrency built on the network.

EOS launched a bug bounty program that rewards developers for discovering security vulnerabilities, with the most significant reward going to Dutch ethical hacker Guido Vranken, who was paid a hefty $120,000 for discovering 11 new vulnerabilities. EOS’s HackerOne profile shows that vulnerabilities are still being discovered.

EOS is currently up by 14.4 percent, trading at $11.32.