While Bitcoin has been making headlines, Ethereum has been making progress. Could the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap be the first to deliver on the promise of the blockchain?

Forget about getting a word in, it was virtually impossible to even get a thought in as delegates from the various tribes bickered noisily at the table, each shouting above the other.

No, this wasn’t the United Nations General Assembly congregating in New York City, or a gathering of tribal leaders of the Maasai on the vast plains of Tanzania.

Instead, this was a gathering of the Saunders clan at a nondescript brownstone in Brooklyn, New York, arguing with each other over whose turn it was to host Thanksgiving Dinner this year — a responsibility that everyone and no one wanted. …

Value investing has had a hard decade, but investors who subscribe to its ideology may want to take a leaf out of Bitcoin’s playbook — “value” isn’t how much something costs, but what it’s worth to you.

“When I first left the commune, I was lost. I didn’t know anything else. You have to understand, it’s not like a religion or anything, it’s all I ever knew.”

Now some thirty-five years later, Douglas Pizzaro, a 54-year-old landscaper looks back on his years in a commune, which he was rescued from.

In the Big Sky country of Montana, you can drive for miles without meeting a single soul.

Yet for the thousand-odd people living in the foothills abutting the Rocky Mountains, they could just as well have been living on another planet.

For the followers of the Reverend James Turnbull, that small patch of America was their entire life. …

A blow-by-blow look on how a Biden presidency could affect the price of the world’s first decentralized currency that could remake the way we look at value, currency and the meaning of money.

In the fifth month of the fourteenth year of the Shang dynasty, Emperor Lu Shou was busy fending off threats to his land coming from the restive western reaches of his vast empire, that stretched from the Mongolian steppes all the way to the eastern coast of China.

But that wasn’t the only challenge facing the Jade Emperor (as he was known), a poor harvest, often seen as a celestial rebuke of the Emperor’s leadership ,as well as the failure to produce a male heir to the throne from his Empress were all complicating matters within the Shang court.

Against this backdrop, the one thing that the Jade Emperor could rely on was the backing of a capable cadre of eunuchs and generals. …

Benford’s Law is often used as a test to see if data has been manipulated, could it also be used to test to see if trading in Bitcoin is as dodgy as it’s made out to be?

By this stage of the interrogation, Tameer Hussain was wondering if he would ever see the light of day again. Staring directly into the eyes of the Director of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, he repeated,

“I’m telling you I didn’t know about the American drone strike, if I had known I would have asked them to call it off.”

The Director gave a half smile and with a slight motion of his head, signaled for Hussain’s interrogators to continue beating him,

“You see, I have a very simple rule. …

Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges are increasingly being targeted for their often flagrant disregard of basic anti-money laundering and know-your-customer requirements. But regulators wanting to target decentralized exchanges may be caught in a bind — how do you regulate what you can’t isolate?

In the spring of 2002, Paul Bladscoe, a U.S. Special Forces soldier was speaking via his interpreter to a local tribal leader in the dusty, sand swept hills of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, trying to get leads on the location of another Al-Qaeda leader.

The U.S. War on Terror was just getting into full swing and Bladscoe was one of dozens of Special Forces teams spread across Afghanistan, from the tundra to the hot and humid lowlands, hunting for Al-Qaeda leaders responsible for the deadly September 11 attacks on U.S. soil, as well as their Taliban hosts.

But what Bladscoe was increasingly realizing was that taking out one Al-Qaeda leader had a limited effect on the organization’s capability to strike back. …

It may be time to rethink what we consider the “risk-free” rate of return when it comes to investments, and that may change how we view decentralized finance as well.

Thomas Billings was the epitome of caution. An accountant by trade, Billings would check four times before crossing the road, use a virtual private network and store his passwords in a safe, changing them periodically every three months.

At work, Billings could be found in the office late into the night, making sure that every ledger entry was accounted for and that every discrepancy was flagged and highlighted.

As accountants go, Billings was both favored and feared for his meticulousness.

And that attention to detail carried across to his daily life, where his modest stucco home was unadorned by any frivolity, his only indulgence being his pet cat, aptly named Integer, a play on its ginger coat. …

1,000% Returns or a Bubble to Zero? If you missed Novum Alpha’s most recent webinar on the DeFi, you can catch it here.

Missed our most recent webinar on #defi?

You can catch in now on YouTube where Patrick Tan, Dennis Hui and Phuong Nguyen uncover what could be the next big #cryptocurrency bubble or an unprecedented opportunity — you decide.

#cryptocurrencies #decentralizedfinance #bitcoin #ether #etherem #btc #eth #blockchain #blockchaintechnology #crypto #coin #cryptotrading #cryptoassets #cbdc #digitalcurrency #coin #cryptotrading #cryptoassets #cbdc #digitalcurrency #centralbanks #centralbank #decentralized #centralbanks #centralbank #decentralized #currency

While Beijing doesn’t judge the way you do business, it does take umbrage if you take issue with the way it conducts its affairs. Could the coronavirus pandemic be powering the strength of a digital yuan more than it would seem?

“It’s great. The working conditions are good and there’s a canteen with free meals, healthcare,” says Akola Abdullah.

In the arid sand-swept landscape that looks like it could have been from the set for Mad Max: Fury Road, Akola and a few hundred other Somali workers, alongside several dozen Chinese supervisors, are working on a pipeline that would bring millions of gallons of crude oil to a deep water port on the Gulf of Aden.

Despite facing one of the most pirate-infested waters in the world, the soon-to-be bustling port of Eyl is being slowly but surely carved into another Chinese deep water port that will secure the Middle Kingdom’s vast energy needs for centuries to come. …