Buying Lodging with Crypto

With bitcoin’s price fluctuating so much lately, there has been more cryptocurrency news than normal, which in many ways is a great thing. As Crypto becomes more and more mainstream, more and more vendors start accepting it.

In the earlier days of bitcoin, it could be really hard to spend. Not many sites accepted it and it really was difficult to use as a currency. Well, bitcoin isn’t limited to a single pizza website with mediocre customer service or a few online retailers. Now there are many things you can buy with bitcoin. For example, now you can buy a burger with bitcoin. Or even more exciting, you can buy lodging. That’s right, a place to stay! The site is called Numundo, and you can book lodging and experiences across the world using 6 different cryptocurrencies: including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Monero. Also, some of the experiences don't even cost money. They even have searchable work-trades worldwide. It is all a very interesting platform. Check it out here!

Should I invest in Bitcoin?

As some of you might know, I started a podcast! Well in this episode I talk about bitcoin. Check it out!

"WARNING: The Truth About Bitcoin"

There is so much hype about Bitcoin right now, even non-crypto people are talking about it. Well, here are some interesting thoughts, enjoy!

Bitcoin Gold

I finally decided to deal with some of my  Bitcoin Gold (BTG).

On a few of my exchanges/faucets I have been given some BTG due to the fork in late 2017. It is actually a bit complex. Here is a excerpt

When was Bitcoin Gold created?

Bitcoin Gold forked the Bitcoin blockchain as scheduled after block 491406 (2017-10-24 01:17:35 UTC).

The new Bitcoin Gold blockchain began actively growing at block 491407 (2017-11-12 at 13:34:01 UTC), about two weeks later.

During those two weeks, the community developed and tested the necessary changes to prevent accidental or malicious complications between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Gold (unique addressing and replay protection), as well as the changes necessary for Bitcoin Gold to run on a completely different network of miners (a change of algorithm to restrict ASIC mining and enable GPU mining).

Technically, Bitcoin Gold was created on 2017-10-24 but not usable until 2017-11-12.

Here is the website. But some of the advantages of it is it is Asic proof, “Replay protection”. Replay protection just helps ensure that transactions are sent on the correct blockchain. For example if you wanted to send classic bitcoin, replay protection ensures you don’t also send BTG in that same transaction. (more on it here). Overall, BTG doesn’t see that unique, lots of other coins are asic proof. The only reason it is noteworthy enough for me to write about is because I have some! I will also have to do a post of getting BCH from a software wallet, and possibly one on BTG.

And to do that, I need a new exchange, check them out here

If you are a fan of Cryptocurrency, you may also be libertarian leaning like me. If that is the case, you may be interested in apparel from The Mad Statist, check out this awesome “MAKE TAXATION THEFT AGAIN” shirt out here!

Coinhive closes

As you may know, I have tried numerous ways to monetize my blog and to make money via cryptocurrency. Well, it looks like another of those ways is shutting down. Coinhive was a service that offered proof of work and would pay the site owner in exchange. To summarize shortly, you could install a proof of work check on your website. As site visitors clicked the proof of work, Coinhive would mine cryptocurrency on the computers of visitors and you, the site owner would get the benefit. This had the dual benefit or removing bots and generating some income for you.  It really was an innovative idea and it is sad to see it go.

Here is some of the official blog post.

Blog » Discontinuation of Coinhive

Some of you might have anticipated this, some of you will be surprised. The decision has been made. We will discontinue our service on March 8, 2019. It has been a blast working on this project over the past 18 months, but to be completely honest, it isn’t economically viable anymore.

The drop in hash rate (over 50%) after the last Monero hard fork hit us hard. So did the “crash“ of the cryptocurrency market with the value of XMR depreciating over 85% within a year. This and the announced hard fork and algorithm update of the Monero network on March 9 has lead us to the conclusion that we need to discontinue Coinhive.

Thus, mining will not be operable anymore after March 8, 2019. Your dashboards will still be accessible until April 30, 2019 so you will be able to initiate your payouts if your balance is above the minimum payout threshold.

Thank you all for the great time we had together.

posted on February 26, 2019, the Coinhive Team

As always, I’m running quite a bit behind. I sometimes worry about some of the larger trends in cryptocurrency. That good ideas come and fail and that the golden age of crypto is behind us. I don’t think that is really true, but sometimes I worry about it. I remember some earlier times in Crypto, like when linkslap was around,  which would pay you in doge to evaluate the descriptions of gifs. I hope we see some new methods to generate crypto in the future. I need new material for a new edition of my book!

Also, as you may have noticed, I have added a sign up option on the top of the page. Please consider signing up! If there is enough interest, I may host a giveaway to promote the sign up feature.

If you are a fan of Cryptocurrency, you may also be libertarian leaning like me. If that is the case, you may be interested in apparel from The Mad Statist, check out this awesome “MAKE TAXATION THEFT AGAIN” shirt out here!

Bitcoin Thru the Eye of a Marketer

Whether you bought virtual items in bitcoin on Steam (back when that was a thing) or are looking to become a lord of the Principality of Sealand, you take for granted that when you see that little “B” with vertical pipes going thru it, you are dealing in bitcoin.

Brilliant and Simple Bitcoin

Originally created by Satoshi Nakamoto for an early version of the original Bitcoin client, the modern bitcoin brand is a beautiful example of iconic simplicity and intuitive messaging. Let’s break it down!

Bitcoin by Name: Digital Currency

While other cryptocurrencies self-identify themselves as being on the fringe with other-worldy names like Ethereum, Bitcoin is the natural amalgamation of the words bit (for digital information bits) and coin (for currency). Both are common terms that pair nicely together in an understandable and entirely underwhelming pairing. (And that’s a good thing!)

Why? Because cryptocurrency is scary to society at large, from personal transactions all the way up to high net worth money managers.

It’s erratic. It’s new. The name “bitcoin” gently submits a safe-sounding name into financial experts’ buckets to draw from without emphasizing negative attributes.

Bitcoin, Dollars, and Visual Space

The bitcoin logo manages to join the visual style of other credible currencies (the dollar, yen, euro…) by using a single defining letter with 2 slashes thru it. It is brilliantly simple—and yet, so many other cryptocurrency symbols miss the mark here. (In fact, many look more like tech company logos from 2001.)

See also: What makes for a strong logo design?

The Future of Bitcoin

“Okay,” you might say, “the logo is pretty and the name is catchy. But I didn’t read a blog about bitcoin to get all artsy! Tell me about money!”

You’ve got it. Bitcoin is, in my opinion, the most likely cryptocurrency to survive. It will survive imitators (as an endless line of new cryptos pop up and shut down just as fast), it will survive regulation (as it’s banned in one place and embraced somewhere else). I believe bitcoin will even survive its current plight of massive swings in value.

Mostly, bitcoin is likely to succeed because government will always run major currencies badly and free people will always want a little more freedom. This is good for society and should be encouraged!

* * *

About the Guest Author:

Michael Lovdal

http://www.michaellovdal.com

is a Marketing Pro & Brand Champion from Charlottesville, VA, USA.

Cryptopia and Profitcoins

Well this is kind of old news, but cryptopia is now offline. Like many exchanges before it, it appears to have been hacked and has faced substantial crypto losses. I think I had some bitcoin on there as well. So it is a bit of a shame.

On the plus side, they announced they were stopping support for Nyancoin recently and as a result, I pulled all my nyancoin off of the site. So all my of Nyan is safe at least, which is a big plus.

The moral of the story, though, is if you don’t control your private keys, it is not really your cryptocurrency, it's someone else holding on to it for you.

I will keep you informed as to all developments in this space.

Also, it looks like Facebook is running into some questionable looking ads on its platform. Look at this ad

Looks a little like a scam. But ok, let's dig in first before we judge. It takes us to this site

https://profitcoins.io/

Which claims to be an automated system that will seek crypto arbitrage opportunities on your behalf and execute trades for you. This sounds nice and dandy, but if you really built a platform that could do this, would you share the platform with others and reduce the opportunities you can take advantage of? Or would you keep it to yourself? Probably the later. So if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. There definitely are some ways to make money with Crypto, after all I wrote a whole book on that. But it doesn’t look like this is one of them.

So how about you help me recoup some of my losses and maybe some of yours too. Check out my faucet recommendations here