Small update: Twitter Bot

For the time being, I will be writing on BTC+ less than in the past. But I just recently did something interesting. I have created a twitter bot. It posts the price of Nyan coin every hour. I had to learn some JavaScript to do it, but its running on node-red on my raspberry pi. Here is the bot if you are interested. Follow me @NyanPrice 

Thanks Donald, Or maybe not

Amidst election night last night, I noted that the rise of bitcoin was rising. It appears to have gone back down to the $718 or so, compared to $740ish or so when I checked last night. Some analysts predicted a Trump win would cause a price increase for bitcoin. The financial markets were not anticipating a Trump victory, which caused a bit of volatility in stock prices. It seems reasonable to assume that the bitcoin community was also unaware that Donald Trump would win the Presidential election. Thus, the news of Trump’s victory should cause the price to alter, which it did. However, the price may not be staying. Coindesk offers an analysis on the topic here.

In other parts of the world, traditional currency are experiencing interesting effects.

In Zimbabwe, people are lining up at the bank to withdraw their funds. The government is proposing a new currency pegged to the U.S. dollar. The citizens of Zimbabwe are not giving this currency a vote of confidence. I think it's in these situations that bitcoin has the potential of thriving (with the exception of its scalability issues, but that is a topic for another day).

Basic Crypto Guide

1. Before you can use any cryptocurrency, you need to pick a wallet to use.

What type of wallet you want depends on what you want to use it for. If you intend on mining, stop and reconsider because you probably can’t make any money. But if you want to anyways, you need a full wallet. Otherwise, a light wallet is probably all you need.

Turns out this site is better at explaining this than me.

But for other cyrptocurrencies, check out these sites:

Litecoin

Dogecoin

2. Install the wallet and then back it up.

Obviously you need to install the wallet in order to use it.

Once your wallet is installed, the first thing you need to do is backup your wallet. I can’t stress this enough. You NEED to backup your wallet. I have not neglected to backup my wallet before, and I have lost coins. Don’t be like me. Backup your wallet first thing.

There are a few ways to do this. Personally, I use google drive. But you don't want your wallets just sitting in google drive vulnerable to theft. My wallets are encrypted using 7-zip. 7-zip is like Winrar but better and free. When you install a wallet, it will place a .dat or .wallet file on your hard drive. The file extension will be in your roaming folder. For example, the file path for a dogecoin wallet might be something like this: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Dogecoin . The roaming folder is often hidden, so you might need to turn on "show hidden folders" under your system setting for your computer. Grab the .dat or .wallet files you want to back up and put them in 7-zip file and set a password. Personally, I would also save this password using a system like keepass. Lastly, upload your 7-zip to google drive or dropbox.

3. Test the wallet

Now let's test your wallet. Here is how you can try it. You can use a faucet to get small amount of cryptocurrency for free.

View 3 more here

BitTXGenerator - False Bitcoin Transaction Generator

Update, the video I shared was a scam! Hopefully no one actually downloaded it. However, my intention was to show that caution should be exercised when using bitcoin. I will do a write up on this later.



I haven't shared a video in a while, but I just saw this on youtube and thought I would share it. Like have mentioned before, make sure you you get confirmations on your transactions when conducting business in btc!

Not another 2017 price prediction, but sort of.

99 bitcoin, a blog I follow, had some interesting things to say about the price of bitcoin next year. There are a few flaws in the article though. One, it asserts that the halving increases price. This is not necessarily true; the halving is just a reduction to the increase in supply. This potentially could help sustain a higher price, as less fiat needs to be spent on btc in order to keep the exchange rate constant.

I go over this concept in another article, but when bitcoin was, near its peak, $1000 a coin, $25,000 every 10 minutes had to be spent on the 25 new bitcoins being mined in order to maintain this price. With the number of bitcoins being mined reduced by half ( that is 1 2.5 bitcoins every 10 minutes), only $12,500 would need to be spent on new bitcoins to maintain the same $1000 price per bitcoin. This potentially means that a higher price is easier to sustain. But this reduction to the increase in supply, in and of itself, does not cause an increase in price.

In short, I don’t think that the halving means bitcoin will rise in price next year. It is possible it will for other reasons, but I won’t attribute this to the halving.

Days late and dollars short

A few weeks ago I mentioned that one on my loans on BTC pop was in default. Well just the other day I finally received a insurance payout. I invested 0.00386900 but I got  back  .00143100 instead, the biggest issue is the loan was due just a little more than a week after it was created on 07/07/2016. But because it defaulted, I wasn’t paid until the insurance payout came, just a few days ago. So my money was tied up for a long time and generated no interest. So I lost money, and I lost the opportunity to make interest on my money. But this is all part of the risk of lending to people.

The insurance system uses collateral held by the borrower to help guarantee repayment of the loan. This loan was insured using shares of POP, which is stock in BTCpop. There are a few other stocks offered on BTCpop, but in my opinion POP is probably the best. After all, my biggest worry is that BTCpop might go the way of Mt. Gox. If it did, all of the securities would become worthless. But, none POP shares also have the risk that the company itself will go under, in other words, they can become worthless in two different ways.

Well, I guess this Ivan fellow hasn’t given me any money. But at least he gave me a ok story. This is the loan, if you wanted to see it for yourself.

I just tested my link and you need an account to view it. Fortunately, you can sign up free here.

Failed bitcoin reporter

I guess it's a good thing this blog isn't my primary source of income, otherwise I would be in trouble. Here are two stories of me attempting to do some reporting and things not going so well. I decided to try to find Hash Ocean’s old office in San Francisco. On Google, the address is 199 Leidesdorff St, San Francisco, CA 94111. But I went there and didn't find it.

This is where the 100 buildings should be. But there is only a sandwich shop. So I must've done something wrong.

About a year ago on empleopled I saw a picture of a bitcoin ATM. I thought it was cool so I wanted to take a picture of it. I moved to San Jose, where the mall is, and I decided to check it out. But I explored all over the mall and couldn't find it.  I'm moving away again for school, but I guess I will have to wait for another year until I come back to San Jose to try again. I also tried to contact the photographer, but wasn’t able to. Here is a link to the photo.