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+Cryptocurrency,"A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It is a decentralized system for verifying that the parties to a transaction have the money they claim to have, eliminating the need for traditional intermediaries, such as banks, when funds are being transferred between two entities.Individual coin ownership records are stored in a digital ledger, which is a computerized database using strong cryptography to secure transaction records, control the creation of additional coins, and verify the transfer of coin ownership. Despite their name, cryptocurrencies are not considered to be currencies in the traditional sense, and while varying treatments have been applied to them, including classification as commodities, securities, and currencies, cryptocurrencies are generally viewed as a distinct asset class in practice. Some crypto schemes use validators to maintain the cryptocurrency. In a proof-of-stake model, owners put up their tokens as collateral. In return, they get authority over the token in proportion to the amount they stake. Generally, these token stakers get additional ownership in the token over time via network fees, newly minted tokens, or other such reward mechanisms.Cryptocurrency does not exist in physical form (like paper money) and is typically not issued by a central authority. Cryptocurrencies typically use decentralized control as opposed to a central bank digital currency (CBDC). When a cryptocurrency is minted, created prior to issuance, or issued by a single issuer, it is generally considered centralized. When implemented with decentralized control, each cryptocurrency works through distributed ledger technology, typically a blockchain, that serves as a public financial transaction database.The first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin, which was first released as open-source software in 2009. As of June 2023, there were more than 25,000 other cryptocurrencies in the marketplace, of which more than 40 had a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+In 1983, American cryptographer David Chaum conceived of a type of cryptographic electronic money called ecash. Later, in 1995, he implemented it through Digicash, an early form of cryptographic electronic payments. Digicash required user software in order to withdraw notes from a bank and designate specific encrypted keys before it can be sent to a recipient. This allowed the digital currency to be untraceable by a third party.
+In 1996, the National Security Agency published a paper entitled How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash, describing a cryptocurrency system. The paper was first published in an MIT mailing list and later in 1997 in The American Law Review.In 1998, Wei Dai described ""b-money"", an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system. Shortly thereafter, Nick Szabo described bit gold. Like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that would follow it, bit gold (not to be confused with the later gold-based exchange BitGold) was described as an electronic currency system which required users to complete a proof of work function with solutions being cryptographically put together and published.
+In January 2009, Bitcoin was created by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. It used SHA-256, a cryptographic hash function, in its proof-of-work scheme. In April 2011, Namecoin was created as an attempt at forming a decentralized DNS. In October 2011, Litecoin was released which used scrypt as its hash function instead of SHA-256. Peercoin, created in August 2012, used a hybrid of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake.
+
+Cryptocurrency has undergone several periods of growth and retraction, including several bubbles and market crashes, such as in 2011, 2013-2014–15, 2017-2018 and 2021–2023.On 6 August 2014, the UK announced its Treasury had commissioned a study of cryptocurrencies, and what role, if any, they could play in the UK economy. The study was also to report on whether regulation should be considered. Its final report was published in 2018, and it issued a consultation on cryptoassets and stablecoins in January 2021.In June 2021, El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, after the Legislative Assembly had voted 62–22 to pass a bill submitted by President Nayib Bukele classifying the cryptocurrency as such.In August 2021, Cuba followed with Resolution 215 to recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.In September 2021, the government of China, the single largest market for cryptocurrency, declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal. This completed a crackdown on cryptocurrency that had previously banned the operation of intermediaries and miners within China.On 15 September 2022, the world's second largest cryptocurrency at that time, Ethereum transitioned its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in an upgrade process known as ""the Merge"".  According to the Ethereum Founder, the upgrade can cut both Ethereum's energy use and carbon-dioxide emissions by 99.9%.On 11 November 2022, FTX Trading Ltd., a cryptocurrency exchange, which also operated a crypto hedge fund, and had been valued at $18 billion, filed for bankruptcy. The financial impact of the collapse extended beyond the immediate FTX customer base, as reported, while, at a Reuters conference, financial industry executives said that ""regulators must step in to protect crypto investors."" Technology analyst Avivah Litan commented on the cryptocurrency ecosystem that ""everything...needs to improve dramatically in terms of user experience, controls, safety, customer service.""
+
+
+== Formal definition ==
+According to Jan Lansky, a cryptocurrency is a system that meets six conditions:
+The system does not require a central authority; its state is maintained through distributed consensus.
+The system keeps an overview of cryptocurrency units and their ownership.
+The system defines whether new cryptocurrency units can be created. If new cryptocurrency units can be created, the system defines the circumstances of their origin and how to determine the ownership of these new units.
+Ownership of cryptocurrency units can be proved exclusively cryptographically.
+The system allows transactions to be performed in which ownership of the cryptographic units is changed. A transaction statement can only be issued by an entity proving the current ownership of these units.
+If two different instructions for changing the ownership of the same cryptographic units are simultaneously entered, the system performs at most one of them.In March 2018, the word cryptocurrency was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
+
+
+=== Altcoins ===
+
+Tokens, cryptocurrencies, and other digital assets other than Bitcoin are collectively known as alternative cryptocurrencies, typically shortened to ""altcoins"" or ""alt coins"", or disparagingly ""shitcoins"". Paul Vigna of The Wall Street Journal also described altcoins as ""alternative versions of Bitcoin"" given its role as the model protocol for altcoin designers.
+
+ Altcoins often have underlying differences when compared to Bitcoin. For example, Litecoin aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than Bitcoin's 10 minutes, which allows Litecoin to confirm transactions faster than Bitcoin. Another example is Ethereum, which has smart contract functionality that allows decentralized applications to be run on its blockchain. Ethereum was the most used blockchain in 2020, according to Bloomberg News. In 2016, it had the largest ""following"" of any altcoin, according to the New York Times.Significant rallies across altcoin markets are often referred to as an ""altseason"".
+
+
+==== Stablecoins ====
+Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a stable level of purchasing power. Notably, these designs are not foolproof, as a number of stablecoins have crashed or lost their peg. For example, on 11 May 2022, Terra's stablecoin UST fell from $1 to 26 cents. The subsequent failure of Terraform Labs resulted in the loss of nearly $40B invested in the Terra and Luna coins. In September 2022, South Korean prosecutors requested the issuance of an Interpol Red Notice against the company's founder, Do Kwon. In Hong Kong, the expected regulatory framework for stablecoins in 2023/24 is being shaped and includes a few considerations.
+
+
+== Architecture ==
+Cryptocurrency is produced by an entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate which is defined when the system is created and which is publicly stated. In centralized banking and economic systems such as the US Federal Reserve System, corporate boards or governments control the supply of currency. In the case of cryptocurrency, companies or governments cannot produce new units, and have not so far provided backing for other firms, banks or corporate entities which hold asset value measured in it. The underlying technical system upon which cryptocurrencies are based was created by Satoshi Nakamoto.Within a proof-of-work system such as Bitcoin, the safety, integrity and balance of ledgers is maintained by a community of mutually distrustful parties referred to as miners. Miners use their computers to help validate and timestamp transactions, adding them to the ledger in accordance with a particular timestamping scheme. In a proof-of-stake blockchain, transactions are validated by holders of the associated cryptocurrency, sometimes grouped together in stake pools.
+Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually decrease the production of that currency, placing a cap on the total amount of that currency that will ever be in circulation. Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies can be more difficult for seizure by law enforcement.
+
+
+=== Blockchain ===
+
+The validity of each cryptocurrency's coins is provided by a blockchain. A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block, a timestamp and transaction data. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is ""an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way"". For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority.
+Blockchains are secure by design and are an example of a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance. Decentralized consensus has therefore been achieved with a blockchain.
+
+
+=== Nodes ===
+A node is a computer that connects to a cryptocurrency network. The node supports the cryptocurrency's network through either relaying transactions, validation, or hosting a copy of the blockchain. In terms of relaying transactions, each network computer (node) has a copy of the blockchain of the cryptocurrency it supports. When a transaction is made, the node creating the transaction broadcasts details of the transaction using encryption to other nodes throughout the node network so that the transaction (and every other transaction) is known.
+Node owners are either volunteers, those hosted by the organization or body responsible for developing the cryptocurrency blockchain network technology, or those who are enticed to host a node to receive rewards from hosting the node network.
+
+
+==== Timestamping ====
+Cryptocurrencies use various timestamping schemes to ""prove"" the validity of transactions added to the blockchain ledger without the need for a trusted third party.
+The first timestamping scheme invented was the proof-of-work scheme. The most widely used proof-of-work schemes are based on SHA-256 and scrypt.Some other hashing algorithms that are used for proof-of-work include CryptoNote, Blake, SHA-3, and X11.
+Another method is called the proof-of-stake scheme. Proof-of-stake is a method of securing a cryptocurrency network and achieving distributed consensus through requesting users to show ownership of a certain amount of currency. It is different from proof-of-work systems that run difficult hashing algorithms to validate electronic transactions. The scheme is largely dependent on the coin, and there is currently no standard form of it. Some cryptocurrencies use a combined proof-of-work and proof-of-stake scheme.
+
+
+=== Mining ===
+On a blockchain, mining is the validation of transactions. For this effort, successful miners obtain new cryptocurrency as a reward. The reward decreases transaction fees by creating a complementary incentive to contribute to the processing power of the network. The rate of generating hashes, which validate any transaction, has been increased by the use of specialized machines such as FPGAs and ASICs running complex hashing algorithms like SHA-256 and scrypt. This arms race for cheaper-yet-efficient machines has existed since Bitcoin was introduced in 2009. Mining is measured by hash rate typically in TH/s.With more people venturing into the world of virtual currency, generating hashes for validation has become more complex over time, forcing miners to invest increasingly large sums of money to improve computing performance. Consequently, the reward for finding a hash has diminished and often does not justify the investment in equipment and cooling facilities (to mitigate the heat the equipment produces), and the electricity required to run them. Popular regions for mining include those with inexpensive electricity, a cold climate, and jurisdictions with clear and conducive regulations. By July 2019, Bitcoin's electricity consumption was estimated to be approximately 7 gigawatts, around 0.2% of the global total, or equivalent to the energy consumed nationally by Switzerland.Some miners pool resources, sharing their processing power over a network to split the reward equally, according to the amount of work they contributed to the probability of finding a block. A ""share"" is awarded to members of the mining pool who present a valid partial proof-of-work.
+As of February 2018, the Chinese Government has halted trading of virtual currency, banned initial coin offerings and shut down mining. Many Chinese miners have since relocated to Canada and Texas. One company is operating data centers for mining operations at Canadian oil and gas field sites, due to low gas prices. In June 2018, Hydro Quebec proposed to the provincial government to allocate 500 megawatts of power to crypto companies for mining. According to a February 2018 report from Fortune, Iceland has become a haven for cryptocurrency miners in part because of its cheap electricity.In March 2018, the city of Plattsburgh, New York put an 18-month moratorium on all cryptocurrency mining in an effort to preserve natural resources and the ""character and direction"" of the city. In 2021, Kazakhstan became the second-biggest crypto-currency mining country, producing 18.1% of the global exahash rate. The country built a compound containing 50,000 computers near Ekibastuz.
+
+
+==== GPU price rise ====
+An increase in cryptocurrency mining increased the demand for graphics cards (GPU) in 2017. The computing power of GPUs makes them well-suited to generating hashes. Popular favorites of cryptocurrency miners such as Nvidia's GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 graphics cards, as well as AMD's RX 570 and RX 580 GPUs, doubled or tripled in price – or were out of stock. A GTX 1070 Ti which was released at a price of $450 sold for as much as $1,100. Another popular card, the GTX 1060 (6 GB model) was released at an MSRP of $250, and sold for almost $500. RX 570 and RX 580 cards from AMD were out of stock for almost a year. Miners regularly buy up the entire stock of new GPU's as soon as they are available.Nvidia has asked retailers to do what they can when it comes to selling GPUs to gamers instead of miners. Boris Böhles, PR manager for Nvidia in the German region, said: ""Gamers come first for Nvidia.""
+
+
+==== Mining accelerator chips ====
+Numerous companies developed dedicated crypto-mining accelerator chips, capable of price-performance far higher than that of CPU or GPU mining. At one point Intel marketed its own brand of crypto accelerator chip, named Blockscale.
+
+
+=== Wallets ===
+
+A cryptocurrency wallet is a means of storing the public and private ""keys"" (address) or seed which can be used to receive or spend the cryptocurrency. With the private key, it is possible to write in the public ledger, effectively spending the associated cryptocurrency. With the public key, it is possible for others to send currency to the wallet.
+There exist multiple methods of storing keys or seed in a wallet. These methods range from using paper wallets (which are public, private or seed keys written on paper), to using hardware wallets (which are hardware to store your wallet information), to a digital wallet (which is a computer with a software hosting your wallet information), to hosting your wallet using an exchange where cryptocurrency is traded, or by storing your wallet information on a digital medium such as plaintext.
+
+
+=== Anonymity ===
+
+Bitcoin is pseudonymous, rather than anonymous; the cryptocurrency in a wallet is not tied to a person, but rather to one or more specific keys (or ""addresses""). Thereby, Bitcoin owners are not immediately identifiable, but all transactions are publicly available in the blockchain. Still, cryptocurrency exchanges are often required by law to collect the personal information of their users.Some cryptocurrencies, such as Monero, Zerocoin, Zerocash, and CryptoNote, implement additional measures to increase privacy, such as by using zero-knowledge proofs.A recent 2020 study presented different attacks on privacy in cryptocurrencies. The attacks demonstrated how the anonymity techniques are not sufficient safeguards. In order to improve privacy, researchers suggested several different ideas including new cryptographic schemes and mechanisms for hiding the IP address of the source.
+
+
+== Economics ==
+
+Cryptocurrencies are used primarily outside banking and governmental institutions and are exchanged over the Internet.
+
+
+=== Block rewards ===
+Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, offer block rewards incentives for miners. There has been an implicit belief that whether miners are paid by block rewards or transaction fees does not affect the security of the blockchain, but a study suggests that this may not be the case under certain circumstances.The rewards paid to miners increase the supply of the cryptocurrency. By making sure that verifying transactions is a costly business, the integrity of the network can be preserved as long as benevolent nodes control a majority of computing power. The verification algorithm requires a lot of processing power, and thus electricity in order to make verification costly enough to accurately validate public blockchain. Not only do miners have to factor in the costs associated with expensive equipment necessary to stand a chance of solving a hash problem, they further must consider the significant amount of electrical power in search of the solution. Generally, the block rewards outweigh electricity and equipment costs, but this may not always be the case.The current value, not the long-term value, of the cryptocurrency supports the reward scheme to incentivize miners to engage in costly mining activities. In 2018, Bitcoin's design caused a 1.4% welfare loss compared to an efficient cash system, while a cash system with 2% money growth has a minor 0.003% welfare cost. The main source for this inefficiency is the large mining cost, which is estimated to be US$360 million per year. This translates into users being willing to accept a cash system with an inflation rate of 230% before being better off using Bitcoin as a means of payment. However, the efficiency of the Bitcoin system can be significantly improved by optimizing the rate of coin creation and minimizing transaction fees. Another potential improvement is to eliminate inefficient mining activities by changing the consensus protocol altogether.
+
+
+=== Transaction fees ===
+Transaction fees for cryptocurrency depend mainly on the supply of network capacity at the time, versus the demand from the currency holder for a faster transaction. The currency holder can choose a specific transaction fee, while network entities process transactions in order of highest offered fee to lowest. Cryptocurrency exchanges can simplify the process for currency holders by offering priority alternatives and thereby determine which fee will likely cause the transaction to be processed in the requested time.For Ethereum, transaction fees differ by computational complexity, bandwidth use, and storage needs, while Bitcoin transaction fees differ by transaction size and whether the transaction uses SegWit. In February 2023, the median transaction fee for Ether corresponded to $2.2845, while for Bitcoin it corresponded to $0.659.Some cryptocurrencies have no transaction fees, and instead rely on client-side proof-of-work as the transaction prioritization and anti-spam mechanism.
+
+
+=== Exchanges ===
+
+Cryptocurrency exchanges allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money, or to trade between different digital currencies.
+Crypto marketplaces do not guarantee that an investor is completing a purchase or trade at the optimal price. As a result, as of 2020 it was possible to arbitrage to find the difference in price across several markets.
+
+
+=== Atomic swaps ===
+Atomic swaps are a mechanism where one cryptocurrency can be exchanged directly for another cryptocurrency, without the need for a trusted third party such as an exchange.
+
+
+=== ATMs ===
+Jordan Kelley, founder of Robocoin, launched the first Bitcoin ATM in the United States on 20 February 2014. The kiosk installed in Austin, Texas, is similar to bank ATMs but has scanners to read government-issued identification such as a driver's license or a passport to confirm users' identities.
+
+
+=== Initial coin offerings ===
+An initial coin offering (ICO) is a controversial means of raising funds for a new cryptocurrency venture. An ICO may be used by startups with the intention of avoiding regulation. However, securities regulators in many jurisdictions, including in the U.S., and Canada, have indicated that if a coin or token is an ""investment contract"" (e.g., under the Howey test, i.e., an investment of money with a reasonable expectation of profit based significantly on the entrepreneurial or managerial efforts of others), it is a security and is subject to securities regulation. In an ICO campaign, a percentage of the cryptocurrency (usually in the form of ""tokens"") is sold to early backers of the project in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies, often Bitcoin or Ether.According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, four of the 10 biggest proposed initial coin offerings have used Switzerland as a base, where they are frequently registered as non-profit foundations. The Swiss regulatory agency FINMA stated that it would take a ""balanced approach"" to ICO projects and would allow ""legitimate innovators to navigate the regulatory landscape and so launch their projects in a way consistent with national laws protecting investors and the integrity of the financial system."" In response to numerous requests by industry representatives, a legislative ICO working group began to issue legal guidelines in 2018, which are intended to remove uncertainty from cryptocurrency offerings and to establish sustainable business practices.
+
+
+=== Price trends ===
+The market capitalization of a cryptocurrency is calculated by multiplying the price by the number of coins in circulation. The total cryptocurrency market cap has historically been dominated by Bitcoin accounting for at least 50% of the market cap value where altcoins have increased and decreased in market cap value in relation to Bitcoin. Bitcoin's value is largely determined by speculation among other technological limiting factors known as blockchain rewards coded into the architecture technology of Bitcoin itself. The cryptocurrency market cap follows a trend known as the ""halving"", which is when the block rewards received from Bitcoin are halved due to technological mandated limited factors instilled into Bitcoin which in turn limits the supply of Bitcoin. As the date reaches near of a halving (twice thus far historically) the cryptocurrency market cap increases, followed by a downtrend.By June 2021, cryptocurrency had begun to be offered by some wealth managers in the US for 401(k)s.
+
+
+=== Volatility ===
+Cryptocurrency prices are much more volatile than established financial assets such as stocks. For example, over one week in May 2022, Bitcoin lost 20% of its value and Ethereum lost 26%, while Solana and Cardano lost 41% and 35% respectively. The falls were attributed to warnings about inflation. By comparison, in the same week, the Nasdaq tech stock index fell 7.6 per cent and the FTSE 100 was 3.6 per cent down.In the longer term, of the 10 leading cryptocurrencies identified by the total value of coins in circulation in January 2018, only four (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano and Ripple (XRP)) were still in that position in early 2022. The total value of all cryptocurrencies was  $2 trillion at the end of 2021, but had halved nine months later. The Wall Street Journal has commented that the crypto sector has become ""intertwined"" with the rest of the capital markets and ""sensitive to the same forces that drive tech stocks and other risk assets"", such as inflation forecasts.
+
+
+=== Databases ===
+There are also centralized databases, outside of blockchains, that store crypto market data. Compared to the blockchain, databases perform fast as there is no verification process. Four of the most popular cryptocurrency market databases are CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, BraveNewCoin, and Cryptocompare.
+
+
+== Social and political aspects ==
+
+According to Alan Feuer of The New York Times, libertarians and anarcho-capitalists were attracted to the philosophical idea behind Bitcoin. Early Bitcoin supporter Roger Ver said: ""At first, almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw Bitcoin as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state."" Economist Paul Krugman argues that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are ""something of a cult"" based in ""paranoid fantasies"" of government power.David Golumbia says that the ideas influencing Bitcoin advocates emerge from right-wing extremist movements such as the Liberty Lobby and the John Birch Society and their anti-Central Bank rhetoric, or, more recently, Ron Paul and Tea Party-style libertarianism. Steve Bannon, who owns a ""good stake"" in Bitcoin, sees cryptocurrency as a form of disruptive populism, taking control back from central authorities.Bitcoin's founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, has supported the idea that cryptocurrencies go well with libertarianism. ""It's very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly,"" Nakamoto said in 2008.According to the European Central Bank, the decentralization of money offered by Bitcoin has its theoretical roots in the Austrian school of economics, especially with Friedrich von Hayek in his book Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined, in which Hayek advocates a complete free market in the production, distribution and management of money to end the monopoly of central banks.
+
+
+== Increasing regulation ==
+The rise in the popularity of cryptocurrencies and their adoption by financial institutions has led some governments to assess whether regulation is needed to protect users. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has defined cryptocurrency-related services as ""virtual asset service providers"" (VASPs) and recommended that they be regulated with the same money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) requirements as financial institutions.In May 2020, the Joint Working Group on interVASP Messaging Standards published ""IVMS 101"", a universal common language for communication of required originator and beneficiary information between VASPs. The FATF and financial regulators were informed as the data model was developed.In June 2020, FATF updated its guidance to include the ""Travel Rule"" for cryptocurrencies, a measure which mandates that VASPs obtain, hold, and exchange information about the originators and beneficiaries of virtual asset transfers. Subsequent standardized protocol specifications recommended using JSON for relaying data between VASPs and identity services. As of December 2020, the IVMS 101 data model has yet to be finalized and ratified by the three global standard setting bodies that created it.The European Commission published a digital finance strategy in September 2020. This included a draft regulation on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), which aimed to provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the EU.On 10 June 2021, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision proposed that banks that held cryptocurrency assets must set aside capital to cover all potential losses. For instance, if a bank were to hold Bitcoin worth $2 billion, it would be required to set aside enough capital to cover the entire $2 billion. This is a more extreme standard than banks are usually held to when it comes to other assets. However, this is a proposal and not a regulation.
+The IMF is seeking a coordinated, consistent and comprehensive approach to supervising cryptocurrencies. Tobias Adrian, the IMF's financial counsellor and head of its monetary and capital markets department said in a January 2022 interview that ""Agreeing global regulations is never quick. But if we start now, we can achieve the goal of maintaining financial stability while also enjoying the benefits which the underlying technological innovations bring,""
+
+
+=== United States ===
+In 2021, 17 states passed laws and resolutions concerning cryptocurrency regulation. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering what steps to take. On 8 July 2021, Senator Elizabeth Warren, part of the Senate Banking Committee, wrote to the chairman of the SEC and demanded answers on cryptocurrency regulation due to the increase in cryptocurrency exchange use and the danger this posed to consumers. On 5 August 2021, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler responded to Senator Elizabeth Warren's letter regarding cryptocurrency regulation and called for legislation focused on ""crypto trading, lending and DeFi platforms,"" because of how vulnerable the investors could be when they traded on crypto trading platforms without a broker. He also argued that many tokens in the crypto market may be unregistered securities without required disclosures or market oversight. Additionally, Gensler did not hold back in his criticism of stablecoins. These tokens, which are pegged to the value of fiat currencies, may allow individuals to bypass important public policy goals related to traditional banking and financial systems, such as anti-money laundering, tax compliance, and sanctions.On 19 October 2021, the first bitcoin-linked exchange-traded fund (ETF) from ProShares started trading on the NYSE under the ticker ""BITO."" ProShares CEO Michael L. Sapir said the ETF would expose Bitcoin to a wider range of investors without the hassle of setting up accounts with cryptocurrency providers. Ian Balina, the CEO of Token Metrics, stated that the approval of the ""BITO"" ETF by the SEC was a significant endorsement for the crypto industry because many regulators globally were not in favor of crypto as well as the hesitance to accept crypto from retail investors. This event would eventually open more opportunities for new capital and new people in this space.The United States Department of the Treasury, on 20 May 2021, announced that it would require any transfer worth $10,000 or more to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service since cryptocurrency already posed a problem where illegal activity like tax evasion was facilitated broadly. This release from the IRS was a part of efforts to promote better compliance and consider more severe penalties for tax evaders.On 17 February 2022, the Justice department named Eun Young Choi as the first director of a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team to aid in identification of and dealing with misuse of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.The Biden administration faced a dilemma as it tried to develop regulations for the cryptocurrency industry. On one hand, officials were hesitant to restrict the growing and profitable industry. On the other hand, they were committed to preventing illegal cryptocurrency transactions. To reconcile these conflicting goals, on 9 March 2022, President Biden issued an executive order. Followed by the executive order, on 16 September 2022, the Comprehensive Framework for Responsible Development of Digital Assets document was released  to support development of cryptocurrencies and restrict their illegal use. The executive order included all digital assets, but cryptocurrencies posed both the greatest security risks and potential economic benefits. Though this might not address all of the challenges in crypto industry, it was a significant milestone in the U.S. cryptocurrency regulation history.In February 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled that cryptocurrency exchange Kraken's estimated $42 billion in staked assets globally operated as an illegal securities seller. The company agreed to a $30 million settlement with the SEC and to cease selling its staking service in the U.S. The case would impact other major crypto exchanges operating staking programs.On 23 March 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an alert to investors stating that firms offering crypto asset securities may not be complying with U.S. laws. The SEC stated that unregistered offerings of crypto asset securities may not include important information.
+
+
+=== China ===
+In September 2017, China banned ICOs to cause abnormal return from cryptocurrency decreasing during announcement window. The liquidity changes by banning ICOs in China was temporarily negative while the liquidity effect became positive after news.On 18 May 2021, China banned financial institutions and payment companies from being able to provide cryptocurrency transaction related services. This led to a sharp fall in the price of the biggest proof of work cryptocurrencies. For instance, Bitcoin fell 31%, Ethereum fell 44%, Binance Coin fell 32% and Dogecoin fell 30%. Proof of work mining was the next focus, with regulators in popular mining regions citing the use of electricity generated from highly polluting sources such as coal to create Bitcoin and Ethereum.In September 2021, the Chinese government declared all cryptocurrency transactions of any kind illegal, completing its crackdown on cryptocurrency.
+
+
+=== United Kingdom ===
+In the United Kingdom, as of 10 January 2021, all cryptocurrency firms, such as exchanges, advisors and professionals that have either a presence, market product or provide services within the UK market must register with the Financial Conduct Authority. Additionally, on 27 June 2021, the financial watchdog demanded that Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, cease all regulated activities in the UK.
+
+
+=== South Africa ===
+South Africa, which has seen a large number of scams related to cryptocurrency, is said to be putting a regulatory timeline in place that will produce a regulatory framework. The largest scam occurred in April 2021, where the two founders of an African-based cryptocurrency exchange called Africrypt, Raees Cajee and Ameer Cajee, disappeared with $3.8 billion worth of Bitcoin. Additionally, Mirror Trading International disappeared with $170 million worth of cryptocurrency in January 2021.
+
+
+=== South Korea ===
+In March 2021, South Korea implemented new legislation to strengthen their oversight of digital assets. This legislation requires all digital asset managers, providers and exchanges to be registered with the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit in order to operate in South Korea. Registering with this unit requires that all exchanges are certified by the Information Security Management System and that they ensure all customers have real name bank accounts. It also requires that the CEO and board members of the exchanges have not been convicted of any crimes and that the exchange holds sufficient levels of deposit insurance to cover losses arising from hacks.
+
+
+=== Turkey ===
+On 30 April 2021, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey banned the use of cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets for making purchases on the grounds that the use of cryptocurrencies for such payments poses significant transaction risks.
+
+
+=== El Salvador ===
+On 9 June 2021, El Salvador announced that it will adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, becoming the first country to do so.
+
+
+=== India ===
+At present, India neither prohibits nor allows investment in the cryptocurrency market. In 2020, the Supreme Court of India had lifted the ban on cryptocurrency, which was imposed by the Reserve Bank of India. Since then, an investment in cryptocurrency is considered legitimate, though there is still ambiguity about the issues regarding the extent and payment of tax on the income accrued thereupon and also its regulatory regime. But it is being contemplated that the Indian Parliament will soon pass a specific law to either ban or regulate the cryptocurrency market in India. Expressing his public policy opinion on the Indian cryptocurrency market to a well-known online publication, a leading public policy lawyer and Vice President of SAARCLAW (South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation in Law) Hemant Batra has said that the ""cryptocurrency market has now become very big with involvement of billions of dollars in the market hence, it is now unattainable and irreconcilable for the government to completely ban all sorts of cryptocurrency and its trading and investment"". He mooted regulating the cryptocurrency market rather than completely banning it. He favoured following IMF and FATF guidelines in this regard.
+
+
+=== Switzerland ===
+Switzerland was one of the first countries to implement the FATF's Travel Rule. FINMA, the Swiss regulator, issued its own guidance to VASPs in 2019. The guidance followed the FATF's Recommendation 16, however with stricter requirements. According to FINMA's requirements, VASPs need to verify the identity of the beneficiary of the transfer.
+
+
+== Legality ==
+
+The legal status of cryptocurrencies varies substantially from country to country and is still undefined or changing in many of them. At least one study has shown that broad generalizations about the use of Bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly overstated and that blockchain analysis is an effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool. While some countries have explicitly allowed their use and trade, others have banned or restricted it. According to the Library of Congress in 2021,
+an ""absolute ban"" on trading or using cryptocurrencies applies in 9 countries:
+Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, and the United Arab Emirates. An ""implicit ban"" applies in another 39 countries or regions, which include: Bahrain, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Gabon, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Macau, Maldives, Mali, Moldova, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia, Sengeal, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Qatar and Vietnam. In the United States and Canada, state and provincial securities regulators, coordinated through the North American Securities Administrators Association, are investigating ""Bitcoin scams"" and ICOs in 40 jurisdictions.Various government agencies, departments, and courts have classified Bitcoin differently. China Central Bank banned the handling of Bitcoins by financial institutions in China in early 2014.
+In Russia, though owning cryptocurrency is legal, its residents are only allowed to purchase goods from other residents using the Russian ruble while nonresidents are allowed to use foreign currency. Regulations and bans that apply to Bitcoin probably extend to similar cryptocurrency systems.In August 2018, the Bank of Thailand announced its plans to create its own cryptocurrency, the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
+
+
+=== Advertising bans ===
+Cryptocurrency advertisements have been banned on the following platforms:
+
+Google - Ended August 2021
+Twitter
+Facebook - Ended December 2021
+Bing - Ended June 2022
+Snapchat
+LinkedIn
+MailChimp
+Baidu
+Tencent
+Weibo
+Line
+Yandex
+
+
+=== U.S. tax status ===
+On 25 March 2014, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ruled that Bitcoin will be treated as property for tax purposes. Therefore, virtual currencies are considered commodities subject to capital gains tax.
+
+
+=== Legal concerns relating to an unregulated global economy ===
+As the popularity and demand for online currencies has increased since the inception of Bitcoin in 2009, so have concerns that such an unregulated person to person global economy that cryptocurrencies offer may become a threat to society. Concerns abound that altcoins may become tools for anonymous web criminals.Cryptocurrency networks display a lack of regulation that has been criticized as enabling criminals who seek to evade taxes and launder money. Money laundering issues are also present in regular bank transfers, however with bank-to-bank wire transfers for instance, the account holder must at least provide a proven identity.
+Transactions that occur through the use and exchange of these altcoins are independent from formal banking systems, and therefore can make tax evasion simpler for individuals. Since charting taxable income is based upon what a recipient reports to the revenue service, it becomes extremely difficult to account for transactions made using existing cryptocurrencies, a mode of exchange that is complex and difficult to track.Systems of anonymity that most cryptocurrencies offer can also serve as a simpler means to launder money. Rather than laundering money through an intricate net of financial actors and offshore bank accounts, laundering money through altcoins can be achieved through anonymous transactions.Cryptocurrency makes legal enforcement against extremist groups more complicated, which consequently strengthens them. White supremacist Richard Spencer went as far as to declare Bitcoin the ""currency of the alt-right"".
+
+
+=== Loss, theft, and fraud ===
+
+In February 2014, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, declared bankruptcy. Likely due to theft, the company claimed that it had lost nearly 750,000 Bitcoins belonging to their clients. This added up to approximately 7% of all Bitcoins in existence, worth a total of $473 million. Mt. Gox blamed hackers, who had exploited the transaction malleability problems in the network. The price of a Bitcoin fell from a high of about $1,160 in December to under $400 in February.On 21 November 2017, Tether announced that it had been hacked, losing $31 million in USDT from its core treasury wallet.On 7 December 2017, Slovenian cryptocurrency exchange Nicehash reported that hackers had stolen over $70M using a hijacked company computer.On 19 December 2017, Yapian, the owner of South Korean exchange Youbit, filed for bankruptcy after suffering two hacks that year. Customers were still granted access to 75% of their assets.
+In May 2018, Bitcoin Gold had its transactions hijacked and abused by unknown hackers. Exchanges lost an estimated $18m and Bitcoin Gold was delisted from Bittrex after it refused to pay its share of the damages.
+On 13 September 2018, Homero Josh Garza was sentenced to 21 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release. Garza had founded the cryptocurrency startups GAW Miners and ZenMiner in 2014, acknowledged in a plea agreement that the companies were part of a pyramid scheme, and pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2015. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission separately brought a civil enforcement action against Garza, who was eventually ordered to pay a judgment of $9.1 million plus $700,000 in interest. The SEC's complaint stated that Garza, through his companies, had fraudulently sold ""investment contracts representing shares in the profits they claimed would be generated"" from mining.In January 2018, Japanese exchange Coincheck reported that hackers had stolen $530M worth of cryptocurrencies.In June 2018, South Korean exchange Coinrail was hacked, losing over $37M worth of cryptos. The hack worsened an already ongoing cryptocurrency selloff by an additional $42 billion.On 9 July 2018, the exchange Bancor, whose code and fundraising had been subjects of controversy, had $23.5 million in cryptocurrency stolen.A 2020 EU report found that users had lost crypto-assets worth hundreds of millions of US dollars in security breaches at exchanges and storage providers. Between 2011 and 2019, reported breaches ranged from four to twelve a year. In 2019, more than a billion dollars worth of cryptoassets was reported stolen. Stolen assets ""typically find their way to illegal markets and are used to fund further criminal activity"".According to a 2020 report produced by the United States Attorney General's Cyber-Digital Task Force, the following three categories make up the majority of illicit cryptocurrency uses: ""(1) financial transactions associated with the commission of crimes; (2) money laundering and the shielding of legitimate activity from tax, reporting, or other legal requirements; or (3) crimes, such as theft, directly implicating the cryptocurrency marketplace itself."" The report concludes that ""for cryptocurrency to realize its truly transformative potential, it is imperative that these risks be addressed"" and that ""the government has legal and regulatory tools available at its disposal to confront the threats posed by cryptocurrency's illicit uses"".According to the UK 2020 national risk assessment—a comprehensive assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing risk in the UK—the risk of using cryptoassets such as Bitcoin for money laundering and terrorism financing is assessed as ""medium"" (from ""low"" in the previous 2017 report). Legal scholars suggested that the money laundering opportunities may be more perceived than real. Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis concluded that illicit activities like cybercrime, money laundering and terrorism financing made up only 0.15% of all crypto transactions conducted in 2021, representing a total of $14 billion.In December 2021, Monkey Kingdom, a NFT project based in Hong Kong, lost US$1.3 million worth of cryptocurrencies via a phishing link used by the hacker.
+
+
+=== Money laundering ===
+
+According to blockchain data company Chainalysis, criminals laundered US$8,600,000,000 worth of cryptocurrency in 2021, up by 30% from the previous year. The data suggests that rather than managing numerous illicit havens, cybercriminals make use of a small group of purpose built centralized exchanges for sending and receiving illicit cryptocurrency. In 2021, those exchanges received 47% of funds sent by crime linked addresses. Almost $2.2bn worth of cryptocurrencies was embezzled from DeFi protocols in 2021, which represents 72% of all cryptocurrency theft in 2021.
+According to Bloomberg and the New York Times, Federation Tower, a two skyscraper complex in the heart of Moscow City, is home to many cryptocurrency businesses under suspicion of facilitating extensive money laundering, including accepting illicit cryptocurrency funds obtained through scams, darknet markets, and ransomware. Notable businesses include Garantex, Eggchange, Cashbank, Buy-Bitcoin, Tetchange, Bitzlato, and Suex, which was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2021. Bitzlato founder and owner Anatoly Legkodymov was arrested following money-laundering charges by the United States Department of Justice.Dark money has also been flowing into Russia through a dark web marketplace called Hydra, which is powered by cryptocurrency, and enjoyed more than $1 billion in sales in 2020, according to Chainalysis. The platform demands that sellers liquidate cryptocurrency only through certain regional exchanges, which has made it difficult for investigators to trace the money.
+Almost 74% of ransomware revenue in 2021 — over $400 million worth of cryptocurrency — went to software strains likely affiliated with Russia, where oversight is notoriously limited. However, Russians are also leaders in the benign adoption of cryptocurrencies, as the ruble is unreliable, and President Putin favours the idea of ""overcoming the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies.""In 2022, RenBridge - an unregulated alternative to exchanges for transferring value between blockchains - was found to be responsible for the laundering of at least $540 million since 2020. It is especially popular with people attempting to launder money from theft. This includes a cyberattack on Japanese crypto exchange Liquid that has been linked to North Korea.
+
+
+=== Darknet markets ===
+
+Properties of cryptocurrencies gave them popularity in applications such as a safe haven in banking crises and means of payment, which also led to the cryptocurrency use in controversial settings in the form of online black markets, such as Silk Road. The original Silk Road was shut down in October 2013 and there have been two more versions in use since then. In the year following the initial shutdown of Silk Road, the number of prominent dark markets increased from four to twelve, while the amount of drug listings increased from 18,000 to 32,000.Darknet markets present challenges in regard to legality. Cryptocurrency used in dark markets are not clearly or legally classified in almost all parts of the world. In the U.S., Bitcoins are labelled as ""virtual assets"". This type of ambiguous classification puts pressure on law enforcement agencies around the world to adapt to the shifting drug trade of dark markets.
+
+
+=== Wash trades ===
+Various studies have found that crypto-trading is rife with wash trading. Wash trading is a process, illegal in some jurisdictions, involving buyers and sellers being the same person or group, and may be used to manipulate the price of a cryptocurrency or inflate volume artificially. Exchanges with higher volumes can demand higher premiums from token issuers. A study from 2019 concluded that up to 80% of trades on unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges could be wash trades. A 2019 report by Bitwise Asset Management claimed that 95% of all Bitcoin trading volume reported on major website CoinMarketCap had been artificially generated, and of 81 exchanges studied, only 10 provided legitimate volume figures.
+
+
+=== As a tool to evade sanctions ===
+In 2022, cryptocurrencies attracted attention when Western nations imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia in the aftermath of its invasion of Ukraine in February. However, American sources warned in March that some crypto-transactions could potentially be used to evade economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus.In April 2022, the computer programmer Virgil Griffith received a five-year prison sentence in the US for attending a Pyongyang cryptocurrency conference, where he gave a presentation on blockchains which might be used for sanctions evasion.
+
+
+== Impacts and analysis ==
+The Bank for International Settlements summarized several criticisms of cryptocurrencies in Chapter V of their 2018 annual report. The criticisms include the lack of stability in their price, the high energy consumption, high and variable transactions costs, the poor security and fraud at cryptocurrency exchanges, vulnerability to debasement (from forking), and the influence of miners.
+
+
+=== Speculation, fraud, and adoption ===
+
+Cryptocurrencies have been compared to Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes and economic bubbles, such as housing market bubbles. Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management stated in 2017 that digital currencies were ""nothing but an unfounded fad (or perhaps even a pyramid scheme), based on a willingness to ascribe value to something that has little or none beyond what people will pay for it"", and compared them to the tulip mania (1637), South Sea Bubble (1720), and dot-com bubble (1999), which all experienced profound price booms and busts.Regulators in several countries have warned against cryptocurrency and some have taken measures to dissuade users. However, research in 2021 by the UK's financial regulator suggests such warnings either went unheard, or were ignored. Fewer than one in 10 potential cryptocurrency buyers were aware of consumer warnings on the FCA website, and 12% of crypto users were not aware that their holdings were not protected by statutory compensation. Of 1,000 respondents between the ages of eighteen and forty, almost 70% falsely assumed cryptocurrencies were regulated, 75% of younger crypto investors claimed to be driven by competition with friends and family, 58% said that social media enticed them to make high risk investments. The FCA recommends making use of its warning list, which flags unauthorized financial firms.Many banks do not offer virtual currency services themselves and can refuse to do business with virtual currency companies. In 2014, Gareth Murphy, a senior banking officer, suggested that the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies may lead to too much money being obfuscated, blinding economists who would use such information to better steer the economy. While traditional financial products have strong consumer protections in place, there is no intermediary with the power to limit consumer losses if Bitcoins are lost or stolen. One of the features cryptocurrency lacks in comparison to credit cards, for example, is consumer protection against fraud, such as chargebacks.
+The French regulator Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) lists 16 websites of companies that solicit investment in cryptocurrency without being authorized to do so in France.An October 2021 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Bitcoin suffers from systemic risk as the top 10,000 addresses control about one-third of all Bitcoin in circulation. It is even worse for Bitcoin miners, with 0.01% controlling 50% of the capacity. According to researcher Flipside Crypto, less than 2% of anonymous accounts control 95% of all available Bitcoin supply. This is considered risky as a great deal of the market is in the hands of a few entities.
+A paper by John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas, and Amin Shams, a graduate student found that in 2017 the price of Bitcoin had been substantially inflated using another cryptocurrency, Tether.Roger Lowenstein, author of ""Bank of America: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve,"" says in a New York Times story that FTX will face over $8 billion in claims.
+
+
+=== Non-fungible tokens ===
+Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that represent art, collectibles, gaming, etc. Like crypto, their data is stored on the blockchain. NFTs are bought and traded using cryptocurrency. The Ethereum blockchain was the first place where NFTs were implemented, but now many other blockchains have created their own versions of NFTs.
+
+
+=== Banks ===
+As the first big Wall Street bank to embrace cryptocurrencies, Morgan Stanley announced on 17 March 2021 that they will be offering access to Bitcoin funds for their wealthy clients through three funds which enable Bitcoin ownership for investors with an aggressive risk tolerance. BNY Mellon on 11 February 2021 announced that it would begin offering cryptocurrency services to its clients.On 20 April 2021, Venmo added support to its platform to enable customers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies.In October 2021, financial services company Mastercard announced it is working with digital asset manager Bakkt on a platform that would allow any bank or merchant on the Mastercard network to offer cryptocurrency services.
+
+
+=== Environmental effects ===
+
+Mining for proof-of-work cryptocurrencies requires enormous amounts of electricity and consequently comes with a large carbon footprint due to causing greenhouse gas emissions. Proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero were estimated to have added between 3 million and 15 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere in the period from 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2017. By November 2018, Bitcoin was estimated to have an annual energy consumption of 45.8TWh, generating 22.0 to 22.9 million tons of CO2, rivalling nations like Jordan and Sri Lanka. By the end of 2021, Bitcoin was estimated to produce 65.4 million tons of CO2, as much as Greece, and consume between 91 and 177 terawatt-hours annually.Critics have also identified a large electronic waste problem in disposing of mining rigs. Mining hardware is improving at a fast rate, quickly resulting in older generations of hardware.Bitcoin is the least energy-efficient cryptocurrency, using 707.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity per transaction.Before June 2021, China was the primary location for Bitcoin mining. However, due to concerns over power usage and other factors, China forced out Bitcoin operations, at least temporarily. As a result, the United States promptly emerged as the top global leader in the industry. An example of a gross amount of electronic waste associated with Bitcoin mining operations in the US is a facility that located in Dalton, Georgia which is consuming nearly the same amount of electricity as the combined power usage of 97,000 households in its vicinity. Another example is that Riot Platforms operates a Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, which consumes approximately as much electricity as the nearby 300,000 households. This makes it the most energy-intensive Bitcoin mining operation in the United States.The world's second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, uses 62.56 kilowatt-hours of electricity per transaction. XRP is the world's most energy efficient cryptocurrency, using 0.0079 kilowatt-hours of electricity per transaction.Although the biggest PoW blockchains consume energy on the scale of medium-sized countries, the annual power demand from proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains is on a scale equivalent to a housing estate. The Times identified six ""environmentally friendly"" cryptocurrencies: Chia, IOTA, Cardano, Nano, Solarcoin and Bitgreen. Academics and researchers have used various methods for estimating the energy use and energy efficiency of blockchains. A study of the six largest proof-of-stake networks in May 2021 concluded:
+
+Cardano has the lowest electricity use per node;
+Polkadot has the lowest electricity use overall; and
+Solana has the lowest electricity use per transaction.In terms of annual consumption (kWh/yr), the figures were: Polkadot (70,237), Tezos (113,249), Avalanche (489,311), Algorand (512,671), Cardano (598,755) and Solana (1,967,930). This equates to Polkadot consuming 7 times the electricity of an average U.S. home, Cardano 57 homes and Solana 200 times as much. The research concluded that PoS networks consumed 0.001% the electricity of the Bitcoin network. University College London researchers reached a similar conclusion.Variable renewable energy power stations could invest in Bitcoin mining to reduce curtailment, hedge electricity price risk, stabilize the grid, increase the profitability of renewable energy power stations and therefore accelerate transition to sustainable energy.
+
+
+=== Technological limitations ===
+There are also purely technical elements to consider. For example, technological advancement in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin result in high up-front costs to miners in the form of specialized hardware and software. Cryptocurrency transactions are normally irreversible after a number of blocks confirm the transaction. Additionally, cryptocurrency private keys can be permanently lost from local storage due to malware, data loss or the destruction of the physical media. This precludes the cryptocurrency from being spent, resulting in its effective removal from the markets.
+
+
+=== Academic studies ===
+
+In September 2015, the establishment of the peer-reviewed academic journal Ledger (ISSN 2379-5980) was announced. It covers studies of cryptocurrencies and related technologies, and is published by the University of Pittsburgh.The journal encourages authors to digitally sign a file hash of submitted papers, which will then be timestamped into the Bitcoin blockchain. Authors are also asked to include a personal Bitcoin address in the first page of their papers.
+
+
+=== Aid agencies ===
+A number of aid agencies have started accepting donations in cryptocurrencies, including UNICEF. Christopher Fabian, principal adviser at UNICEF Innovation, said the children's fund would uphold donor protocols, meaning that people making donations online would have to pass checks before they were allowed to deposit funds.However, in 2021, there was a backlash against donations in Bitcoin because of the environmental emissions it caused. Some agencies stopped accepting Bitcoin and others turned to ""greener"" cryptocurrencies. The U.S. arm of Greenpeace stopped accepting bitcoin donations after seven years. It said: ""As the amount of energy needed to run Bitcoin became clearer, this policy became no longer tenable.""In 2022, the Ukrainian government raised over US$10,000,000 worth of aid through cryptocurrency following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
+
+
+=== Criticism ===
+Bitcoin has been characterized as a speculative bubble by eight winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: Paul Krugman, Robert J. Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, Richard Thaler, James Heckman, Thomas Sargent, Angus Deaton, and Oliver Hart; and by central bank officials including Alan Greenspan, Agustín Carstens, Vítor Constâncio, and Nout Wellink.Investors Warren Buffett and George Soros have respectively characterized it as a ""mirage"" and a ""bubble""; while business executives Jack Ma and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have called it a ""bubble"" and a ""fraud"", respectively, although Jamie Dimon later said he regretted dubbing Bitcoin a fraud. BlackRock CEO Laurence D. Fink called Bitcoin an ""index of money laundering"".In June 2022, business magnate Bill Gates said that cryptocurrencies are ""100% based on greater fool theory"".Legal scholars criticize the lack of regulation, which hinders conflict resolution when crypto assets are at the center of a legal dispute, for example a divorce or an inheritance. In Switzerland, jurists generally deny that cryptocurrencies are objects that fall under property law, as cryptocurrencies do not belong to any class of legally defined objects (Typenzwang, the legal numerus clausus). Therefore, it is debated whether anybody could even be sued for embezzlement of cryptocurrency if he/she had access to someone's wallet. However, in the law of obligations and contract law, any kind of object would be legally valid, but the object would have to be tied to an identified counterparty. However, as the more popular cryptocurrencies can be freely and quickly exchanged into legal tender, they are financial assets and have to be taxed and accounted for as such.In 2018, an increase in crypto-related suicides was noticed after the cryptocurrency market crashed in August. The situation was particularly critical in Korea as crypto traders were on ""suicide watch"". A cryptocurrency forum on Reddit even started providing suicide prevention support to affected investors. The May 2022 collapse of the Luna currency operated by Terra also led to reports of suicidal investors in crypto-related subreddits.
+
+
+== See also ==
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Chayka, Kyle (2 July 2013). ""What Comes After Bitcoin?"". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
+Guadamuz, Andres; Marsden, Chris (2015). ""Blockchains and Bitcoin: Regulatory responses to cryptocurrencies"" (PDF). First Monday. 20 (12). doi:10.5210/fm.v20i12.6198. S2CID 811921.
+
+
+== External links ==
+ Media related to Cryptocurrency at Wikimedia Commons
+ Quotations related to Cryptocurrency at Wikiquote
+ Learning materials related to Should cryptocurrencies be banned? at Wikiversity"
+Bitcoin,"Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC or XBT; sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. 
+Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive system based on proof-of-work called mining. Bitcoin mining requires increasing quantities of electricity and was responsible for 0.2% of world greenhouse gas emissions as of 2022.Based on a free market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, an unknown person. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its open-source implementation.: ch. 1  In 2021, El Salvador adopted it as legal tender. Bitcoin is currently used more as a store of value and less as a medium of exchange or unit of account. It is mostly seen as an investment and has been described by many scholars as an economic bubble. As bitcoin is pseudonymous, its use by criminals has attracted the attention of regulators, leading to its ban by several countries as of 2021.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Background ===
+Before bitcoin, several digital cash technologies were released, starting with David Chaum's ecash in the 1980s. The idea that solutions to computational puzzles could have some value was first proposed by cryptographers Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1992. The concept was independently rediscovered by Adam Back who developed Hashcash, a proof-of-work scheme for spam control in 1997. The first proposals for distributed digital scarcity-based cryptocurrencies came from cypherpunks Wei Dai (b-money) and Nick Szabo (bit gold) in 1998. In 2004, Hal Finney developed the first currency based on reusable proof-of-work. These various attempts were not successful: Chaum's concept required centralized control and no banks wanted to sign on, Hashcash had no protection against double-spending, while b-money and bit gold were not resistant to Sybil attacks.
+
+
+=== 2008–2009: Creation ===
+
+The domain name bitcoin.org was registered on 18 August 2008. On 31 October 2008, a link to a white paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list. Nakamoto implemented the bitcoin software as open-source code and released it in January 2009. Nakamoto's identity remains unknown. All individual components of bitcoin originated in earlier academic literature. Nakamoto's innovation was their complex interplay resulting in the first decentralized, Sybil resistant, Byzantine fault tolerant digital cash system, that would eventually be referred to as the first blockchain. Nakamoto's paper was not peer-reviewed and initially ignored by academics, who argued that it could not work, based on theoretical models, even though it was working in practice.On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network was created when Nakamoto mined the starting block of the chain, known as the genesis block. Embedded in this block was the text ""The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"", which is the date and headline of an issue of The Times newspaper. Nine days later, Hal Finney received the first bitcoin transaction: ten bitcoins from Nakamoto. Wei Dai and Nick Szabo were also early supporters. In 2010, the first known commercial transaction using bitcoin occurred when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John's pizzas for ₿10,000.
+
+
+=== 2010–2012: Early growth ===
+Blockchain analysts estimate that Nakamoto had mined about one million bitcoins before disappearing in 2010 when he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository over to Gavin Andresen. Andresen later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, an organization founded in September 2012 to promote bitcoin.After early ""proof-of-concept"" transactions, the first major users of bitcoin were black markets, such as the dark web Silk Road. During its 30 months of existence, beginning in February 2011, Silk Road exclusively accepted bitcoins as payment, transacting ₿9.9 million, worth about $214 million.: 222 
+
+
+=== 2013–2014: First regulatory actions ===
+In March 2013, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for ""decentralized virtual currencies"" such as bitcoin, classifying American bitcoin miners who sell their generated bitcoins as money services businesses, subject to registration and other legal obligations. In May 2013, US authorities seized the unregistered exchange Mt. Gox. In June 2013, the US Drug Enforcement Administration seized ₿11.02 from a man attempting to use them to buy illegal substances. This marked the first time a government agency had seized bitcoins. The FBI seized about ₿30,000 in October 2013 from Silk Road, following the arrest of its founder Ross Ulbricht.In December 2013, the People's Bank of China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoin. After the announcement, the value of bitcoin dropped, and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services. Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency had been illegal in China since at least 2009.
+
+
+=== 2015–2019 ===
+Research produced by the University of Cambridge estimated that in 2017, there were 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin. In August 2017, the SegWit software upgrade was activated. Segwit was intended to support the Lightning Network as well as improve scalability. SegWit opponents, who supported larger blocks as a scalability solution, forked to create Bitcoin Cash, one of many forks of bitcoin.In February 2018, price crashed after China imposed a complete ban on Bitcoin trading. The percentage of bitcoin trading in the Chinese renminbi fell from over 90% in September 2017 to less than 1% in June 2018. During the same year, Bitcoin prices were negatively affected by several hacks or thefts from cryptocurrency exchanges.
+
+
+=== 2020–present ===
+In 2020, some major companies and institutions started to acquire bitcoin: MicroStrategy invested $250 million in bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, Square, Inc., $50 million, and MassMutual, $100 million. In November 2020, PayPal added support for bitcoin in the US.In February 2021, Bitcoin's market capitalization reached $1 trillion for the first time. In November 2021, the Taproot soft-fork upgrade was activated, adding support for Schnorr signatures, improved functionality of smart contracts and Lightning Network. Before, Bitcoin only used a custom elliptic curve with the ECDSA algorithm to produce signatures.: 101  In September 2021, Bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador, alongside the US dollar.In May and June 2022, the bitcoin price fell following the collapses of TerraUSD, a stablecoin, and the Celsius Network, a decentralized finance loan company.In 2023, ordinals, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Bitcoin, went live.
+
+
+== Design ==
+
+
+=== Units and divisibility ===
+The unit of account of the bitcoin system is the bitcoin. It is represented with the currency codes BTC and XBT as well as the symbol ₿. 
+No uniform capitalization convention exists; some sources use Bitcoin, capitalized, to refer to the technology and network, and bitcoin, lowercase, for the unit of account. The Oxford English Dictionary advocates the use of lowercase bitcoin in all cases.One bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places.: ch. 5  Units for smaller amounts of bitcoin are the millibitcoin (mBTC), equal to 1⁄1000 bitcoin, and the satoshi (sat), representing 1⁄100000000 (one hundred millionth) bitcoin, the smallest amount possible. 100,000 satoshis are one mBTC.
+
+
+=== Blockchain ===
+
+As a decentralized system, bitcoin operates without a central authority or single administrator, so that anyone can create a new bitcoin address and transact without needing any approval.: ch. 1  This is accomplished through a specialized distributed ledger called a blockchain that records bitcoin transactions.The blockchain is implemented as an ordered list of blocks. Each block contains a SHA-256 hash of the previous block, ""chaining"" them in chronological order.: ch. 7  The blockchain is maintained by a peer-to-peer network.: 215–219  Individual blocks, public addresses, and transactions within blocks are public information, and can be examined using a blockchain explorer.Nodes validate and broadcast transactions, each maintaining a copy of the blockchain for ownership verification. A new block is created every 10 minutes on average, updating the blockchain across all nodes without central oversight. This process tracks bitcoin spending, ensuring each bitcoin is spent only once. Unlike a traditional ledger that tracks physical currency, bitcoins exist digitally as unspent outputs of transactions.: ch. 5 
+
+
+=== Addresses and transactions ===
+In the blockchain, bitcoins are linked to specific addresses that are hashes of a public key. Creating an address involves generating a random private key and then computing the corresponding address. This process is almost instant, but the reverse (finding the private key for a given address) is nearly impossible.: ch. 4  Publishing a bitcoin address does not risk its private key, and it is extremely unlikely to accidentally generate a used key with funds. To use bitcoins, owners need their private key to digitally sign transactions, which are verified by the network using the public key, keeping the private key secret.: ch. 5 Bitcoin transactions use a Forth-like scripting language,: ch. 5  involving one or more inputs and outputs. When sending bitcoins, a user specifies the recipients' addresses and the amount for each output. This allows sending bitcoins to several recipients in a single transaction. To prevent double-spending, each input must refer to a previous unspent output in the blockchain. Using multiple inputs is similar to using multiple coins in a cash transaction. As in a cash transaction, the sum of inputs can exceed the intended sum of payments. In such a case, an additional output can return the change back to the payer. Unallocated input satoshis in the transaction become the transaction fee.Losing a private key means losing access to the bitcoins, with no other proof of ownership accepted by the protocol. For instance, in 2013, a user lost ₿7,500, valued at US$7.5 million, by accidentally discarding a hard drive with the private key. It is estimated that around 20% of all bitcoins are lost. The private key must also be kept secret as its exposure, such as through a data breach, can lead to theft of the associated bitcoins.: ch. 10  As of December 2017, approximately ₿980,000 had been stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges.
+
+
+=== Mining ===
+
+The mining process in Bitcoin involves maintaining the blockchain through computer processing power. Miners group and broadcast new transactions into blocks, which are then verified by the network. Each block must contain a proof-of-work (PoW) to be accepted, involving finding a nonce number that, combined with the block content, produces a hash numerically smaller than the network's difficulty target.: ch. 8  This PoW is simple to verify but hard to generate, requiring many attempts.: ch. 8  PoW forms the basis of Bitcoin's consensus mechanism.The difficulty of generating a block is deterministically adjusted based on the mining power on the network by changing the difficulty target, which is recalibrated every 2,016 blocks (approximately two weeks) to maintain an average time of ten minutes between new blocks. The process requires significant computational power and specialized hardware.: ch. 8 Miners who successfully find a new block can collect transaction fees from the included transactions and a set reward in bitcoins. To claim this reward, a special transaction called a coinbase is included in the block, with the miner as the payee. All bitcoins in existence have been created through this type of transaction.: ch. 8  This reward is halved every 210,000 blocks until ₿21 million, with new bitcoin issuance slated to end around 2140. Afterward, miners will only earn from transaction fees. These fees are determined by the transaction's size and the amount of data stored, measured in satoshis per byte.: ch. 8 The proof-of-work system and the chaining of blocks make blockchain modifications very difficult, as altering one block requires changing all subsequent blocks. As more blocks are added, modifying older blocks becomes increasingly challenging. In case of disagreement, nodes trust the longest chain, which required the greatest amount of effort to produce. To tamper or censor the ledger, one needs to control the majority of the global hashrate. The high cost required to reach this level of computational power guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain.Bitcoin mining's environmental impact is significant and has attracted the attention of regulators, leading to restrictions or bans in various jurisdictions. As of 2022, bitcoin mining is estimated to represent 0.4% of global electricity consumption and to be responsible for 0.2% of world greenhouse gas emissions, as about half of the electricity used is generated through fossil fuels. Moreover, mining hardware's short lifespan results in electronic waste. The amount of electrical energy and e-waste generated by bitcoin mining is often compared with countries like Greece or the Netherlands.
+
+
+=== Privacy and fungibility ===
+Bitcoin is pseudonymous, with funds linked to addresses, not real-world identities. While the owners of these addresses are not directly identified, all transactions are public on the blockchain. Patterns of use, like spending coins from multiple inputs, can hint at a common owner. Public data can sometimes be matched with known address owners. Bitcoin exchanges might also need to collect personal data as per legal requirements. For enhanced privacy, users can generate a new address for each transaction.In the Bitcoin network, each bitcoin is treated equally, ensuring basic fungibility. However, users and applications can choose to differentiate between bitcoins. While wallets and software treat all bitcoins the same, each bitcoin's transaction history is recorded on the blockchain. This public record allows for chain analysis, where users can identify and potentially reject bitcoins from controversial sources. For example, in 2012, Mt. Gox froze accounts containing bitcoins identified as stolen.
+
+
+=== Wallets ===
+
+Bitcoin wallets were the first cryptocurrency wallets, enabling users to store the information necessary to transact bitcoins.: ch. 1, glossary  The first wallet program, simply named Bitcoin, and sometimes referred to as the Satoshi client, was released in 2009 by Nakamoto as open-source software. Bitcoin Core is among the best known clients. Forks of Bitcoin Core exist such as Bitcoin Unlimited. Wallets can be full clients, with a full copy of the blockchain to check the validity of mined blocks,: ch. 1  or lightweight clients, just to send and receive transactions without a local copy of the entire blockchain. Third-party internet services called online wallets store users' credentials on their servers, making them susceptible of hacks. ""Cold storage"" protects bitcoins from such hacks by keeping private keys offline, either through specialized hardware wallets or paper printouts.: ch. 4 
+
+
+=== Scalability and decentralization challenges ===
+Nakamoto limited the block size to one megabyte. The limited block size and frequency can lead to delayed processing of transactions, increased fees and a Bitcoin scalability problem. The Lightning Network, second-layer routing network, is a potential scaling solution.: ch. 8 Research shows a trend towards centralization in bitcoin as miners join pools for stable income.: 215, 219–222 : 3  If a single miner or pool controls more than 50% of the hashing power, it would allow them to censor transactions and double-spend coins. In 2014, mining pool Ghash.io reached 51% mining power, causing safety concerns, but later voluntarily capped its power at 39.99% for the benefit of the whole network. A few entities also dominate other parts of the ecosystem such as the client software, online wallets, and simplified payment verification (SPV) clients.
+
+
+== Economics and usage ==
+
+
+=== Bitcoin's theoretical roots and ideology ===
+
+According to the European Central Bank, the decentralization of money offered by bitcoin has its theoretical roots in the Austrian school of economics, especially with Friedrich von Hayek's book The Denationalization of Money, in which he advocates a complete free market in the production, distribution and management of money to end the monopoly of central banks.: 22  Sociologist Nigel Dodd, citing the crypto-anarchist Declaration of Bitcoin's Independence, argues that the essence of the bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control. The Economist describes bitcoin as ""a techno-anarchist project to create an online version of cash, a way for people to transact without the possibility of interference from malicious governments or banks"". These philosophical ideas initially attracted libertarians and anarchists. Economist Paul Krugman argues that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are only used by bank skeptics and criminals.
+
+
+=== Recognition as a currency and legal status ===
+Money serves three purposes: a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account. According to The Economist in 2014, bitcoin functions best as a medium of exchange. In 2015, The Economist noted that bitcoins had three qualities useful in a currency: they are ""hard to earn, limited in supply and easy to verify"". However, a 2018 assessment by The Economist stated that cryptocurrencies met none of these three criteria. Per some researchers, as of 2015, bitcoin functions more as a payment system than as a currency. In 2014, economist Robert J. Shiller wrote that bitcoin has potential as a unit of account for measuring the relative value of goods, as with Chile's Unidad de Fomento, but that ""Bitcoin in its present form ... doesn't really solve any sensible economic problem"". François R. Velde, Senior Economist at the Chicago Fed, described bitcoin as ""an elegant solution to the problem of creating a digital currency"". David Andolfatto, Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, stated that bitcoin is a threat to the establishment, which he argues is a good thing for the Federal Reserve System and other central banks, because it prompts these institutions to operate sound policies.The legal status of bitcoin varies substantially from one jurisdiction to another. Because of its decentralized nature and its global presence, regulating bitcoin is difficult. However, the use of bitcoin can be criminalized, and shutting down exchanges and the peer-to-peer economy in a given country would constitute a de facto ban. The use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators, legislative bodies, and law enforcement. Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that bitcoin's anonymity encourages money laundering and other crimes. This is the main justification behind bitcoin bans. As of November 2021, nine countries applied an absolute ban (Algeria, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Qatar, and Tunisia) while another 42 countries had an implicit ban. Bitcoin is only legal tender in El Salvador.
+
+
+=== Use for payments ===
+As of 2018, Bitcoin is rarely used in transactions with merchants, but it is popular to purchase illegal goods online. Prices are not usually quoted in bitcoin and trades involve conversions into fiat currencies. Commonly cited reasons for not using Bitcoin include high costs, the inability to process chargebacks, high price volatility, long transaction times, transaction fees (especially for small purchases). Bloomberg reported that bitcoin was being used for large-item purchases on the site Overstock.com and for cross-border payments to freelancers. As of 2015, there was little sign of bitcoin use in international remittances despite high fees charged by banks and Western Union who compete in this market.In September 2021, the Bitcoin Law made bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador, alongside the US dollar. The adoption has been criticized both internationally and within El Salvador. In particular, in 2022, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged El Salvador to reverse its decision. As of 2022, the use of Bitcoin in El Salvador remains low: 80% of businesses refused to accept it despite being legally required to. In April 2022, the Central African Republic (CAR) adopted Bitcoin as legal tender alongside the CFA franc, but repealed the reform one year later.Bitcoin is also used by some governments. For instance, the Iranian government initially opposed cryptocurrencies, but later saw them as an opportunity to circumvent sanctions. Since 2020, Iran has required local bitcoin miners to sell bitcoin to the Central Bank of Iran, allowing the central bank to use it for imports. Some constituent states also accept tax payments in bitcoin, including Colorado (US) and Zug (Switzerland).
+
+
+=== Use for investment and status as an economic bubble ===
+
+As of 2018, the overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions took place on cryptocurrency exchanges. Since 2014, regulated bitcoin funds also allow exposure to the asset or to futures as an investment. Individuals and companies such as the Winklevoss twins and Elon Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla have massively invested in Bitcoin. Bitcoin wealth is highly concentrated, with 0.01% holding 27% of in-circulation currency, as of 2021. As of September 2023, El Salvador had $76.5 million worth of bitcoin in its international reserves.In 2018, research published in the Journal of Monetary Economics concluded that price manipulation occurred during the Mt. Gox bitcoin theft and that the market remained vulnerable to manipulation. Research published in The Journal of Finance also suggested that trading associated with increases in the amount of the Tether cryptocurrency and associated trading at the Bitfinex exchange accounted for about half of the price increase in bitcoin in late 2017.Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic bubble by several economists, including Nobel Prize in Economics laureates, such as Joseph Stiglitz, James Heckman, and Paul Krugman. Another recipient of the prize, Robert Shiller, argues that bitcoin is rather a fad that may become an asset class. He describes its price growth as an ""epidemic"", driven by contagious narratives.According to research published in the International Review of Financial Analysis in 2018, Bitcoin as an asset is highly volatile and does not behave like any other conventional asset. According to one 2022 analysis published in The Journal of Alternative Investments, bitcoin was less volatile than oil, silver, US Treasuries, and 190 stocks in the S&P 500 during and after the 2020 stock market crash. The term ""hodl"" was created in December 2013 for holding Bitcoin rather than selling it during periods of volatility.Economists, investors, and the central bank of Estonia have described bitcoin as a potential Ponzi scheme. Legal scholar Eric Posner disagrees as ""a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems more like a collective delusion."" A 2014 World Bank report also concluded that bitcoin was not a deliberate Ponzi scheme.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Alternative currency
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Nakamoto, Satoshi (31 October 2008). ""Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"" (PDF). bitcoin.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 March 2014. Retrieved 28 April 2014."
+Digital currency,"Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital currencies include cryptocurrency, virtual currency and central bank digital currency. Digital currency may be recorded on a distributed database on the internet, a centralized electronic computer database owned by a company or bank, within digital files or even on a stored-value card.Digital currencies exhibit properties similar to traditional currencies, but generally do not have a classical physical form of fiat currency historically that can be held in the hand, like currencies with printed banknotes or minted coins. However, they do have a physical form in an unclassical sense coming from the computer to computer and computer to human interactions and the information and processing power of the servers that store and keep track of money. This unclassical physical form allows nearly instantaneous transactions over the internet and vastly lowers the cost associated with distributing notes and coins: for example, of the types of money in the UK economy, 3% are notes and coins, and 79% as electronic money (in the form of bank deposits). Usually not issued by a governmental body, virtual currencies are not considered a legal tender and they enable ownership transfer across governmental borders.This type of currency may be used to buy physical goods and services, but may also be restricted to certain communities such as for use inside an online game.Digital money can either be centralized, where there is a central point of control over the money supply (for instance, a bank), or decentralized, where the control over the money supply is predetermined or agreed upon democratically.
+
+
+== History ==
+Precursory ideas for digital currencies were presented in electronic payment methods such as the Sabre (travel reservation system). In 1983, a research paper titled ""Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments"" by David Chaum introduced the idea of digital cash. In 1989, he founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in Amsterdam to commercialize the ideas in his research. It filed for bankruptcy in 1998.e-gold was the first widely used Internet money, introduced in 1996, and grew to several million users before the US Government shut it down in 2008. e-gold has been referenced to as ""digital currency"" by both US officials and academia. In 1997, Coca-Cola offered buying from vending machines using mobile payments. PayPal launched its USD-denominated service in 1998. In 2009, bitcoin was launched, which marked the start of decentralized blockchain-based digital currencies with no central server, and no tangible assets held in reserve.  Also known as cryptocurrencies, blockchain-based digital currencies proved resistant to attempt by government to regulate them, because there was no central organization or person with the power to turn them off.Origins of digital currencies date back to the 1990s Dot-com bubble. Another known digital currency service was Liberty Reserve, founded in 2006; it lets users convert dollars or euros to Liberty Reserve Dollars or Euros, and exchange them freely with one another at a 1% fee. Several digital currency operations were reputed to be used for Ponzi schemes and money laundering, and were prosecuted by the U.S. government for operating without MSB licenses. Q coins or QQ coins, were used as a type of commodity-based digital currency on Tencent QQ's messaging platform and emerged in early 2005. Q coins were so effective in China that they were said to have had a destabilizing effect on the Chinese Yuan currency due to speculation. Recent interest in cryptocurrencies has prompted renewed interest in digital currencies, with bitcoin, introduced in 2008, becoming the most widely used and accepted digital currency.
+
+
+== Sub-types of digital currency and comparisons ==
+
+
+=== Digital currency as a specific type and as a meta-group name ===
+Digital currency is a term that refers to a specific type of electronic currency with specific properties. Digital currency is also a term used to include the meta-group of sub-types of digital currency, the specific meaning can only be determined within the specific legal or contextual case. Legally and technically, there already are a myriad of legal definitions of digital currency and the many digital currency sub-types.  Combining different possible properties, there exists an extensive number of implementations creating many and numerous sub-types of digital currency.  Many governmental jurisdictions have implemented their own unique definition for digital currency, virtual currency, cryptocurrency, e-money, network money, e-cash, and other types of digital currency.  Within any specific government jurisdiction, different agencies and regulators define different and often conflicting meanings for the different types of digital currency based on the specific properties of a specific currency type or sub-type.
+
+
+=== Digital versus virtual currency ===
+
+A virtual currency has been defined in 2012 by the European Central Bank as ""a type of unregulated, digital money, which is issued and usually controlled by its developers, and used and accepted among the members of a specific virtual community"". The US Department of Treasury in 2013 defined it more tersely as ""a medium of exchange that operates like a currency in some environments, but does not have all the attributes of real currency"". The US Department of Treasury also stated that, ""Virtual currency does not have legal-tender status in any jurisdiction.""According to the European Central Bank's 2015 ""Virtual currency schemes – a further analysis"" report, virtual currency is a digital representation of value, not issued by a central bank, credit institution or e-money institution, which, in some circumstances, can be used as an alternative to money. In the previous report of October 2012, the virtual currency was defined as a type of unregulated, digital money, which is issued and usually controlled by its developers, and used and accepted among the members of a specific virtual community.According to the Bank for International Settlements' November 2015 ""Digital currencies"" report, it is an asset represented in digital form and having some monetary characteristics. Digital currency can be denominated to a sovereign currency and issued by the issuer responsible to redeem digital money for cash. In that case, digital currency represents electronic money (e-money). Digital currency denominated in its own units of value or with decentralized or automatic issuance will be considered as a virtual currency. As such, bitcoin is a digital currency but also a type of virtual currency. Bitcoin and its alternatives are based on cryptographic algorithms, so these kinds of virtual currencies are also called cryptocurrencies.
+
+
+=== Digital versus cryptocurrency ===
+Cryptocurrency is a sub-type of digital currency and a digital asset that relies on cryptography to chain together digital signatures of asset transfers, peer-to-peer networking and decentralization. In some cases a proof-of-work or proof-of-stake scheme is used to create and manage the currency. Cryptocurrencies can allow electronic money systems to be decentralized. When implemented with a blockchain, the digital ledger system or record keeping system uses cryptography to edit separate shards of database entries that are distributed across many separate servers. The first and most popular system is bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic monetary system based on cryptography.
+
+
+=== Digital versus traditional currency ===
+Most of the traditional money supply is bank money held on computers. They are considered digital currency in some cases. One could argue that our increasingly cashless society means that all currencies are becoming digital currencies, but they are not presented to us as such.
+
+
+== Types of systems ==
+
+
+=== Centralized systems ===
+
+Currency can be exchanged electronically using debit cards and credit cards using electronic funds transfer at point of sale.
+
+
+==== Mobile digital wallets ====
+A number of electronic money systems use contactless payment transfer in order to facilitate easy payment and give the payee more confidence in not letting go of their electronic wallet during the transaction.
+
+In 1994 Mondex and National Westminster Bank provided an ""electronic purse"" to residents of Swindon
+In about 2005 Telefónica and BBVA Bank launched a payment system in Spain called Mobipay which used simple short message service facilities of feature phones intended for pay-as-you-go services including taxis and pre-pay phone recharges via a BBVA current bank account debit.
+In January 2010, Venmo launched as a mobile payment system through SMS, which transformed into a social app where friends can pay each other for minor expenses like a cup of coffee, rent and pay a share of the restaurant bill when one has forgotten their wallet. It is popular with college students, but has some security issues. It can be linked to a bank account, credit/debit card or have a loaded value to limit the amount of loss in case of a security breach. Credit cards and non-major debit cards incur a 3% processing fee.
+On 19 September 2011, Google Wallet released in the United States to make it easy to carry all one's credit/debit cards on a phone.
+In 2012 Ireland's O2 (owned by Telefónica) launched Easytrip to pay road tolls which were charged to the mobile phone account or prepay credit.
+The UK's O2 invented O2 Wallet at about the same time. The wallet can be charged with regular bank accounts or cards and discharged by participating retailers using a technique known as 'money messages'. The service closed in 2014.
+On 9 September 2014, Apple Pay was announced at the iPhone 6 event. In October 2014 it was released as an update to work on iPhone 6 and Apple Watch. It is very similar to Google Wallet, but for Apple devices only.
+
+
+==== Central bank digital currency ====
+A central bank digital currency (CBDC) is a form of universally accessible digital money in a nation and holds the same value as the country's paper currency. Like a cryptocurrency, a CBCD is held in the form of tokens. CBDCs are different from regular digital cash forms like in online bank accounts because CBDCs are established through the central bank within a country, with liabilities held by one's government, rather than from a commercial bank. Approximately nine countries have already established a CBDC, with interest in the system increasing highly throughout the world. In these nations, CBDCs have been used as a form of exchange and a way for governments to try to prevent risks from occurring within their financial systems.A major problem with central bank digital currencies is deciding whether the currency should be easily trackable. If it's traceable, the government has more control than it currently does. Additionally, there's a technical aspect to consider: whether CBDCs should be based on tokens or accounts and how much anonymity users should have.
+
+
+=== Decentralized systems ===
+
+Digital Currency has been implemented in some cases as a decentralized system of any combination of currency issuance, ownership record, ownership transfer authorization and validation, and currency storage.
+Per the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), ""These schemes do not distinguish between users based on location, and
+therefore allow value to be transferred between users across borders. Moreover, the speed of a
+transaction is not conditional on the location of the payer and payee.""
+
+
+== Law ==
+Since 2001, the European Union has implemented the E-Money Directive ""on the taking up, pursuit and prudential supervision of the business of electronic money institutions"" last amended in 2009.In the United States, electronic money is governed by Article 4A of the Uniform Commercial Code for wholesale transactions and the Electronic Fund Transfer Act for consumer transactions. Provider's responsibility and consumer's liability are regulated under Regulation E.
+
+
+== Regulation ==
+Virtual currencies pose challenges for central banks, financial regulators, departments or ministries of finance, as well as fiscal authorities and statistical authorities.
+
+
+== Adoption by governments ==
+As of 2016, over 24 countries are investing in distributed ledger technologies (DLT) with $1.4bn in investments. In addition, over 90 central banks are engaged in DLT discussions, including implications of a central bank issued digital currency.
+Hong Kong's Octopus card system: Launched in 1997 as an electronic purse for public transportation, is the most successful and mature implementation of contactless smart cards used for mass transit payments. After only 5 years, 25 percent of Octopus card transactions are unrelated to transit, and accepted by more than 160 merchants.
+London Transport's Oyster card system: Oyster is a plastic smartcard that can hold pay-as-you-go credit, Travelcards and Bus & Tram season tickets. An Oyster card can be used to travel on bus, Tube, tram, DLR, London Overground and most National Rail services in London.
+Japan's FeliCa: A contactless RFID smart card, used in a variety of ways such as in ticketing systems for public transportation, e-money, and residence door keys.
+The Netherlands' Chipknip: As an electronic cash system used in the Netherlands, all ATM cards issued by the Dutch banks had value that could be loaded via Chipknip loading stations. For people without a bank, pre-paid Chipknip cards could be purchased at various locations in the Netherlands. As of 1 January 2015, payment can no longer be made with Chipknip.
+Belgium's Proton: An electronic purse application for debit cards in Belgium. Introduced in February 1995, as a means to replace cash for small transactions. The system was retired on 31 December 2014.In March 2018, the Marshall Islands became the first country to issue their own cryptocurrency and certify it as legal tender; the currency is called the ""sovereign"".
+
+
+=== United States of America ===
+
+
+==== US Commodity Futures Trading Commission guidance ====
+The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has determined virtual currencies are properly defined as commodities in 2015. The CFTC warned investors against pump and dump schemes that use virtual currencies.
+
+
+==== US Internal Revenue Service guidance ====
+The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ruling Notice 2014-21 defines any virtual currency, cryptocurrency and digital currency as property; gains and losses are taxable within standard property policies.
+
+
+==== US Treasury guidance ====
+On 20 March 2013, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a guidance to clarify how the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act applied to persons creating, exchanging, and transmitting virtual currencies.
+
+
+==== US Securities and Exchange Commission guidance ====
+In May 2014 the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ""warned about the hazards of bitcoin and other virtual currencies"".
+
+
+==== New York state regulation ====
+In July 2014, the New York State Department of Financial Services proposed the most comprehensive regulation of virtual currencies to date, commonly called BitLicense. It has gathered input from bitcoin supporters and the financial industry through public hearings and a comment period until 21 October 2014 to customize the rules. The proposal per NY DFS press release ""sought to strike an appropriate balance that helps protect consumers and root out illegal activity"". It has been criticized by smaller companies to favor established institutions, and Chinese bitcoin exchanges have complained that the rules are ""overly broad in its application outside the United States"".
+
+
+=== Canada ===
+The Bank of Canada has explored the possibility of creating a version of its currency on the blockchain.The Bank of Canada teamed up with the nation's five largest banks – and the blockchain consulting firm R3 – for what was known as Project Jasper. In a simulation run in 2016, the central bank issued CAD-Coins onto a blockchain similar Ethereum. The banks used the CAD-Coins to exchange money the way they do at the end of each day to settle their master accounts.
+
+
+=== China ===
+
+In 2016, Fan Yifei, a deputy governor of China's central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), wrote that ""the conditions are ripe for digital currencies, which can reduce operating costs, increase efficiency and enable a wide range of new applications"". According to Fan Yifei, the best way to take advantage of the situation is for central banks to take the lead, both in supervising private digital currencies and in developing digital legal tender of their own.In October 2019, the PBOC announced that a digital renminbi would be released after years of preparation. The version of the currency, known as DCEP (Digital Currency Electronic Payment), is based on cryptocurrency which can be ""decoupled"" from the banking system. The announcement received a variety of responses: some believe it is more about domestic control and surveillance.In December 2020, the PBOC distributed CN¥20 million worth of digital renminbi to the residents of Suzhou through a lottery program to further promote the government-backed digital currency. Recipients of the currency could make both offline and online purchases, expanding on an earlier trial that did not require internet connection through the inclusion of online stores in the program. Around 20,000 transactions were reported by the e-commerce company JD.com in the first 24 hours of the trial. Contrary to other online payment platforms such as Alipay or WeChat Pay, the digital currency does not have transaction fees.
+
+
+=== Denmark ===
+The Danish government proposed getting rid of the obligation for selected retailers to accept payment in cash, moving the country closer to a ""cashless"" economy. The Danish Chamber of Commerce is backing the move. Nearly a third of the Danish population uses MobilePay, a smartphone application for transferring money.
+
+
+=== Ecuador ===
+A law passed by the National Assembly of Ecuador gives the government permission to make payments in electronic currency and proposes the creation of a national digital currency. ""Electronic money will stimulate the economy; it will be possible to attract more Ecuadorian citizens, especially those who do not have checking or savings accounts and credit cards alone. The electronic currency will be backed by the assets of the Central Bank of Ecuador"", the National Assembly said in a statement. In December 2015, Sistema de Dinero Electrónico (""electronic money system"") was launched, making Ecuador the first country with a state-run electronic payment system.
+
+
+=== El Salvador ===
+On Jun 9, 2021, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador has become the first country in the world to officially classify Bitcoin as legal currency. Starting 90 days after approval, every business must accept Bitcoin as legal tender for goods or services, unless it is unable to provide the technology needed to do the transaction.
+
+
+=== Netherlands ===
+The Dutch central bank is experimenting with a blockchain-based virtual currency called ""DNBCoin"".
+
+
+=== India ===
+The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a real-time payment system for instant money transfers between any two bank accounts held in participating banks in India. The interface has been developed by the National Payments Corporation of India and is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. This digital payment system is available 24 hours a day, every day of the year. UPI is agnostic to the type of user and is used for person to person, person to business, business to person and business to business transactions.
+Transactions can be initiated by the payer or the payee. To identify a bank account it uses a unique Virtual Payment Address (VPA) of the type 'accountID@bankID'. The VPA can be assigned by the bank, but can also be self specified just like an email address. The simplest and most common form of VPA is 'mobilenumber@upi'. Money can be transferred from one VPA to another or from one VPA to any bank account in a participating bank using account number and bank branch details. Transfers can be inter-bank or intra-bank.
+UPI has no intermediate holding pond for money. It withdraws funds directly from the bank account of the sender and deposits them directly into the recipient's bank account whenever a transaction is requested. A sender can initiate and authorise a transfer using a two step secure process: login using a pass code → initiate → verify using a passcode. A receiver can initiate a payment request on the system to send the payer a notification or by presenting a QR code. On receiving the request, the payer can decline or confirm the payment using the same two step process: login → confirm → verify. The system is extraordinarily user friendly to the extent that even technophobes and barely literate users are adopting it in huge numbers.
+
+
+=== Russia ===
+Government-controlled Sberbank of Russia owns YooMoney – electronic payment service and digital currency of the same name.
+
+
+=== Sweden ===
+Sweden is in the process of replacing all of its physical banknotes, and most of its coins by mid-2017. However, the new banknotes and coins of the Swedish krona will probably be circulating at about half the 2007 peak of 12,494 kronor per capita. The Riksbank is planning to begin discussions of an electronic currency issued by the central bank to which ""is not to replace cash, but to act as complement to it"". Deputy Governor Cecilia Skingsley states that cash will continue to spiral out of use in Sweden, and while it is currently fairly easy to get cash in Sweden, it is often very difficult to deposit it into bank accounts, especially in rural areas. No decision has been currently made about the decision to create ""e-krona"".
+In her speech, Skingsley states: ""The first question is whether e-krona should be booked in accounts or whether the ekrona should be some form of a digitally transferable unit that does not need an underlying account structure, roughly like cash."" Skingsley also states: ""Another important question is whether the Riksbank should issue e-krona directly to the general public or go via the banks, as we do now with banknotes and coins."" Other questions will be addressed like interest rates, should they be positive, negative, or zero?
+
+
+=== Switzerland ===
+In 2016, a city government first accepted digital currency in payment of city fees.  Zug, Switzerland, added bitcoin as a means of paying small amounts, up to SFr 200, in a test and an attempt to advance Zug as a region that is advancing future technologies.  In order to reduce risk, Zug immediately converts any bitcoin received into the Swiss currency. Swiss Federal Railways, government-owned railway company of Switzerland, sells bitcoins at its ticket machines.
+
+
+=== UK ===
+In 2016, the UK's chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, advised the government to consider using a blockchain-based digital currency.The chief economist of Bank of England, the central bank of the United Kingdom, proposed the abolition of paper currency. The Bank has also taken an interest in blockchain. In 2016 it has embarked on a multi-year research programme to explore the implications of a central bank issued digital currency. The Bank of England has produced several research papers on the topic. One suggests that the economic benefits of issuing a digital currency on a distributed ledger could add as much as 3 percent to a country's economic output. The Bank said that it wanted the next version of the bank's basic software infrastructure to be compatible with distributed ledgers.
+
+
+== Adoption by financial actors ==
+Government attitude dictates the tendency among established heavy financial actors that both are risk-averse and conservative. None of these offered services around cryptocurrencies and much of the criticism came from them. ""The first mover among these has been Fidelity Investments, Boston based Fidelity Digital Assets LLC will provide enterprise-grade custody solutions, a cryptocurrency trading execution platform and institutional advising services 24 hours a day, seven days a week designed to align with blockchain's always-on trading cycle"". It will work with Bitcoin and Ethereum with general availability scheduled for 2019.
+
+
+== Hard vs. soft digital currencies ==
+Hard electronic currency does not have the ability to be disputed or reversed when used. It is nearly impossible to reverse a transaction, justified or not. It is very similar to cash. Contrarily, soft electronic currency payments can be reversed. Usually, when a payment is reversed there is a ""clearing time."" A hard currency can be ""softened"" with a third-party service.
+
+
+== Criticism ==
+Many existing digital currencies have not yet seen widespread usage, and may not be easily used or exchanged. Banks generally do not accept or offer services for them. There are concerns that cryptocurrencies are extremely risky due to their very high volatility and potential for pump and dump schemes. Regulators in several countries have warned against their use and some have taken concrete regulatory measures to dissuade users. The non-cryptocurrencies are all centralized. As such, they may be shut down or seized by a government at any time. The more anonymous a currency is, the more attractive it is to criminals, regardless of the intentions of its creators. Bitcoin has also been criticised for its energy inefficient SHA-256-based proof of work.According to Barry Eichengreen, an economist known for his work on monetary and financial economics, ""cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are too volatile to possess the essential attributes of money. Stablecoins have fragile currency pegs that diminish their utility in transactions. And central bank digital currencies are a solution in search of a problem.""
+
+
+== List ==
+
+
+=== Non-cryptocurrencies ===
+
+
+== See also ==
+Complementary currency
+Automated clearing house
+Cashless catering
+Cashless society
+Community Exchange System
+Cryptocurrency exchange
+Cryptocurrency wallet
+Central bank digital currency
+Digital wallet
+E-commerce payment system
+Electronic Money Association
+Electronic funds transfer
+Local exchange trading system
+Payment system
+Private currency
+Privacy
+
+
+== References =="
+Central bank digital currency,"A central bank digital currency (CBDC; also called digital fiat currency or digital base money) is a digital currency issued by a central bank, rather than by a commercial bank. It is also a liability of the central bank and denominated in the sovereign currency, as is the case with physical banknotes and coins.
+
+There are two general models that CBDCs most commonly described as falling under: retail and wholesale. Retail CBDCs are designed for households and businesses to make payments for everyday transactions, while wholesale CBDCs are designed for financial institutions and operate similarly to central bank reserves. Other CBDC models have emerged as well over time. Most notably, the Federal Reserve proposed an intermediated CBDC in 2022. In this model, the central bank issues a sort of retail CBDC, but financial intermediaries offer customer services.
+The present concept of CBDCs differs from virtual currency and cryptocurrency in that a CBDC is or would be issued by a state. Most CBDC implementations will likely not use or need any sort of distributed ledger such as a blockchain.In 2023, over 120 different jurisdictions, including major economies like the ECB, UK, and the US, were evaluating national digital currencies. As it currently stands, 9 countries and the 8 islands making up the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union have launched CBDCs; 38 countries and Hong Kong have CBDC pilot programs; and 67 countries and 2 currency unions are researching CBDCs.CBDCs have faced a plethora of criticisms among those being that a ""centrally managed, centrally controlled, CBDC is a tool for coercion and control"" and that it would ""allow the government to spy on"" the citizenry.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+Although the term ""CBDC"" did not become widely used until after 2019, central banks have researched and launched digital currency projects for decades. For example, Finland's central bank issued the Avant stored value e-money card in the 1990s. In 2014, the Chinese central bank began researching the idea of issuing a CBDC. Elsewhere, the Ecuadorian central bank operated a mobile payment system from 2014 to 2018.
+
+
+== Implementation ==
+A central bank digital currency would likely be implemented using a database run by the central bank, government, or approved private-sector entities. The database would keep a record (with appropriate privacy and cryptographic protections) of the amount of money held by every entity, such as people and corporations.In contrast to cryptocurrency, a central bank digital currency would be centrally controlled (even if it was on a distributed database), and so a blockchain or other distributed ledger would likely not be required or useful - even as they were the original inspiration for the concept.In 2023, the central banks of 114 countries accounting for 95% of the world’s GDP were said to be in various stages of evaluating the launch of a national digital currency. These included the ECB, the UK, and the US. China's digital RMB was the first digital currency to be issued by a major economy. Six central banks have launched a CBDC: the Central Bank of The Bahamas (Sand Dollar), the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (DCash), the Central Bank of Nigeria (e-Naira), the Bank of Jamaica (JamDex),  People's Bank of China (Digital renminbi), the Reserve Bank of India (Digital Rupee), and Bank of Russia (Digital Ruble). The Central Bank of Brazil has been rolling out tests of a digital Brazilian currency (Drex) since March 2023. The ECB/Eurozone decided in October 2023 to move forward to the preparation phase for the potential issuance of a digital euro after a two-year study phase.Some states have also issued, or have considered issuing, cryptocurrencies: these include Venezuela (Petro) and the Marshall Islands (Sovereign). These cryptocurrencies are often considered with the intent of increasing a state's independence from global financial systems, such as by reducing dependence on a foreign currency or by evading international sanctions.Contrasting attitudes towards digital currencies were demonstrated by developments in the UK and Switzerland in February 2023. The UK Treasury and the Bank of England said a state-backed digital pound was likely to be launched some time after 2025. Two weeks later, a Swiss lobby group triggered a national vote on maintaining a ""sufficient quantity"" of cash in circulation over fears that electronic payments make it easier for the state to monitor its citizens' actions. In a comment on the British government’s plans, the BBC's Faisal Islam said the issue was about access to the data attached to every spending transaction, and whether people might choose to trust a global company more than the state: ""The eye here is on maintaining UK monetary sovereignty against upheaval from the likes of Big Tech.""A major problem with central bank digital currencies is deciding whether the currency should be easily trackable. If it's traceable, the government has more control than it currently does. Additionally, there's a technical aspect to consider: whether CBDCs should be based on tokens or accounts and how much anonymity users should have.
+
+
+== Characteristics ==
+A CBDC is a high-security digital instrument; like paper banknotes, it is a means of payment, a unit of account, and a store of value. And like paper currency, each unit is uniquely identifiable to prevent counterfeiting. CBDC will have implications for commercial banks, probably in the field of lowering banks' commissions, no big customer data-selling ability, accumulating the deposits and deposit policies and credit policies due to higher funding costs for banks.Digital fiat currency is part of the base money supply, together with other forms of the currency. As such, DFC is a liability of the central bank just as physical currency is. It is a digital bearer instrument that can be stored, transferred and transmitted by all kinds of digital payment systems and services. The validity of the digital fiat currency is independent of the digital payment systems storing and transferring the digital fiat currency.Proposals for CBDC implementation often involve the provision of universal bank accounts at the central banks for all citizens.
+
+
+== Benefits and impacts ==
+Governments and central banks are studying CBDCs and their implications for financial inclusion, economic growth, technology innovation, and the efficiency of bank transactions. Potential advantages include:
+
+Technological efficiency: instead of relying on intermediaries such as banks and clearing houses, money transfers and payments could be made in real time, directly from the payer to the payee.  Being real time has some advantages:
+Reduces risk: payment for goods and services often needs to be done in a timely manner and when payment verification is slow, merchants usually accept the risk of some payments not succeeding in exchange for faster service to customers. When these risks are eliminated with instant payment verifications, merchants no longer need to use intermediaries to handle the risk or to absorb the risk cost themselves.
+Reduces complexity: merchants will not need to separately keep track of transactions that are slow (where the customer claims to have paid but the money has not arrived yet), therefore eliminate the waiting queue, which could simplify the transaction process from payment to rendition of goods/services.
+Reduces (or eliminates) transaction fees: current payment systems like Visa, Mastercard, American Express etc. have a fee attached to each transaction and lowering or eliminating these fees could lead to widespread price drops and increased adoption of digital payments.
+Financial inclusion: safe money accounts at the central banks could constitute a strong instrument of financial inclusion, allowing any legal resident or citizen to be provided with a free or low-cost basic bank account.
+Preventing illicit activity: A CBDC makes it feasible for a central bank to keep track of the exact location of every unit of the currency (assuming the more probable centralized, database form)Tax collection: It makes tax avoidance and tax evasion much more difficult, since it would become impossible to use methods such as offshore banking and unreported employment to hide financial activity from the central bank or government. However, cryptos like Bitcoin  risk undermining effort to crack down on corporate tax avoidance.
+Combating crime: It makes it much easier to spot criminal activity (by observing financial activity), and thus put an end to it. Furthermore, in cases where criminal activity has already occurred, tracking makes it much harder to successfully launder money, and it would often be straightforward to instantly reverse a transaction and return money to the victim of the crime.
+Proof of transaction: a digital record exists to prove that money changed hands between two parties which avoids problems inherent to cash such as short-changing, cash theft and conflicting testimonies.
+Protection of money as a public utility: digital currencies issued by central banks would provide a modern alternative to physical cash – whose abolition is currently being envisaged.
+Safety of payments systems: A secure and standard interoperable digital payment instrument issued and governed by a Central Bank and used as the national digital payment instruments boosts confidence in privately controlled money systems and increases trust in the entire national payment system while also boosting competition in payment systems.
+Preservation of seigniorage income: public digital currency issuance would avoid a predictable reduction of seigniorage income for governments in the event of a disappearance of physical cash.
+Banking competition: the provision of free bank accounts at the central bank offering complete safety of money deposits could strengthen competition between banks to attract bank deposits, for example by offering once again remunerated sight deposits.
+Monetary policy transmission: the issuance of central bank base money through transfers to the public could constitute a new channel for monetary policy transmission (i.e. helicopter money), which would allow more direct control of the money supply than indirect tools such as quantitative easing and interest rates, and possibly lead the way towards a full reserve banking system. In digital Yuan trial in Shenzhen, the CBDC was programmed with an expiration date, which encouraged spending and discouraged money from sitting in a saving account. In the end, 90% of vouchers were spent in shops. Demurrage could be implemented, such as by shaving off fractions of the value on a scheduled basis, as a supplement to traditional inflation targets.
+Financial safety: CBDC would provide an alternative to fractional reserve banking for daily uses, for those who want to avoid all risk of bank runs, despite the relative safety provided by deposit insurance.
+
+
+== Risks ==
+Despite having potential advantages, CBDCs remain a controversial topic, and there are risks associated with their implementation.
+
+Banking system disintermediation: With the ability to provide digital currency directly to its citizens, one concern is that depositors would shift out of the banking system. Customers may deem the safety, liquidity, solvibility, and publicity of CBDCs to be more attractive, weakening the balance sheet position of commercial banks. In the extreme, this could precipitate potential bank runs and thus make banks' funding positions weaker. However, the Bank of England found that if the introduction of CBDC follows a set of core principles, the risk of a system-wide run from bank deposits to CBDC is addressed. A central bank could also limit the demand of CBDCs by setting a ceiling on the amount of holdings.Centralization: Since most central bank digital currencies are centralized, rather than decentralized like most cryptocurrencies, the controllers of the issuance of CBDCs can add or remove money from anyone's account with a flip of a switch. In contrast, cryptocurrencies with a distributed ledger such as Bitcoin prevent this unless a group of users controlling more than 50% of mining power is in agreement.
+Digital dollarization: A well-run foreign digital currency could become a replacement for a local currency for the same reasons as those described in dollarization. The announcement of Facebook's Libra contributed to the increased attention to CBDCs by central bankers, as well as China's progress with DCEP to that of several Asian economies.
+Privacy:
+""Governments have direct visibility of financial transactions"", an ""eagle-eyed view on the spending of everyone"".
+Digital currency would give a country ""broad new powers when it comes to surveillance and controlling its population.""
+Data from tracing money routes could lead to losing financial privacy if the CBDC implementation does not have adequate privacy protections. This could lead to encouraging of self-censorship, deterioration of freedom of expression and association, and ultimately to stalling social developments.
+Government Social Manipulation:
+Digital currency ""will simply become an extension of the surveillance state"" and ""it could see citizens fined in a split second for behaviors deemed undesirable. Dissidents and activists could see their wallets emptied or taken offline.""
+Limiting individual freedom: ""Digital currencies could also empower the state to make it impossible to donate to a vocal NGO""
+Limiting or prohibiting purchases of products: Digital currency could prohibit a ""purchase alcohol on a weekday. ""
+Digital currency "" is also programmable. The government could theoretically give out money that expires within a certain period of time or money that could only be used on certain items, which could be used to induce behaviour that the government is seeking.""
+Direct interaction with individuals: ""In times of crisis, they enable governments to send aid and stimulus payments directly to the smartphones of affected citizens, regardless of whether the recipients have a bank account or not.""
+Forcing consumer behavior: ""Digital currencies can also be tailored to specific purposes. For example, in the Chinese pilot program, money has an expiration date of a few weeks because authorities are hoping to drive consumption""
+
+
+== See also ==
+ENaira
+Digital renminbi
+Digital rupee
+Digital currency
+mBridge
+M-Pesa
+E-Cedi
+History of CBDCs by country
+Central bank
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker"
+Litecoin,"Litecoin (Abbreviation: LTC; sign: Ł) is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open-source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. Inspired by Bitcoin, Litecoin was among the earliest altcoins, starting in October 2011.  In technical details, the Litecoin main chain shares a slightly modified Bitcoin codebase. The practical effects of those codebase differences are lower transaction fees, faster transaction confirmations, and faster mining difficulty retargeting. Due to its underlying similarities to Bitcoin, Litecoin has historically been referred to as the ""silver to Bitcoin's gold."" In 2022, Litecoin added optional privacy features via soft fork through the MWEB (MimbleWimble extension block) upgrade.
+
+
+== Design ==
+
+
+=== Units and divisibility ===
+Currency codes for representing litecoin is LTC. Its Unicode character is Ł.
+One litecoin is divisible to eight decimal places. Units for smaller amounts of litecoin are:
+
+lites, or millilitecoin (mŁ), equal to 1⁄1000 litecoin,
+photons, or microlitecoin (μŁ), equal to 1⁄1000000,
+the litoshi, which is the smallest possible division, and named in homage to bitcoin's smallest denomination the satoshi, representing 1⁄100000000 (one hundred millionth) litecoin.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Pre-Litecoin ===
+By 2011, Bitcoin mining was largely performed by GPUs. This raised concern in some users that mining now had a high barrier to entry, and that CPU resources were becoming obsolete and worthless for mining. Using code from Bitcoin, a new alternative currency was created called Tenebrix (TBX). Tenebrix replaced the SHA-256 rounds in Bitcoin's mining algorithm with the scrypt function, which had been specifically designed in 2009 to be expensive to accelerate with FPGA or ASIC chips. This would allow Tenebrix to have been ""GPU-resistant"", and utilize the available CPU resources from bitcoin miners. Tenebrix itself was a successor project to an earlier cryptocurrency which replaced Bitcoin's issuance schedule with a constant block reward (thus creating an unlimited money supply). However, the developers included a clause in the code that would allow them to claim 7.7 million TBX for themselves at no cost, which was criticized by users.To address this, Charlie Lee, a Google employee who would later become engineering director at Coinbase, created an alternative version of Tenebrix called Fairbrix (FBX). Litecoin inherits the scrypt mining algorithm from Fairbrix, but returns to the limited money supply of Bitcoin, with other changes.
+
+
+=== Creation and launch ===
+Lee released Litecoin via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011. The Litecoin network went live on October 13, 2011.
+Litecoin was a source code fork of the Bitcoin Core client, originally differing by having a decreased block generation time (2.5 minutes), increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm (scrypt, instead of SHA-256), faster difficulty retarget, and a slightly modified GUI.
+
+
+=== 2011–2016 ===
+After launch, the early growth of Litecoin was aided by its increasing exchange availability and liquidity on early exchanges such as BTC-e.   During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours.In early 2014, Lee suggested merge mining (auxPOW) Dogecoin with Litecoin to the Dogecoin community at large. In September 2014, Dogecoin began merge-mining with Litecoin, providing increased security for Dogecoin and a permanent block subsidy that previously was not available with Litecoin mining.
+
+
+=== 2017–2021 ===
+In 2020, PayPal added the ability for users to purchase a derivative of Litecoin along with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash which could not be withdrawn or spent as part of its Crypto feature.
+In September 2021, a fake press release was published on GlobeNewswire announcing a partnership between Litecoin and Walmart. This caused the price of Litecoin to increase by around 30%, before the press release was revealed as a hoax.
+
+
+=== 2022–present ===
+In May 2022, MWEB (Mimblewimble Extension Blocks) upgrade was activated on the Litecoin network as a soft fork. This upgrade provides users with the option of sending confidential Litecoin transactions, in which the amount being sent is only known between the sender and receiver.In June 2022, PayPal added the ability for users to transfer Litecoin along with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash between PayPal to other wallets and exchanges.
+
+
+== Differences from Bitcoin ==
+Litecoin is different in some ways from Bitcoin:
+
+The targeted block time is every 2.5 minutes for Litecoin, as opposed to Bitcoin's 10 minutes. This allows Litecoin to confirm transactions four times faster than Bitcoin.
+Scrypt, an alternative proof-of-work algorithm, is used for Litecoin. It differs from Bitcoin's SHA-256 algorithm in part by including a sequential memory-hard function, requiring asymptotically more memory than an algorithm which is not memory-hard. Due to Litecoin's use of the scrypt algorithm, FPGA and ASIC devices made for mining Litecoin are more complicated to create and more expensive to produce than they are for Bitcoin, which uses SHA-256.
+Litecoin is merge mined with another prominent cryptocurrency (Dogecoin), increasing miner compensation and network security for both blockchains.
+Litecoin has a maximum circulating supply of Ł84,000,000, which is four times larger than Bitcoin's maximum circulating supply of ₿21,000,000.
+Both Litecoin and Bitcoin retarget their mining difficulty every 2016 blocks. However, due to the 4x faster block speed for Litecoin, mining difficulty retargets occur approximately every 3.5 days. This compares to approximately every 14 days for Bitcoin.
+MWEB optional privacy was added to Litecoin's base layer in May 2022 via soft fork. This allows amounts held within wallets and transaction amounts within MWEB to be private.Third party vendors providing point of sale infrastructure for Litecoin include companies such as Verifone, BitPay, and Coingate. BitPay added support for Litecoin in 2021, with Litecoin initially accounting for less than 3% of BitPay transactions. As of June 2023, Litecoin surpassed Bitcoin as the #1 most used method for transactions by payment count with 34.9%.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of scrypt crypto currencies
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Litecoin Foundation"
+Satoshi Nakamoto,"Satoshi Nakamoto  is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Nakamoto was active in the development of bitcoin up until December 2010.There has been widespread speculation about Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity, with various people posited as the person or persons behind the name. Though Nakamoto's name is Japanese, and he stated in 2012 that he was a man living in Japan, most of the speculation has involved software and cryptography experts in the United States or Europe.
+
+
+== Development of bitcoin ==
+Nakamoto stated that work on the writing of the code for Bitcoin began in the spring of 2007. On 18 August 2008, he or a colleague registered the domain name bitcoin.org, and created a web site at that address. On 31 October, Nakamoto published a white paper on the cryptography mailing list at metzdowd.com describing a digital cryptocurrency, titled ""Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"".On 9 January 2009, Nakamoto released version 0.1 of the Bitcoin software on SourceForge and launched the network by defining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins. Embedded in the coinbase transaction of this block is the text: ""The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"", citing a headline in the UK newspaper The Times published on that date. This note has been interpreted as both a timestamp and a derisive comment on the alleged instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.: 18 Nakamoto continued to collaborate with other developers on the Bitcoin software until mid-2010, making all modifications to the source code himself. He then gave control of the source code repository and network alert key to Gavin Andresen, transferred several related domains to various prominent members of the bitcoin community, and stopped his recognized involvement in the project.Nakamoto owns between 750,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoin. In November 2021, when Bitcoin hit its still-highest value of over US$68,000, that would have made his net worth up to US$73 billion, making him the 15th-richest person in the world at the time.
+
+
+== Characteristics and identity ==
+Nakamoto has never revealed personal information when discussing technical matters, though has at times provided commentary on banking and fractional-reserve banking. On his P2P Foundation profile as of 2012, Nakamoto claimed to be a 37-year-old male who lived in Japan; however, some speculated he was unlikely to be Japanese due to his native-level use of English.Some have considered that Nakamoto might be a team of people. Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who read the bitcoin code, said that Nakamoto could either be a ""team of people"" or a ""genius""; Laszlo Hanyecz, a developer who had emailed Nakamoto, had the feeling the code was too well designed for one person; Gavin Andresen has said of Nakamoto's code: ""He was a brilliant coder, but it was quirky.""The use of British English in both source code comments and forum postings, such as the expression ""bloody hard"", terms such as ""flat"" and ""maths"", and the spellings ""grey"" and ""colour"", led to speculation that Nakamoto, or at least one individual in a consortium claiming to be him, was of Commonwealth origin. The reference to London's Times newspaper in the first bitcoin block mined by Nakamoto suggested to some a particular interest in the British government.Stefan Thomas, a Swiss software engineer and active community member, graphed the timestamps for each of Nakamoto's bitcoin forum posts (more than 500); the chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (or midnight to 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time). This was between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Japan Standard Time, suggesting an unusual sleep pattern for someone supposedly living in Japan. As this pattern held even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was consistently asleep at this time.
+
+
+=== Possible identities ===
+The identity of Nakamoto is unknown, but speculations have focussed on various cryptography and computer science experts, most of non-Japanese descent.
+
+
+==== Hal Finney ====
+Hal Finney (4 May 1956 – 28 August 2014) was a pre-bitcoin cryptographic pioneer and the first person (other than Nakamoto himself) to use the software, file bug reports, and make improvements. He also lived a few blocks from a man named 'Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto', according to Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg. Greenberg asked the writing analysis consultancy Juola & Associates to compare a sample of Finney's writing to Nakamoto's, and found it to be the closest resemblance they had yet come across, including when compared to candidates suggested by Newsweek, Fast Company, The New Yorker, Ted Nelson, and Skye Grey. Greenberg theorized that Finney may have been a ghostwriter on behalf of Nakamoto, or that he simply used his neighbor Dorian's identity as a ""drop"" or ""patsy whose personal information is used to hide online exploits""; however, after meeting Finney, seeing the emails between him and Nakamoto and his bitcoin wallet's history (including the very first bitcoin transaction from Nakamoto to him, which he forgot to pay back) and hearing his denial, Greenberg concluded that Finney was telling the truth. Juola & Associates also found that Nakamoto's emails to Finney more closely resemble Nakamoto's other writings than Finney's do. Finney's fellow extropian and sometimes co-blogger Robin Hanson assigned a subjective probability of ""at least"" 15% that ""Hal was more involved than he's said"", before further evidence suggested that was not the case.
+
+
+==== Dorian Nakamoto ====
+In a high-profile 6 March 2014 article in the magazine Newsweek, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman identified Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, a Japanese American man living in California, whose birth name is Satoshi Nakamoto, as the Nakamoto in question. Besides his name, Goodman pointed to a number of facts that circumstantially suggested he was the Bitcoin inventor. Trained as a physicist at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Nakamoto worked as a systems engineer on classified defense projects and computer engineer for technology and financial information services companies. Nakamoto was laid off twice in the early 1990s and turned libertarian according to his daughter and encouraged her to start her own business ""not under the government's thumb."" In the article's seemingly biggest piece of evidence, Goodman wrote that when she asked him about Bitcoin during a brief in-person interview, Nakamoto seemed to confirm his identity as the Bitcoin founder by stating: ""I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.""The article's publication led to a flurry of media interest, including reporters camping out near Dorian Nakamoto's house and subsequently chasing him by car when he drove to do an interview. Later that day, the pseudonymous Nakamoto's P2P Foundation account posted its first message in five years, stating: ""I am not Dorian Nakamoto."" During the subsequent full-length interview, Dorian Nakamoto denied all connection to Bitcoin, saying he had never heard of the currency before, and that he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as being about his previous work for military contractors, much of which was classified. In a Reddit ""ask-me-anything"" interview, he claimed he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as being related to his work for Citibank. In September, the P2P Foundation account posted another message saying it had been hacked, raising questions over the authenticity of the message six months earlier.
+
+
+==== Nick Szabo ====
+In December 2013, blogger Skye Grey linked Nick Szabo to the Bitcoin white paper using an approach he described as stylometric analysis. Szabo is a decentralized currency enthusiast and had published a paper on ""bit gold"", one of the precursors of Bitcoin. He is known to have been interested in using pseudonyms in the 1990s. In a May 2011 article, Szabo stated about the Bitcoin creator: ""Myself, Wei Dai, and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai's case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai).""Financial author Dominic Frisby provides much circumstantial evidence but, as he admits, no proof that Nakamoto is Szabo. Szabo has denied being Nakamoto. In a July 2014 email to Frisby, he said: ""Thanks for letting me know. I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it."" Nathaniel Popper wrote in The New York Times that ""the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo.""
+
+
+==== Craig Wright ====
+
+On 8 December 2015, Wired wrote that Craig Steven Wright, an Australian academic, ""either invented bitcoin or is a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did"". Craig Wright took down his Twitter account and neither he nor his ex-wife responded to press inquiries. The same day, Gizmodo published a story with evidence supposedly obtained by a hacker who broke into Wright's email accounts, claiming that Satoshi Nakamoto was a joint pseudonym for Craig Steven Wright and computer forensics analyst David Kleiman, who died in 2013. Wright's claim was supported by Jon Matonis (former director of the Bitcoin Foundation) and bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen.Wright has stated that he chose the family name ""Nakamoto"" in honor of Japanese philosopher Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746), whom Wright learned about from his Japanese martial arts instructor, and the accompanying given name ""Satoshi"" after the Pokémon character Satoshi, because his name was anglicized as ""Ash"", and thus ""Satoshi"" represents the current financial system that must be burned into ash in order to make way for cryptocurrency.A number of prominent Bitcoin promoters remained unconvinced by the reports. Subsequent reports also raised the possibility that the evidence provided was an elaborate hoax, which Wired acknowledged ""cast doubt"" on their suggestion that Wright was Nakamoto. Bitcoin developer Peter Todd said that Wright's blog post, which appeared to contain cryptographic proof, actually contained nothing of the sort. Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik agreed that evidence publicly provided by Wright does not prove anything, and security researcher Dan Kaminsky concluded Wright's claim was ""intentional scammery"".In May 2019, Wright started using English libel law to sue people who denied he was the inventor of bitcoin, and who called him a fraud. In 2019, Wright registered US copyright for the bitcoin white paper and the code for Bitcoin 0.1. Wright's team claimed this was ""government agency recognition of Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto""; the United States Copyright Office issued a press release clarifying that this was not the case (as they primarily determine whether a work is eligible for copyright, and do not investigate legal ownership, which, if disputed, is determined by the courts).
+
+
+==== Other candidates ====
+In a 2011 article in The New Yorker, Joshua Davis claimed to have narrowed down the identity of Nakamoto to a number of possible individuals, including the Finnish economic sociologist Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta and Irish student Michael Clear, who was in 2008 an undergraduate student in cryptography at Trinity College Dublin. Clear strongly denied he was Nakamoto, and so did Lehdonvirta.In October 2011, writing for Fast Company, investigative journalist Adam Penenberg cited circumstantial evidence suggesting Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry could be Nakamoto. They jointly filed a patent application that contained the phrase ""computationally impractical to reverse"" in 2008, which was also used in the Bitcoin white paper by Nakamoto. The domain name bitcoin.org was registered three days after the patent was filed. All three men denied being Nakamoto when contacted by Penenberg.In May 2013, Ted Nelson speculated that Nakamoto was Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki. Later, an article was published in The Age newspaper that claimed that Mochizuki denied these speculations, but without attributing a source for the denial.A 2013 article in Vice listed Gavin Andresen, Jed McCaleb, or a government agency as possible candidates to be Nakamoto.In 2013, two Israeli mathematicians, Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir, published a paper claiming a link between Nakamoto and Ross Ulbricht. The two based their suspicion on an analysis of the network of Bitcoin transactions, but later retracted their claim.In 2016, the Financial Times said that Nakamoto might have been a group of people, mentioning Hal Finney, Nick Szabo and Adam Back as potential members. In 2020, the YouTube channel Barely Sociable claimed that Adam Back, inventor of Bitcoin predecessor Hashcash, is Nakamoto. Back subsequently denied this. Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and co-founder of Ethereum, has also opined that Adam Back is the most likely candidate for Nakamoto.Elon Musk denied he was Nakamoto in a tweet on 28 November 2017, responding to speculation the previous week in a Medium post by a former SpaceX intern.In 2019, journalist Evan Ratliff claimed drug dealer Paul Le Roux could be Nakamoto.In 2021, developer Evan Hatch proposed cypherpunk Len Sassaman of COSIC as a possible candidate. Sassaman had been mentioned on bitcointalk on 15 March 2013 when a user suggested Sassaman was Satoshi.
+
+
+== In popular culture ==
+A bust of Satoshi Nakamoto was installed in Hungary in 2021.
+
+
+== References =="
+Blockchain,"A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain (compare linked list data structure), with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.
+Blockchains are typically managed by a peer-to-peer (P2P) computer network for use as a public distributed ledger, where nodes collectively adhere to a consensus algorithm protocol to add and validate new transaction blocks. Although blockchain records are not unalterable, since blockchain forks are possible, blockchains may be considered secure by design and exemplify a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance.A blockchain was created by a person (or group of people) using the name (or pseudonym) Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to serve as the public distributed ledger for bitcoin cryptocurrency transactions, based on previous work by Stuart Haber, W. Scott Stornetta, and Dave Bayer. The implementation of the blockchain within bitcoin made it the first digital currency to solve the double-spending problem without the need for a trusted authority or central server. The bitcoin design has inspired other applications and blockchains that are readable by the public and are widely used by cryptocurrencies. The blockchain may be considered a type of payment rail.Private blockchains have been proposed for business use. Computerworld called the marketing of such privatized blockchains without a proper security model ""snake oil""; however, others have argued that permissioned blockchains, if carefully designed, may be more decentralized and therefore more secure in practice than permissionless ones.
+
+
+== History ==
+Cryptographer David Chaum first proposed a blockchain-like protocol in his 1982 dissertation ""Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups."" Further work on a cryptographically secured chain of blocks was described in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta. They wanted to implement a system wherein document timestamps could not be tampered with. In 1992, Haber, Stornetta, and Dave Bayer incorporated Merkle trees into the design, which improved its efficiency by allowing several document certificates to be collected into one block. Under their company Surety, their document certificate hashes have been published in The New York Times every week since 1995.The first decentralized blockchain was conceptualized by a person (or group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Nakamoto improved the design in an important way using a Hashcash-like method to timestamp blocks without requiring them to be signed by a trusted party and introducing a difficulty parameter to stabilize the rate at which blocks are added to the chain. The design was implemented the following year by Nakamoto as a core component of the cryptocurrency bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for all transactions on the network.In August 2014, the bitcoin blockchain file size, containing records of all transactions that have occurred on the network, reached 20 GB (gigabytes). In January 2015, the size had grown to almost 30 GB, and from January 2016 to January 2017, the bitcoin blockchain grew from 50 GB to 100 GB in size.  The ledger size had exceeded 200 GB by early 2020.The words block and chain were used separately in Satoshi Nakamoto's original paper, but were eventually popularized as a single word, blockchain, by 2016.According to Accenture, an application of the diffusion of innovations theory suggests that blockchains attained a 13.5% adoption rate within financial services in 2016, therefore reaching the early adopters' phase. Industry trade groups joined to create the Global Blockchain Forum in 2016, an initiative of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.
+In May 2018, Gartner found that only 1% of CIOs indicated any kind of blockchain adoption within their organisations, and only 8% of CIOs were in the short-term ""planning or [looking at] active experimentation with blockchain"". For the year 2019 Gartner reported 5% of CIOs believed blockchain technology was a 'game-changer' for their business.
+
+
+== Structure and design ==
+A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and often public, digital ledger consisting of records called blocks that are used to record transactions across many computers so that any involved block cannot be altered retroactively, without the alteration of all subsequent blocks. This allows the participants to verify and audit transactions independently and relatively inexpensively. A blockchain database is managed autonomously using a peer-to-peer network and a distributed timestamping server. They are authenticated by mass collaboration powered by collective self-interests. Such a design facilitates robust workflow where participants' uncertainty regarding data security is marginal. The use of a blockchain removes the characteristic of infinite reproducibility from a digital asset. It confirms that each unit of value was transferred only once, solving the long-standing problem of double-spending. A blockchain has been described as a value-exchange protocol. A blockchain can maintain title rights because, when properly set up to detail the exchange agreement, it provides a record that compels offer and acceptance.Logically, a blockchain can be seen as consisting of several layers:
+infrastructure (hardware)
+networking (node discovery, information propagation and verification)
+consensus (proof of work, proof of stake)
+data (blocks, transactions)
+application (smart contracts/decentralized applications, if applicable)
+
+
+=== Blocks ===
+Blocks hold batches of valid transactions that are hashed and encoded into a Merkle tree. Each block includes the cryptographic hash of the prior block in the blockchain, linking the two. The linked blocks form a chain. This iterative process confirms the integrity of the previous block, all the way back to the initial block, which is known as the genesis block (Block 0). To assure the integrity of a block and the data contained in it, the block is usually digitally signed.Sometimes separate blocks can be produced concurrently, creating a temporary fork. In addition to a secure hash-based history, any blockchain has a specified algorithm for scoring different versions of the history so that one with a higher score can be selected over others. Blocks not selected for inclusion in the chain are called orphan blocks. Peers supporting the database have different versions of the history from time to time. They keep only the highest-scoring version of the database known to them. Whenever a peer receives a higher-scoring version (usually the old version with a single new block added) they extend or overwrite their own database and retransmit the improvement to their peers. There is never an absolute guarantee that any particular entry will remain in the best version of history forever. Blockchains are typically built to add the score of new blocks onto old blocks and are given incentives to extend with new blocks rather than overwrite old blocks. Therefore, the probability of an entry becoming superseded decreases exponentially as more blocks are built on top of it, eventually becoming very low.: ch. 08  For example, bitcoin uses a proof-of-work system, where the chain with the most cumulative proof-of-work is considered the valid one by the network. There are a number of methods that can be used to demonstrate a sufficient level of computation. Within a blockchain the computation is carried out redundantly rather than in the traditional segregated and parallel manner.
+
+
+==== Block time ====
+The block time is the average time it takes for the network to generate one extra block in the blockchain. By the time of block completion, the included data becomes verifiable. In cryptocurrency, this is practically when the transaction takes place, so a shorter block time means faster transactions. The block time for Ethereum is set to between 14 and 15 seconds, while for bitcoin it is on average 10 minutes.
+
+
+==== Hard forks ====
+
+
+=== Decentralization ===
+By storing data across its peer-to-peer network, the blockchain eliminates some risks that come with data being held centrally. The decentralized blockchain may use ad hoc message passing and distributed networking.In a  so-called ""51% attack"" a central entity gains control of more than half of a network and can then manipulate that specific blockchain record at will, allowing double-spending.Blockchain security methods include the use of public-key cryptography.: 5  A public key (a long, random-looking string of numbers) is an address on the blockchain. Value tokens sent across the network are recorded as belonging to that address. A private key is like a password that gives its owner access to their digital assets or the means to otherwise interact with the various capabilities that blockchains now support. Data stored on the blockchain is generally considered incorruptible.Every node in a decentralized system has a copy of the blockchain. Data quality is maintained by massive database replication and computational trust. No centralized ""official"" copy exists and no user is ""trusted"" more than any other. Transactions are broadcast to the network using the software. Messages are delivered on a best-effort basis. Early blockchains rely on energy-intensive mining nodes to validate transactions, add them to the block they are building, and then broadcast the completed block to other nodes.: ch. 08  Blockchains use various time-stamping schemes, such as proof-of-work, to serialize changes. Later consensus methods include proof of stake. The growth of a decentralized blockchain is accompanied by the risk of centralization because the computer resources required to process larger amounts of data become more expensive.
+
+
+==== Finality ====
+Finality is the level of confidence that the well-formed block recently appended to the blockchain will not be revoked in the future (is ""finalized"") and thus can be trusted. Most distributed blockchain protocols, whether proof of work or proof of stake, cannot guarantee the finality of a freshly committed block, and instead rely on ""probabilistic finality"": as the block goes deeper into a blockchain, it is less likely to be altered or reverted by a newly found consensus.Byzantine fault tolerance-based proof-of-stake protocols purport to provide so called ""absolute finality"": a randomly chosen validator proposes a block, the rest of validators vote on it, and, if a supermajority decision approves it, the block is irreversibly committed into the blockchain. A modification of this method, an ""economic finality"", is used in practical protocols, like the Casper protocol used in Ethereum: validators which sign two different blocks at the same position in the blockchain are subject to ""slashing"", where their leveraged stake is forfeited.
+
+
+=== Openness ===
+Open blockchains are more user-friendly than some traditional ownership records, which, while open to the public, still require physical access to view. Because all early blockchains were permissionless, controversy has arisen over the blockchain definition. An issue in this ongoing debate is whether a private system with verifiers tasked and authorized (permissioned) by a central authority should be considered a blockchain. Proponents of permissioned or private chains argue that the term ""blockchain"" may be applied to any data structure that batches data into time-stamped blocks. These blockchains serve as a distributed version of multiversion concurrency control (MVCC) in databases. Just as MVCC prevents two transactions from concurrently modifying a single object in a database, blockchains prevent two transactions from spending the same single output in a blockchain.: 30–31  Opponents say that permissioned systems resemble traditional corporate databases, not supporting decentralized data verification, and that such systems are not hardened against operator tampering and revision. Nikolai Hampton of Computerworld said that ""many in-house blockchain solutions will be nothing more than cumbersome databases,"" and ""without a clear security model, proprietary blockchains should be eyed with suspicion.""
+
+
+==== Permissionless (public) blockchain ====
+An advantage to an open, permissionless, or public, blockchain network is that guarding against bad actors is not required and no access control is needed. This means that applications can be added to the network without the approval or trust of others, using the blockchain as a transport layer.Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies currently secure their blockchain by requiring new entries to include proof of work. To prolong the blockchain, bitcoin uses Hashcash puzzles. While Hashcash was designed in 1997 by Adam Back, the original idea was first proposed by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor and Eli Ponyatovski in their 1992 paper ""Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail"".
+In 2016, venture capital investment for blockchain-related projects was weakening in the USA but increasing in China. Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies use open (public) blockchains. As of April 2018, bitcoin has the highest market capitalization.
+
+
+==== Permissioned (private) blockchain ====
+
+Permissioned blockchains use an access control layer to govern who has access to the network. It has been argued that permissioned blockchains can guarantee a certain level of decentralization, if carefully designed, as opposed to permissionless blockchains, which are often centralized in practice.
+
+
+===== Disadvantages of permissioned blockchain =====
+Nikolai Hampton argued in Computerworld that ""There is also no need for a '51 percent' attack on a private blockchain, as the private blockchain (most likely) already controls 100 percent of all block creation resources. If you could attack or damage the blockchain creation tools on a private corporate server, you could effectively control 100 percent of their network and alter transactions however you wished."" This has a set of particularly profound adverse implications during a financial crisis or debt crisis like the financial crisis of 2007–08, where politically powerful actors may make decisions that favor some groups at the expense of others, and ""the bitcoin blockchain is protected by the massive group mining effort. It's unlikely that any private blockchain will try to protect records using gigawatts of computing power — it's time-consuming and expensive."" He also said, ""Within a private blockchain there is also no 'race'; there's no incentive to use more power or discover blocks faster than competitors. This means that many in-house blockchain solutions will be nothing more than cumbersome databases.""
+
+
+==== Blockchain analysis ====
+The analysis of public blockchains has become increasingly important with the popularity of bitcoin, Ethereum, litecoin and other cryptocurrencies. A blockchain, if it is public, provides anyone who wants access to observe and analyse the chain data, given one has the know-how. The process of understanding and accessing the flow of crypto has been an issue for many cryptocurrencies, crypto exchanges and banks. The reason for this is accusations of blockchain-enabled cryptocurrencies enabling illicit dark market trade of drugs, weapons, money laundering, etc. A common belief has been that cryptocurrency is private and untraceable, thus leading many actors to use it for illegal purposes. This is changing and now specialised tech companies provide blockchain tracking services, making crypto exchanges, law-enforcement and banks more aware of what is happening with crypto funds and fiat-crypto exchanges. The development, some argue, has led criminals to prioritise the use of new cryptos such as Monero.
+
+
+=== Standardisation ===
+In April 2016, Standards Australia submitted a proposal to the International Organization for Standardization to consider developing standards to support blockchain technology. This proposal resulted in the creation of ISO Technical Committee 307, Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies. The technical committee has working groups relating to blockchain terminology, reference architecture, security and privacy, identity, smart contracts, governance and interoperability for blockchain and DLT, as well as standards specific to industry sectors and generic government requirements. More than 50 countries are participating in the standardization process together with external liaisons such as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the European Commission, the International Federation of Surveyors, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).Many other national standards bodies and open standards bodies are also working on blockchain standards.  These include the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), and some individual participants in the  Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
+
+
+=== Centralized blockchain ===
+Although most of blockchain implementation are decentralized and distributed, Oracle launched a centralized blockchain table feature in Oracle 21c database.  The Blockchain Table in Oracle 21c database is a centralized blockchain which provide immutable feature.  Compared to decentralized blockchains, centralized blockchains normally can provide a higher throughput and lower latency of transactions than consensus-based distributed blockchains.
+
+
+== Types ==
+Currently, there are at least four types of blockchain networks — public blockchains, private blockchains, consortium blockchains and hybrid blockchains.
+
+
+=== Public blockchains ===
+A public blockchain has absolutely no access restrictions. Anyone with an Internet connection can send transactions to it as well as become a validator (i.e., participate in the execution of a consensus protocol). Usually, such networks offer economic incentives for those who secure them and utilize some type of a proof-of-stake or proof-of-work algorithm.
+Some of the largest, most known public blockchains are the bitcoin blockchain and the Ethereum blockchain.
+
+
+=== Private blockchains ===
+A private blockchain is permissioned. One cannot join it unless invited by the network administrators. Participant and validator access is restricted. To distinguish between open blockchains and other peer-to-peer decentralized database applications that are not open ad-hoc compute clusters, the terminology Distributed Ledger (DLT) is normally used for private blockchains.
+
+
+=== Hybrid blockchains ===
+A hybrid blockchain has a combination of centralized and decentralized features. The exact workings of the chain can vary based on which portions of centralization and decentralization are used.
+
+
+=== Sidechains ===
+A sidechain is a designation for a blockchain ledger that runs in parallel to a primary blockchain. Entries from the primary blockchain (where said entries typically represent digital assets) can be linked to and from the sidechain; this allows the sidechain to otherwise operate independently of the primary blockchain (e.g., by using an alternate means of record keeping, alternate consensus algorithm, etc.).
+
+
+=== Consortium blockchain ===
+A consortium blockchain is a type of blockchain that combines elements of both public and private blockchains. In a consortium blockchain, a group of organizations come together to create and operate the blockchain, rather than a single entity. The consortium members jointly manage the blockchain network and are responsible for validating transactions. Consortium blockchains are permissioned, meaning that only certain individuals or organizations are allowed to participate in the network. This allows for greater control over who can access the blockchain and helps to ensure that sensitive information is kept confidential.
+Consortium blockchains are commonly used in industries where multiple organizations need to collaborate on a common goal, such as supply chain management or financial services. One advantage of consortium blockchains is that they can be more efficient and scalable than public blockchains, as the number of nodes required to validate transactions is typically smaller. Additionally, consortium blockchains can provide greater security and reliability than private blockchains, as the consortium members work together to maintain the network. Some examples of consortium blockchains include Quorum and Hyperledger.
+
+
+== Uses ==
+Blockchain technology can be integrated into multiple areas. The primary use of blockchains is as a distributed ledger for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin; there were also a few other operational products that had matured from proof of concept by late 2016. As of 2016, some businesses have been testing the technology and conducting low-level implementation to gauge blockchain's effects on organizational efficiency in their back office.In 2019, it was estimated that around $2.9 billion were invested in blockchain technology, which represents an 89% increase from the year prior. Additionally, the International Data Corp has estimated that corporate investment into blockchain technology will reach $12.4 billion by 2022. Furthermore, According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the second-largest professional services network in the world, blockchain technology has the potential to generate an annual business value of more than $3 trillion by 2030. PwC's estimate is further augmented by a 2018 study that they have conducted, in which PwC surveyed 600 business executives and determined that 84% have at least some exposure to utilizing blockchain technology, which indicates a significant demand and interest in blockchain technology.In 2019, the BBC World Service radio and podcast series Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy identified blockchain as a technology that would have far-reaching consequences for economics and society. The economist and Financial Times journalist and broadcaster Tim Harford discussed why the underlying technology might have much wider applications and the challenges that needed to be overcome. His first broadcast was on June 29, 2019.
+The number of blockchain wallets quadrupled to 40 million between 2016 and 2020.A paper published in 2022 discussed the potential use of blockchain technology in sustainable management.
+
+
+=== Cryptocurrencies ===
+
+Most cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology to record transactions. For example, the bitcoin network and Ethereum network are both based on blockchain.
+The criminal enterprise Silk Road, which operated on Tor, utilized cryptocurrency for payments, some of which the US federal government has seized through research on the blockchain and forfeiture.Governments have mixed policies on the legality of their citizens or banks owning cryptocurrencies. China implements blockchain technology in several industries including a national digital currency which launched in 2020. To strengthen their respective currencies, Western governments including the European Union and the United States have initiated similar projects.
+
+
+=== Smart contracts ===
+
+Blockchain-based smart contracts are proposed contracts that can be partially or fully executed or enforced without human interaction. One of the main objectives of a smart contract is automated escrow. A key feature of smart contracts is that they do not need a trusted third party (such as a trustee) to act as an intermediary between contracting entities — the blockchain network executes the contract on its own. This may reduce friction between entities when transferring value and could subsequently open the door to a higher level of transaction automation. An IMF staff discussion from 2018 reported that smart contracts based on blockchain technology might reduce moral hazards and optimize the use of contracts in general. But ""no viable smart contract systems have yet emerged."" Due to the lack of widespread use, their legal status was unclear.
+
+
+=== Financial services ===
+According to Reason, many banks have expressed interest in implementing distributed ledgers for use in banking and are cooperating with companies creating private blockchains, and according to a September 2016 IBM study, this is occurring faster than expected.Banks are interested in this technology not least because it has the potential to speed up back office settlement systems. Moreover, as the blockchain industry has reached early maturity institutional appreciation has grown that it is, practically speaking, the infrastructure of a whole new financial industry, with all the implications which that entails.Banks such as UBS are opening new research labs dedicated to blockchain technology in order to explore how blockchain can be used in financial services to increase efficiency and reduce costs.Berenberg, a German bank, believes that blockchain is an ""overhyped technology"" that has had a large number of ""proofs of concept"", but still has major challenges, and very few success stories.The blockchain has also given rise to initial coin offerings (ICOs) as well as a new category of digital asset called security token offerings (STOs), also sometimes referred to as digital security offerings (DSOs). STO/DSOs may be conducted privately or on public, regulated stock exchange and are used to tokenize traditional assets such as company shares as well as more innovative ones like intellectual property, real estate, art, or individual products. A number of companies are active in this space providing services for compliant tokenization, private STOs, and public STOs.
+
+
+=== Games ===
+
+Blockchain technology, such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has been used in video games for monetization. Many live-service games offer in-game customization options, such as character skins or other in-game items, which the players can earn and trade with other players using in-game currency. Some games also allow for trading of virtual items using real-world currency, but this may be illegal in some countries where video games are seen as akin to gambling, and has led to gray market issues such as skin gambling, and thus publishers typically have shied away from allowing players to earn real-world funds from games. Blockchain games typically allow players to trade these in-game items for cryptocurrency, which can then be exchanged for money.The first known game to use blockchain technologies was CryptoKitties, launched in November 2017, where the player would purchase NFTs with Ethereum cryptocurrency, each NFT consisting of a virtual pet that the player could breed with others to create offspring with combined traits as new NFTs. The game made headlines in December 2017 when one virtual pet sold for more than US$100,000. CryptoKitties also illustrated scalability problems for games on Ethereum when it created significant congestion on the Ethereum network in early 2018 with approximately 30% of all Ethereum transactions being for the game.By the early 2020s, there had not been a breakout success in video games using blockchain, as these games tend to focus on using blockchain for speculation instead of more traditional forms of gameplay, which offers limited appeal to most players. Such games also represent a high risk to investors as their revenues can be difficult to predict. However, limited successes of some games, such as Axie Infinity during the COVID-19 pandemic, and corporate plans towards metaverse content, refueled interest in the area of GameFi, a term describing the intersection of video games and financing typically backed by blockchain currency, in the second half of 2021. Several major publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Take Two Interactive, have stated that blockchain and NFT-based games are under serious consideration for their companies in the future.In October 2021, Valve Corporation banned blockchain games, including those using cryptocurrency and NFTs, from being hosted on its Steam digital storefront service, which is widely used for personal computer gaming, claiming that this was an extension of their policy banning games that offered in-game items with real-world value. Valve's prior history with gambling, specifically skin gambling, was speculated to be a factor in the decision to ban blockchain games. Journalists and players responded positively to Valve's decision as blockchain and NFT games have a reputation for scams and fraud among most PC gamers, and Epic Games, which runs the Epic Games Store in competition to Steam, said that they would be open to accepted blockchain games in the wake of Valve's refusal.
+
+
+=== Supply chain ===
+There have been several different efforts to employ blockchains in supply chain management.
+
+Precious commodities mining — Blockchain technology has been used for tracking the origins of gemstones and other precious commodities. In 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported that the blockchain technology company Everledger was partnering with IBM's blockchain-based tracking service to trace the origin of diamonds to ensure that they were ethically mined. As of 2019, the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) has been involved in building a diamond trading supply chain product called Tracer.
+Food supply — As of 2018, Walmart and IBM were running a trial to use a blockchain-backed system for supply chain monitoring for lettuce and spinach — all nodes of the blockchain were administered by Walmart and were located on the IBM cloud.
+Fashion industry — There is an opaque relationship between brands, distributors, and customers in the fashion industry, which will prevent the sustainable and stable development of the fashion industry. Blockchain makes up for this shortcoming and makes information transparent, solving the difficulty of sustainable development of the industry.
+Motor vehicles — Mercedes-Benz and partner Icertis developed a blockchain prototype used to facilitate consistent documentation of contracts along the supply chain so that the ethical standards and contractual obligations required of its direct suppliers can be passed on to second tier suppliers and beyond. In another project, the company uses blockchain technology to track the emissions of climate-relevant gases and the amount of secondary material along the supply chain for its battery cell manufacturers.
+
+
+=== Domain names ===
+There are several different efforts to offer domain name services via the blockchain. These domain names can be controlled by the use of a private key, which purports to allow for uncensorable websites. This would also bypass a registrar's ability to suppress domains used for fraud, abuse, or illegal content.Namecoin is a cryptocurrency that supports the "".bit"" top-level domain (TLD). Namecoin was forked from bitcoin in 2011. The .bit TLD is not sanctioned by ICANN, instead requiring an alternative DNS root. As of 2015, .bit was used by 28 websites, out of 120,000 registered names. Namecoin was dropped by OpenNIC in 2019, due to malware and potential other legal issues. Other blockchain alternatives to ICANN include The Handshake Network, EmerDNS, and Unstoppable Domains.Specific TLDs include "".eth"", "".luxe"", and "".kred"", which are associated with the Ethereum blockchain through the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). The .kred TLD also acts as an alternative to conventional cryptocurrency wallet addresses as a convenience for transferring cryptocurrency.
+
+
+=== Other uses ===
+
+Blockchain technology can be used to create a permanent, public, transparent ledger system for compiling data on sales, tracking digital use and payments to content creators, such as wireless users or musicians. The Gartner 2019 CIO Survey reported 2% of higher education respondents had launched blockchain projects and another 18% were planning academic projects in the next 24 months. In 2017, IBM partnered with ASCAP and PRS for Music to adopt blockchain technology in music distribution. Imogen Heap's Mycelia service has also been proposed as a blockchain-based alternative ""that gives artists more control over how their songs and associated data circulate among fans and other musicians.""New distribution methods are available for the insurance industry such as peer-to-peer insurance, parametric insurance and microinsurance following the adoption of blockchain. The sharing economy and IoT are also set to benefit from blockchains because they involve many collaborating peers. The use of blockchain in libraries is being studied with a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.Other blockchain designs include Hyperledger, a collaborative effort from the Linux Foundation to support blockchain-based distributed ledgers, with projects under this initiative including Hyperledger Burrow (by Monax) and Hyperledger Fabric (spearheaded by IBM). Another is Quorum, a permissioned private blockchain by JPMorgan Chase with private storage, used for contract applications.Oracle introduced a blockchain table feature in its Oracle 21c database.Blockchain is also being used in peer-to-peer energy trading.Lightweight blockchains, or simplified blockchains, are more suitable for internet of things (IoT) applications than conventional blockchains. One experiment suggested that a lightweight blockchain-based network could accommodate up to 1.34 million authentication processes every second, which could be sufficient for resource-constrained IoT networks.Blockchain could be used in detecting counterfeits by associating unique identifiers to products, documents and shipments, and storing records associated with transactions that cannot be forged or altered. It is however argued that blockchain technology needs to be supplemented with technologies that provide a strong binding between physical objects and blockchain systems, as well as provisions for content creator verification ala KYC standards. The EUIPO established an Anti-Counterfeiting Blockathon Forum, with the objective of ""defining, piloting and implementing"" an anti-counterfeiting infrastructure at the European level. The Dutch Standardisation organisation NEN uses blockchain together with QR Codes to authenticate certificates.Beijing and Shanghai are among the cities designated by China to trial blockchain applications as January 30, 2022. In Chinese legal proceedings, blockchain technology was first accepted as a method for authenticating internet evidence by the Hangzhou Internet Court in 2019 and has since been accepted by other Chinese courts.: 123–125 
+
+
+== Blockchain interoperability ==
+With the increasing number of blockchain systems appearing, even only those that support cryptocurrencies, blockchain interoperability is becoming a topic of major importance. The objective is to support transferring assets from one blockchain system to another blockchain system. Wegner stated that ""interoperability is the ability of two or more software components to cooperate despite differences in language, interface, and execution platform"". The objective of blockchain interoperability is therefore to support such cooperation among blockchain systems, despite those kinds of differences.
+There are already several blockchain interoperability solutions available. They can be classified into three categories: cryptocurrency interoperability approaches, blockchain engines, and blockchain connectors.
+Several individual IETF participants produced the draft of a blockchain interoperability architecture.
+
+
+== Energy consumption concerns ==
+Some cryptocurrencies use blockchain mining — the peer-to-peer computer computations by which transactions are validated and verified. This requires a large amount of energy. In June 2018, the Bank for International Settlements criticized the use of public proof-of-work blockchains for their high energy consumption.Early concern over the high energy consumption was a factor in later blockchains such as Cardano (2017), Solana (2020) and Polkadot (2020) adopting the less energy-intensive proof-of-stake model. Researchers have estimated that Bitcoin consumes 100,000 times as much energy as proof-of-stake networks.In 2021, a study by Cambridge University determined that Bitcoin (at 121 terawatt-hours per year) used more electricity than Argentina (at 121TWh) and the Netherlands (109TWh). According to Digiconomist, one bitcoin transaction required 708 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy, the amount an average U.S. household consumed in 24 days.In February 2021, U.S. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen called Bitcoin ""an extremely inefficient way to conduct transactions"", saying ""the amount of energy consumed in processing those transactions is staggering"". In March 2021, Bill Gates stated that ""Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind"", adding ""It's not a great climate thing.""Nicholas Weaver, of the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, examined blockchain's online security, and the energy efficiency of proof-of-work public blockchains, and in both cases found it grossly inadequate. The 31TWh-45TWh of electricity used for bitcoin in 2018 produced 17-23 million tonnes of CO2. By 2022, the University of Cambridge and Digiconomist estimated that the two largest proof-of-work blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, together used twice as much electricity in one year as the whole of Sweden, leading to the release of up to 120 million tonnes of CO2 each year.Some cryptocurrency developers are considering moving from the proof-of-work model to the proof-of-stake model.
+
+
+== Academic research ==
+In October 2014, the MIT Bitcoin Club, with funding from MIT alumni, provided undergraduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology access to $100 of bitcoin. The adoption rates, as studied by Catalini and Tucker (2016), revealed that when people who typically adopt technologies early are given delayed access, they tend to reject the technology. Many universities have founded departments focusing on crypto and blockchain, including MIT, in 2017. In the same year, Edinburgh became ""one of the first big European universities to launch a blockchain course"", according to the Financial Times.
+
+
+=== Adoption decision ===
+Motivations for adopting blockchain technology (an aspect of innovation adoptation) have been investigated by researchers. For example, Janssen, et al. provided a framework for analysis, and Koens & Poll pointed out that adoption could be heavily driven by non-technical factors. Based on behavioral models, Li has discussed the differences between adoption at the individual level and organizational levels.
+
+
+=== Collaboration ===
+Scholars in business and management have started studying the role of blockchains to support collaboration. It has been argued that blockchains can foster both cooperation (i.e., prevention of opportunistic behavior) and coordination (i.e., communication and information sharing). Thanks to reliability, transparency, traceability of records, and information immutability, blockchains facilitate collaboration in a way that differs both from the traditional use of contracts and from relational norms. Contrary to contracts, blockchains do not directly rely on the legal system to enforce agreements. In addition, contrary to the use of relational norms, blockchains do not require a trust or direct connections between collaborators.
+
+
+=== Blockchain and internal audit ===
+The need for internal audits to provide effective oversight of organizational efficiency will require a change in the way that  information  is accessed in new formats. Blockchain adoption requires a framework to identify the risk of exposure associated with transactions using blockchain. The Institute of Internal Auditors has identified the need for internal auditors to address this transformational technology.  New methods are required to develop audit plans that identify threats and risks. The Internal Audit Foundation study, Blockchain and Internal Audit, assesses these factors. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has outlined new roles for auditors as a result of blockchain.
+
+
+=== Journals ===
+
+In September 2015, the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology research, Ledger, was announced. The inaugural issue was published in December 2016. The journal covers aspects of mathematics, computer science, engineering, law, economics and philosophy that relate to cryptocurrencies. The journal encourages authors to digitally sign a file hash of submitted papers, which are then timestamped into the bitcoin blockchain. Authors are also asked to include a personal bitcoin address on the first page of their papers for non-repudiation purposes.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Changelog – a record of all notable changes made to a project
+Checklist – an informational aid used to reduce failure
+Economics of digitization
+List of blockchains
+Privacy and blockchain
+Version control – a record of all changes (mostly of software project) in a form of a graph
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+ Media related to Blockchain at Wikimedia Commons"
+Ethereum,"Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH;  sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-source software.
+Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin. Additional founders of Ethereum included Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin. In 2014, development work began and was crowdfunded, and the network went live on 30 July 2015. Ethereum allows anyone to deploy permanent and immutable decentralized applications onto it, with which users can interact. Decentralized finance (DeFi) applications provide financial instruments that do not directly rely on financial intermediaries like brokerages, exchanges, or banks. This facilitates borrowing against cryptocurrency holdings or lending them out for interest. Ethereum also allows users to create and exchange non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are tokens that can be tied to unique digital assets, such as images. Additionally, many other cryptocurrencies utilize the ERC-20 token standard on top of the Ethereum blockchain and have utilized the platform for initial coin offerings.
+On 15 September 2022, Ethereum transitioned its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in an upgrade process known as ""the Merge"". This has cut Ethereum's energy usage by 99%.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Founding (2013–2014) ===
+Ethereum was initially described in late 2013 in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin, a programmer and co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, that described a way to build decentralized applications. Buterin argued to the Bitcoin Core developers that Bitcoin and blockchain technology could benefit from other applications besides money and that it needed a more robust language for application development: 88  that could lead to attaching real-world assets, such as stocks and property, to the blockchain. In 2013, Buterin briefly worked with eToro CEO Yoni Assia on the Colored Coins project and drafted its white paper outlining additional use cases for blockchain technology. However, after failing to gain agreement on how the project should proceed, he proposed the development of a new platform with a more robust scripting language—a Turing-complete programming language—that would eventually become Ethereum.Ethereum was announced at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, in January 2014. During the conference, Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, and Anthony Di Iorio (who financed the project) rented a house in Miami with Buterin at which they could develop a fuller sense of what Ethereum might become. Di Iorio invited friend Joseph Lubin, who invited reporter Morgen Peck, to bear witness. Peck subsequently wrote about the experience in Wired. Six months later the founders met again in Zug, Switzerland, where Buterin told the founders that the project would proceed as a non-profit. Hoskinson left the project at that time and soon after founded IOHK, a blockchain company responsible for Cardano.Ethereum has an unusually long list of founders. Anthony Di Iorio wrote: ""Ethereum was founded by Vitalik Buterin, Myself, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie & Amir Chetrit (the initial 5) in December 2013. Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, & Jeffrey Wilcke were added in early 2014 as founders."" Buterin chose the name Ethereum after browsing a list of elements from science fiction on Wikipedia. He stated, ""I immediately realized that I liked it better than all of the other alternatives that I had seen; I suppose it was that [it] sounded nice and it had the word 'ether', referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel."" Buterin wanted his platform to be the underlying and imperceptible medium for the applications running on top of it.
+
+
+=== Development (2014) ===
+Formal development of the software underlying Ethereum began in early 2014 through a Swiss company, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH (EthSuisse).
+The idea of putting executable smart contracts in the blockchain needed to be specified before it could be implemented in software. This work was done by Gavin Wood, then the chief technology officer, in the Ethereum Yellow Paper that specified the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Subsequently, a Swiss non-profit foundation, the Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum), was founded. Development was funded by an online public crowd sale from July to August 2014, in which participants bought the Ethereum value token (ether) with another digital currency, bitcoin. While there was early praise for the technical innovations of Ethereum, questions were also raised about its security and scalability.
+
+
+=== Launch and the DAO event (2014–2016) ===
+Several codenamed prototypes of Ethereum were developed over 18 months in 2014 and 2015 by the Ethereum Foundation as part of their proof-of-concept series. ""Olympic"" was the last prototype and public beta pre-release. The Olympic network gave users a bug bounty of 25,000 ether for stress-testing the Ethereum blockchain. On 30 July 2015, ""Frontier"" marked the official launch of the Ethereum platform, and Ethereum created its ""genesis block"". The genesis block contained 8,893 transactions allocating various amounts of ether to different addresses, and a block reward of 5 ETH.Since the initial launch, Ethereum has undergone a number of planned protocol upgrades, which are important changes affecting the underlying functionality and/or incentive structures of the platform. Protocol upgrades are accomplished by means of a hard fork.In 2016, a decentralized autonomous organization called The DAO—a set of smart contracts developed on the platform—raised a record US$150 million in a crowd sale to fund the project. The DAO was exploited in June 2016 when US$50 million of DAO tokens were stolen by an unknown hacker. The event sparked a debate in the crypto-community about whether Ethereum should perform a contentious ""hard fork"" to reappropriate the affected funds. The fork resulted in the network splitting into two blockchains: Ethereum with the theft reversed, and Ethereum Classic which continued on the original chain.
+
+
+=== Continued development and milestones (2017–present) ===
+In March 2017, various blockchain startups, research groups, and Fortune 500 companies announced the creation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) with 30 founding members. By May 2017, the nonprofit organization had 116 enterprise members, including ConsenSys, CME Group, Cornell University's research group, Toyota Research Institute, Samsung SDS, Microsoft, Intel, J. P. Morgan, Cooley LLP, Merck KGaA, DTCC, Deloitte, Accenture, Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, ING, and National Bank of Canada. By July 2017, there were over 150 members in the alliance, including MasterCard, Cisco Systems, Sberbank, and Scotiabank.
+
+
+==== CryptoKitties and the ERC-721 NFT standard ====
+In 2017, CryptoKitties, the blockchain game and decentralized application (dApp) featuring digital cat artwork as NFTs, was launched on the Ethereum network. In cultivating popularity with users and collectors, it gained notable mainstream media attention providing significant exposure to Ethereum in the process. It was considered the most popular smart contract in use on the network but it also highlighted concerns over Ethereum's scalability due to the game's substantial consumption of network capacity at the time.In January 2018, a community-driven paper (an EIP, ""Ethereum Improvement Proposal"") under the leadership of civic hacker and lead author William Entriken was published, called ERC-721: Non-Fungible Token Standard. It introduced ERC-721, the first official NFT standard on Ethereum. This standardization was a milestone for Ethereum in pioneering the foundation of the multi-billion dollar digital collectibles eco-system.
+
+
+==== Continued developments ====
+By January 2018, ether was the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, behind bitcoin. As of 2021, it maintained that relative position.In 2019, Ethereum Foundation employee Virgil Griffith was arrested by the US government for presenting at a blockchain conference in North Korea. He would later plead guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in 2021.In March 2021, Visa Inc. announced that it began settling stablecoin transactions using Ethereum. In April 2021, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, and MasterCard announced that they were investing US$65 million into ConsenSys, a software development firm that builds Ethereum-related infrastructure.There were two network upgrades in 2021. The first was ""Berlin"", implemented on 14 April 2021. The second was ""London"", which took effect on 5 August. The London upgrade included Ethereum Improvement Proposal (""EIP"") 1559, a mechanism for reducing transaction fee volatility. The mechanism causes a portion of the ether paid in transaction fees for each block to be destroyed rather than given to the block proposer, reducing the inflation rate of ether and potentially resulting in periods of deflation.On 27 August 2021, the blockchain experienced a brief fork that was the result of clients running different incompatible software versions.
+
+
+=== Ethereum 2.0 ===
+Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2) was a set of three or more upgrades, also known as ""phases"", meant to transition the network's consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake, and to scale the network's transaction throughput with execution sharding and an improved EVM architecture.The switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake on 15 September 2022 has cut Ethereum's energy usage by 99%. However, the impact this has on global energy consumption and climate change may be limited since the computers previously used for mining ether may be used to mine other cryptocurrencies that are energy-intensive.As of April 2023, 18.2 million ETH ($34.6 billion) was locked in the Ethereum 2.0 staking deposit contract.
+
+
+== Design ==
+
+
+=== Ether ===
+Ether (ETH) is the cryptocurrency generated in accordance with the Ethereum protocol as a reward to validators in a proof-of-stake system for adding blocks to the blockchain. Ether is represented in the state as an unsigned integer associated with each account, this being the account's ETH balance denominated in wei (1018 wei = 1 ether). At the end of each epoch, new ETH is generated by the addition of protocol-specified amounts to the balances of all validators for that epoch, with the block proposers receiving the largest portion. Additionally, ether is the only currency accepted by the protocol as payment for the transaction fee. The transaction fee is composed of two parts: the base fee and the tip. The base fee is ""burned"" (deleted from existence) and the tip goes to the block proposer. The validator reward together with the tips provide the incentive to validators to keep the blockchain growing (i.e. to keep processing new transactions). Therefore, ETH is fundamental to the operation of the network. Ether may be ""sent"" from one account to another via a transaction, which simply entails subtracting the amount to be sent from the sender's balance and adding the same amount to the recipient's balance.Ether is often erroneously referred to as ""Ethereum"".
+
+
+=== Accounts ===
+There are two types of accounts on Ethereum: user accounts (also known as externally-owned accounts), and contract accounts. Both types have an ETH balance, may transfer ETH to any account, may execute the code of another contract, or create a new contract, and are identified on the blockchain and in the state by an account address.Contracts are the only type of account that has associated bytecode and storage (to store contract specific state). The code of a contract is evaluated when a transaction is sent to it. The code of the contract may read user specified data from the transaction, and may have a return value. In addition to control flow statements, the bytecode may include instructions to send ETH, read from and write to the contract's storage, create temporary storage (memory) that vanishes at the end of code evaluation, perform arithmetic and hashing operations, send transactions to other contracts (thus executing their code), create new contracts, and query information about the current transaction or the blockchain.
+
+
+==== Addresses ====
+Ethereum addresses are composed of the prefix ""0x"" (a common identifier for hexadecimal) concatenated with the rightmost 20 bytes of the Keccak-256 hash of the ECDSA public key (the curve used is the so-called secp256k1). In hexadecimal, two digits represent a byte, and so addresses contain 40 hexadecimal digits after the ""0x"", e.g. 0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce839613fffba74279579268. Contract addresses are in the same format, however, they are determined by sender and creation transaction nonce.
+
+
+=== Virtual machine ===
+The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the runtime environment for transaction execution in Ethereum. The EVM is a stack based virtual machine with an instruction set specifically designed for Ethereum. The instruction set includes, among other things, stack operations, memory operations, and operations to inspect the current execution context, such as remaining gas, information about the current block, and the current transaction. The EVM is designed to be deterministic on a wide variety of hardware and operating systems, so that given a pre-transaction state and a transaction, each node produces the same post-transaction state, thereby enabling network consensus. The formal definition of the EVM is specified in the Ethereum Yellow Paper. EVMs have been implemented in C++, C#, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Rust, Elixir, Erlang, and soon WebAssembly.
+
+
+=== Gas ===
+Gas is a unit of account within the EVM used in the calculation of the transaction fee, which is the amount of ETH a transaction's sender must pay to the network to have the transaction included in the blockchain. Each type of operation which may be performed by the EVM is hardcoded with a certain gas cost, which is intended to be roughly proportional to the monetary value of the resources (e.g. computation and storage) a node must expend or dedicate to perform that operation.When a sender is creating a transaction, the sender must specify a gas limit and gas price. The gas limit is the maximum amount of gas the sender is willing to use in the transaction, and the gas price is the amount of ETH the sender wishes to pay to the network per unit of gas used. A transaction may only be included in the blockchain at a block slot that has a base gas price less than or equal to the transaction's gas price. The portion of the gas price that is in excess of the base gas price is known as the tip and goes to the block proposer; the higher the tip, the more incentive a block proposer has to include the transaction in their block, and thus the quicker the transaction will be included in the blockchain. The sender buys the full amount of gas (i.e. their ETH balance is debited the amount: gas limit × gas price) up-front, at the start of the execution of the transaction, and is refunded at the end for any unused gas. If at any point the transaction does not have enough gas to perform the next operation, the transaction is reverted but the sender is still only refunded for the unused gas. In user interfaces, gas prices are typically denominated in gigawei (Gwei), a subunit of ETH equal to 10−9 ETH.
+
+
+== Applications ==
+The EVM's instruction set is Turing-complete. Popular uses of Ethereum have included the creation of fungible (ERC-20) and non-fungible (ERC-721) tokens with a variety of properties, crowdfunding (e.g. initial coin offerings), decentralized finance, decentralized exchanges, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), games, prediction markets, and gambling.
+
+
+=== Contract source code ===
+Ethereum's smart contracts are written in high-level programming languages and then compiled down to EVM bytecode and deployed to the Ethereum blockchain. They can be written in Solidity (a language library with similarities to C and JavaScript), Serpent (similar to Python, but deprecated), Yul (an intermediate language that can compile to various different backends—EVM 1.0, EVM 1.5, and eWASM are planned), LLL (a low-level Lisp-like language), and Mutan (Go-based, but deprecated), and Vyper (a strongly-typed Python-derived decidable language). Source code and compiler information are usually published along with the launch of the contract so that users can see the code and verify that it compiles to the bytecode that is on-chain.One issue related to using smart contracts on a public blockchain is that bugs, including security holes, are visible to all but cannot be fixed quickly. One example of this is the 2016 attack on The DAO, which could not be quickly stopped or reversed.
+
+
+=== ERC-20 tokens ===
+The ERC-20 (Ethereum Request-for-Comments #20) Token Standard allows for fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The standard, proposed by Fabian Vogelsteller in November 2015, implements an API for tokens within smart contracts. The standard provides functions that include the transfer of tokens from one account to another, getting the current token balance of an account, and getting the total supply of the token available on the network. Smart contracts that correctly implement ERC-20 processes are called ERC-20 Token Contracts, and they keep track of created tokens on Ethereum. Numerous cryptocurrencies have launched as ERC-20 tokens and have been distributed through initial coin offerings.
+
+
+=== Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) ===
+
+Ethereum also allows for the creation of unique and indivisible tokens, called non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Since tokens of this type are unique, they have been used to represent such things as collectibles, digital art, sports memorabilia, virtual real estate, and items within games. ERC-721 is the first official NFT standard for Ethereum and was followed up by ERC-1155 which introduced semi-fungibility, both are widely used, though some fully fungible tokens using ERC-20 have been used for NFTs such as CryptoPunks.The first NFT project, Etheria, a 3D map of tradable and customizable hexagonal tiles, was deployed to the network in October 2015 and demonstrated live at DEVCON1 in November of that year. In 2021, Christie's sold a digital image with an NFT by Beeple for US$69.3 million, making him the third-most-valuable living artist in terms of auction prices at the time, although observers have noted that both the buyer and seller had a vested interest in driving demand for the artist's work.
+
+
+=== Decentralized finance ===
+
+Decentralized finance (DeFi) offers traditional financial instruments in a decentralized architecture, outside of companies' and governments' control, such as money market funds which let users earn interest. DeFi applications are typically accessed through a Web3-enabled browser extension or application, such as MetaMask, which allows users to directly interact with the Ethereum blockchain through a website. Many of these DApps can connect and work together to create complex financial services.Examples of DeFi platforms include MakerDAO and Compound. Uniswap, a decentralized exchange for tokens on Ethereum grew from US$20 million in liquidity to US$2.9 billion in 2020. As of October 2020, over US$11 billion was invested in various DeFi protocols. Additionally, through a process called ""wrapping"", certain DeFi protocols allow synthetic versions of various assets (such as bitcoin, gold, and oil) to be tradeable on Ethereum and also compatible with all of Ethereum's major wallets and applications.
+
+
+=== Enterprise software ===
+Ethereum-based software and networks, independent from the public Ethereum chain, are being tested by enterprise software companies. Interested parties include Microsoft, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte, R3, and Innovate UK (cross-border payments prototype). Barclays, UBS, Credit Suisse, Amazon, Visa, and other companies are also experimenting with Ethereum.
+
+
+=== Permissioned ledgers ===
+Ethereum-based permissioned blockchain variants are used and being investigated for various projects:
+
+In 2017, JPMorgan Chase proposed developing JPM Coin on a permissioned-variant of Ethereum blockchain dubbed ""Quorum"". It is ""designed to toe the line between private and public in the realm of shuffling derivatives and payments. The idea is to satisfy regulators who need seamless access to financial goings-on while protecting the privacy of parties that don't wish to reveal their identities nor the details of their transactions to the general public.""
+
+
+=== Performance ===
+As of January 2016, the Ethereum protocol could process about 25 transactions per second; this did not change after the move to proof-of-stake. In comparison, the Visa payment platform processes 45,000 payments per second. This has led some to question the scalability of Ethereum.A proposal to partition global state and computation into shard chains was presented at Ethereum's Devcon 3 in November 2017. If implemented, each node in the network would only have to store and validate a subset of the network.
+Ethereum's blockchain uses a Merkle-Patricia Trie to store account state in each block. The trie allows for storage savings, set membership proofs (called ""Merkle proofs""), and light client synchronization. The network has faced congestion problems, such as in 2017 in relation to CryptoKitties.
+
+
+== Regulation ==
+
+In the United States, the proposed Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act would treat Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies as commodities, which could then be regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website"
+Charlie Lee (computer scientist),"Charlie Lee is a computer scientist, best known as the creator of Litecoin. He serves as the managing director of the Litecoin Foundation.
+
+
+== Early life ==
+Lee was born in Ivory Coast, moved to the United States at the age of 13, and graduated from high school in 1995. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science in 2000.Lee's brother, Bobby C. Lee, is the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BTC China.
+
+
+== Career ==
+For a decade in the 2000s, Lee worked for Google. His work for the company included writing code for ChromeOS. In 2011, Lee became interested in Bitcoin. In October 2011, he released Litecoin on Bitcointalk. He had written the blockchain technology based on the Bitcoin in his spare time while employed at Google. He released Litecoin to the public after mining only 150 coins. Lee has stated that he did not intend to compete with Bitcoin but meant Litecoin to be used for smaller transactions.In July 2013, Lee left Google and began working at Coinbase, before the cryptocurrency exchange adopted the coin he had created. Lee held the position of Engineering Director until 2017.In December 2017, Lee announced on Reddit that he sold almost all of his Litecoin holdings due to a perceived conflict of interest. He had been criticized for his tweets, which had a possible effect on the price of the coin. Lee sold or donated all of his coins except for a few minted in physical form, which he kept as collectibles.Lee is currently working full-time with the Litecoin Foundation on fostering Litecoin adoption.
+
+
+== References =="
+Namecoin,"Namecoin (Abbreviation: NMC; sign: 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          N
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \mathbb {N} }
+  ) is a cryptocurrency originally forked from bitcoin software. It uses proof-of-work algorithm. Like bitcoin, it is limited to 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          N
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \mathbb {N} }
+  21 million.Namecoin can store data within its own blockchain transaction database. The original proposal for Namecoin called for Namecoin to insert data into bitcoin's blockchain directly. Anticipating scaling difficulties with this approach, a shared proof-of-work system was proposed to secure new cryptocurrencies with different use cases.
+Namecoin's flagship use case is the censorship-resistant top level domain .bit, which is functionally similar to .com or .net domains but is independent of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the main governing body for domain names. In practice, the top level domain is used by a handful of functional websites. As of 2019, OpenNIC no longer supports the .bit domain.
+
+
+== Transactions ==
+A peer-to-peer network similar to handles Namecoin's transactions, balances and issuance through a based proof-of-work scheme (they are issued when a small enough hash value is found, at which point a block is created).
+
+
+=== Records ===
+Each Namecoin record consists of a name and a value. Each name is actually a path, with the namespace preceding the name of the record. The key d/example signifies a record stored in the DNS namespace d with the name example and corresponds to the record for the example.bit website. The content of d/example is expected to conform to the DNS namespace specification.As of 2015, the fee for a record was 0.01 NMC and records expired after 36000 blocks (~200 days) unless updated or renewed.
+
+
+== Uses ==
+.bit is a top-level domain, created outside the commonly used Domain Name System, and is not sanctioned by ICANN. The .bit domain is served via Namecoin infrastructure, which acts as a decentralized domain name system.Proposed potential uses for Namecoin besides domain name registration include notary/timestamp systems.
+
+
+== History ==
+In September 2010, a discussion was started in the BitcoinTalk forum about a hypothetical system called BitDNS and generalizing bitcoin. Gavin Andresen and Satoshi Nakamoto joined the discussion in the BitcoinTalk forum and supported the idea of BitDNS, and a reward for implementing BitDNS was announced on the forum in December 2010.On block 19200 Namecoin activated the merged mining upgrade to allow mining of Bitcoin and Namecoin simultaneously, instead of having to choose between one or the other; this fixed the issue of miners jumping from one blockchain to another when the profitability becomes favorable in the former.Two years later, in June 2013, NameID was launched. NameID allows to associate profile information with identities on the Namecoin blockchain, and an OpenID provider to allow logging into existing websites with Namecoin identities. The main site itself is accompanied by an open protocol for password-less authentication with Namecoin identities, a corresponding free-software implementation and a supporting extension for Firefox.In October 2013, Michael Gronager, main developer of libcoin, found a security issue in the Namecoin protocol, which allowed modifying foreign names. It was successfully fixed in a short timeframe and was never exploited, except for bitcoin.bit as a proof-of-concept.Namecoin was also mentioned by ICANN in a public report as the most well-known example of distributing control and privacy in DNS.A 2015 study found that of the 120,000 domain names registered on Namecoin, only 28 were in use.In December 2018, a proposal was tabled on the OpenNIC mailing list to drop support for Namecoin .bit domains., citing Spamhaus' (and by extension other antivirus software) blocking of several of their servers owing to spread of malware from some .bit domains, as well as concerns about potential child pornography. The vote did not reach a consensus.In the same month, OpenNIC was advised to drop support for .bit namespace owing to security concerns of Namecoin and PRISM Break developers.In July 2019, OpenNIC again voted on dropping the .bit namespace, citing ""numerous problems with support of NameCoin domains"" and recent animosity between the two projects. The vote passed. Namecoin developer Jeremy Rand welcomed the move, thanking OpenNIC and describing it as the ""right decision"".
+
+
+== See also ==
+Alternative DNS root
+Zooko's triangle
+Non-fungible token (a concept which Namecoin is sometimes considered a precursor of)
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Judmayer, Aljosha; Stifter, Nicholas; Krombholz, Katharina; Weippl, Edgar (2022) [2017]. Blocks and Chains: Introduction to Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, and Their Consensus Mechanisms. Cham: Springer Nature. pp. 47–49. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-02352-1. ISBN 978-3-031-01224-2. ISSN 1945-9742. S2CID 249533342. Retrieved 2022-06-25 – via Google Books.
+Haferkorn, Martin; Quintana Diaz, Josué Manual (2015). ""Seasonality and Interconnectivity Within Cryptocurrencies – An Analysis on the Basis of Bitcoin, Litecoin and Namecoin"". In Lugmayr, Artur (ed.). Enterprise Applications and Services in the Finance Industry: 7th International Workshop, FinanceCom 2014, Sydney, Australia, December 2014, Revised Papers. Cham: Springer Nature. p. 110. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-28151-3. ISBN 978-3-319-28150-6. ISSN 1865-1348. S2CID 37289572. Retrieved 2022-06-25 – via Google Books.
+Karame, Ghassan; Androulaki, Elli (2016). Bitcoin and Blockchain Security. Boston: Artech House. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-63081-013-9. Retrieved 2022-06-25 – via Google Books.
+Bheemaiah, Kariappa (2017). The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory. New York: Apress. p. 77. ISBN 978-1-4842-2673-5. Retrieved 2022-06-25 – via Google Books.
+Franco, Pedro (2015). Understanding Bitcoin: Cryptography, Engineering and Economics. West Sussex: Wiley. p. 174. ISBN 978-1-119-01914-5. Retrieved 2022-06-25 – via Google Books.
+Kirillova, Elena Anatolyevna; Pavlyuk, Albert Valentinovich; Mikhaylova, Irina Aleksandrovna; Zulfugarzade, Teymur E.; Zenin, Sergey S. (2018). ""Bitcoin, Lifecoin, Namecoin: The Legal Nature of Virtual Currency"". Journal of Advanced Research in Law and Economics. 9 (31): 119. doi:10.14505//jarle.v9.1(31).16. S2CID 169842085. Archived from the original on 2022-06-25. Retrieved 2022-06-25 – via Central and Eastern European Online Library.
+Chang, Tao-Hung; Svetinovic, Davor (2016). ""Data Analysis of Digital Currency Networks: Namecoin Case Study"". 2016 21st International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems (ICECCS). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. pp. 122–125. doi:10.1109/ICECCS.2016.023. ISBN 978-1-5090-5526-5. S2CID 9397221. Archived from the original on 2022-06-25. Retrieved 2022-06-25.
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website"
+Peercoin,"Peercoin, also known as Peer-to-Peer Coin, PP Coin, or PPC, is a  cryptocurrency utilizing both proof-of-stake and proof-of-work systems.
+
+
+== History ==
+Peercoin is based on an August 2012 paper that listed the authors as Scott Nadal and Sunny King. King, who also created Primecoin, is a pseudonym. Peercoin was the first implementation of a proof-of-stake–based cryptocurrency.The Peercoin source code is distributed under the MIT/X11 software license.
+
+
+== Economics ==
+Peercoin uses both the proof-of-work and proof-of-stake algorithms. Both are used to spread the distribution of new coins. During its primary years, Peercoin relied heavily on PoW, although there has now been a transition to PoS. Proof-of-stake is used to secure the network: The chain with longest PoS coin age wins in case of a blockchain split-up.
+A transaction fee prevents spam and is burned (instead of being collected by a miner), benefiting the overall network.To recover from lost coins and to discourage hoarding, the currency supply targets growth at 1% per year in the long run.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website 
+ Media related to PPCoin at Wikimedia Commons"
+Dogecoin,"Dogecoin ( DOHJ-koyn or DOHZH-koyn, Abbreviation:  DOGE; sign: Ð) is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a ""joke"", making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is considered both the first ""meme coin"", and more specifically the first ""dog coin"". Despite its satirical nature, some consider it a legitimate investment prospect. Dogecoin features the face of the Shiba Inu dog from the ""doge"" meme as its logo and namesake. It was introduced on December 6, 2013, and quickly developed its own online community, reaching a peak market capitalization of over US$85 billion on May 5, 2021. As of 2021, it is the sleeve sponsor of Watford Football Club.Dogecoin.com promotes the currency as the ""fun and friendly Internet currency"", referencing its origins as a ""joke"". Software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer launched the satirical cryptocurrency as a way to make fun of Bitcoin and the many other cryptocurrencies boasting grand plans to take over the world. With the help of Reddit, the site became an instant hit. Within two weeks, Dogecoin had established a dedicated blog and forum, and its market value reached $8 million, once jumping to become the seventh largest electronic currency in the world. Dogecoin is based on Scrypt algorithm.
+
+
+== History ==
+Originally formed as a ""joke"", Dogecoin was created by IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe software engineer Jackson Palmer. They wanted to create a peer-to-peer digital currency that could reach a broader demographic than Bitcoin. In addition, they wanted to distance it from the controversial history of other coins. Dogecoin was officially launched on December 6, 2013, and within the first 30 days, there were over a million visitors to Dogecoin.com.Palmer is credited with making the idea a reality. At the time, he was a member of the Adobe marketing department in Sydney, Australia. Palmer had purchased the domain Dogecoin.com and added a splash screen, which featured the coin's logo and scattered Comic Sans text. Markus reached out to Palmer after seeing the site, and started efforts to develop the currency. Markus designed Dogecoin's protocol based on existing cryptocurrencies Luckycoin and Litecoin, which use scrypt technology in their proof-of-work algorithm.  The use of scrypt means that miners cannot use SHA-256 bitcoin mining equipment, and instead must use dedicated field-programmable gate array and application-specific integrated circuit devices for mining which are known to be more complex to produce.On December 19, 2013, Dogecoin jumped nearly 300% in value in 72 hours, rising from $0.00026 to $0.00095, with a volume of billions of Dogecoins traded per day. This growth occurred during a time when Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies were reeling from China's decision to forbid Chinese banks from investing in the Bitcoin economy. Three days later, Dogecoin experienced its first major crash when its price dropped by 80% due to this event and to large mining pools exploiting the small amount of computing power required at the time to mine Dogecoin.On December 25, 2013, the first major theft of Dogecoin occurred when millions of coins were stolen during a hack on the online cryptocurrency wallet platform Dogewallet. The hacker gained access to the platform's filesystem and modified its send/receive page to send any and all coins to a static internet protocol address. This hacking incident spiked tweets about Dogecoin, making it the most mentioned altcoin on Twitter at the time, although it was in reference to a negative event. To help those who lost funds on Dogewallet after its breach, the Dogecoin community started an initiative named ""SaveDogemas"" to help donate coins to those who had them stolen. Approximately one month later, enough money was donated to cover all of the coins that were stolen.In January 2014, the trading volume of Dogecoin briefly surpassed that of all other cryptocurrencies combined. However, its market capitalization remained substantially behind that of Bitcoin. Initially, Dogecoin featured a randomized reward that is received for each mining block. However, in March 2014, this behaviour was updated to a static block reward.
+Co-founder Jackson Palmer left the cryptocurrency community in 2015 and has no plans to return, having come to the belief that cryptocurrency, originally conceived as a libertarian alternative to money, is fundamentally exploitative and built to enrich its top proponents. His co-founder, Billy Markus, agreed that Palmer's position was generally valid.During the 2017 to early 2018 cryptocurrency bubble, Dogecoin briefly reached a peak of $0.017 on January 7, 2018, putting its total market capitalization near $2 billion.
+In July 2020, the price of Dogecoin spiked following a TikTok trend aimed at getting Dogecoin to $1.On May 9, 2021, SpaceX announced a rideshare mission to the Moon completely funded by Dogecoin, thus becoming the first space mission funded by a cryptocurrency. Elon Musk confirmed this news via Twitter. DOGE-1 was planned to be a minor 40 kg rideshare payload on Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission in Q1 2022.On August 14, 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation announced the ""re-establishment of the Dogecoin Foundation (est 2014), with a renewed focus on supporting the Dogecoin Ecosystem, Community and promoting the future of the Dogecoin Blockchain."" The Foundation was reinvigorated by the addition to its Board of notable advisors such as Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum co-founder and inventor) and Jared Birchall (representing Elon Musk).
+
+
+=== 2021 boom and subsequent fall ===
+In January 2021, Dogecoin went up over 800% in 24 hours, reaching $0.07, as a result of attention from Reddit users, partially encouraged by Elon Musk and the GameStop short squeeze. In February 2021, Dogecoin hit a new high price of $0.08 following Twitter encouragement from Musk, Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons. In March 2021, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban announced his NBA team would allow purchasing tickets and products with Dogecoin; within two days, Cuban had declared his franchise had become the top Dogecoin merchant, having carried out 20,000 transactions.In April 2021, Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies surged, stimulated in part by the direct listing for cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on April 14, although that platform did not provide trading of Dogecoin. Dogecoin first reached $0.10 on April 14, before hitting a new high of $0.45 on April 16 (up 400% that week), with a volume of nearly $70 billion traded in the preceding 24 hours. At the time, Dogecoin's market capitalization approached $50 billion, making it the fifth-highest-valued cryptocurrency; its value had increased more than 7,000% year-to-date. Interest in Dogecoin contributed to an outage in electronic trading platform Robinhood's cryptocurrency system on April 15, caused by ""unprecedented demand"", and prompted concerns from experts of a nearing speculative bubble in the cryptocurrency market.On May 4, 2021, the value of Dogecoin first surpassed the symbolic hurdle of $0.50.In April 2023, a Dogecoin increase was attributed to Elon Musk temporarily changing the logo on the Twitter app to a Doge logo.  In June 2023, Musk was accused of insider trading by investors based on a series of stunts including the change of logo.
+
+
+== Use and exchanges ==
+Dogecoin is an altcoin with a large userbase, and is traded against both fiat currencies and other cryptocurrencies on several reputable cryptocurrency exchanges and retail investment platforms.
+Trading physical, tangible items in exchange for Dogecoin takes place on online communities such as Reddit and Twitter, where users in such circles frequently share cryptocurrency-related information.Several cases of people using their employers' or universities' computers to mine Dogecoin have been discovered.Dogecoin has been used in an attempted property sale, and it has been used in the pornography and gambling industries.
+
+
+=== Online tipping ===
+One major mainstream commercial application of the cryptocurrency has been Internet-based tipping systems, in which social media users tip other users for providing interesting or noteworthy content.
+
+
+==== Dogetipbot ====
+Dogetipbot was a cryptocurrency transaction service used on popular sites like Reddit and Twitch. It allowed users to send Dogecoins to other users through commands via Reddit comments. In May 2017, Dogetipbot was discontinued and taken offline after its creator declared bankruptcy; this left many Dogetipbot users losing their coins stored in the Dogetipbot system.
+
+
+== Technology and DeFi ==
+DeFi (decentralized finance) is a form of finance that does not rely on middlemen such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks to offer financial instruments. This is accomplished using ""smart contracts"" which are automated enforceable agreements that use online blockchain technology. While Dogecoin cannot interact with smart contracts directly given that it operates on its own blockchain, the coins can be ""wrapped"" so that they can be locked into a state that is interoperable with a contract until they are  later unwrapped. The Ren Project has enabled Dogecoin (renDOGE) to be used on the Ethereum blockchain and access the DeFi network. (Most DeFi coins use the Ethereum blockchain network.) DeFi-linked coins use decentralized applications (""dApps"") to transact and trade on decentralized exchanges (DExs), such as Uniswap. These DExs are entirely peer-to-peer exchanges, without any company or other institution providing the platform.
+
+
+== Currency supply ==
+Dogecoin started with a supply limit of Ð100 billion, which would have been far more coins than the top digital currencies were then allowing. By mid-2015, the 100 billionth Dogecoin had been mined, with an additional Ð5 billion put into circulation every year thereafter. Although there is no theoretical supply limit, at this rate, the number of Dogecoins put into circulation will only double in 20 years (the next doubling will occur in the year 2075). There is no implemented hard cap on the total supply of Dogecoins. Nonetheless, in February 2014, Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer announced that the limit would be removed in an effort to create a consistent reduction of its inflation rate over time. In other words, the inflation rate improves over time starting at 5% in 2015 to less than 4% by 2019, 3% by 2027, and 2% by 2035.
+
+
+== Mining parameters ==
+Dogecoin's implementation differs from its predecessors: It was originally forked from Litecoin, then refactored to Bitcoin. Dogecoin's target block time is 1 minute, as opposed to Litecoin's 2.5 minutes and Bitcoin's 10 minutes.
+
+
+== Fundraising ==
+
+
+=== 2014 Winter Olympics ===
+The Dogecoin community and foundation have encouraged fundraising for charities and other notable causes. On January 19, 2014, a fundraiser was established by the Dogecoin community to raise $50,000 for the Jamaican Bobsled Team, which had qualified for, but could not afford to go to, the Sochi Winter Olympics. By the second day, $36,000 worth of Dogecoin was donated and the Dogecoin to Bitcoin exchange rate rose by 50%.  The Dogecoin community also raised funds for a second Sochi athlete, Shiva Keshavan.
+
+
+=== Doge4Water ===
+Inspired by the Winter Olympics fundraiser and smaller charity fundraising successes, the Dogecoin Foundation, led by Eric Nakagawa, began collecting donations to build a well in the Tana river basin in Kenya in cooperation with Charity: Water. They set out to raise a total of Ð40,000,000 (US$30,000 at the time) Dogecoin before World Water Day (March 22) in 2014. The campaign succeeded, collecting donations from more than 4,000 donors, including one anonymous benefactor who donated Ð14,000,000 (worth approximately $11,000 at the time, or $2.8 million in 2021).
+
+
+=== NASCAR ===
+
+On March 25, 2014, the Dogecoin community successfully raised Ð67.8 million (around US$55,000 at the time) in an effort to sponsor NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Josh Wise. Nicknamed the ""Moonrocket"", the No. 98 car featured a Dogecoin/Reddit-sponsored paint scheme and was driven by Wise at the Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway. Wise and the car were featured for nearly a minute, during which the race commentators discussed Dogecoin and the crowdfunding effort, while finishing twentieth and narrowly avoiding multiple wrecks.On May 16, 2014 Wise won a spot at the Sprint All-Star Race through an online fan vote beating Danica Patrick, largely due to the efforts of the Dogecoin Reddit community. He finished the race in fifteenth, the last car running. In the following race in 2014 Coca-Cola 600, Wise debuted a Dogecoin/Reddit.com helmet. Wise later announced he would run the car again at the Toyota/Save Mart 350 and the GEICO 500 as a thank-you gift to the community. He finished twenty-eighth in the race due in part to a refueling issue; he was in twelfth place after a gas-and-go pit stop, but the gas can did not engage long enough, resulting in a second pit stop that took him towards the back of the pack. Eutechnyx, the developer of the NASCAR '14 video game, added the Dogecoin car as a drivable car in a DLC pack.On March 2, 2021, NASCAR Xfinity Series team B. J. McLeod Motorsports announced that Dogecoin would be sponsoring the № 99 car in the Alsco Uniforms 300 at Las Vegas alongside Springrates; Stefan Parsons drove the car to a 36th-place finish as fuel line issues prevented him from completing the race. His father Phil was the owner of the team that fielded the original Dogecoin-sponsored car in 2014.
+
+
+== Criticism ==
+Dogecoin's origin as a ""joke"", which makes it the first meme coin, has made it difficult to be taken seriously by mainstream media and financial experts. The cryptocurrency has had a long and problematic history of scams. Similar to many other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin has been described by some commentators as a form of Ponzi scheme. Critics allege that Dogecoin investors who purchased Dogecoins early on, have a large financial incentive to draw others into purchasing more Dogecoins in order to drive the price up, therefore benefitting the early investors financially at the direct expense of later purchasers. This is primarily because Dogecoin does not have a supply cap like other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which has a capped supply of 21 million coins. Dogecoin has instead a deliberately stable, ""deterministic inflation"" rate of Ð10,000 per block, with a block time of one minute. Exactly Ð5 billion in new Dogecoins will be created and enter circulation every year.
+
+
+== Positives ==
+While the price of Dogecoin is volatile, this volatility has its benefits. It allows investors to use strategies such as cryptocurrency day trading or scalping to profit from fast, short-lived price swings. Additionally, while the cryptocurrency may have begun as a ""joke"", it was the 10th-largest cryptocurrency in the world in September 2021, with a market capitalisation of US$26 billion. (Cryptocurrencies with larger market capitalizations at the time were Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Binance Coin, Tether, and XRP.) Mark Cuban has stated of Dogecoin that, ""Doge has 'deterministic inflation' meaning the amount of inflation is defined. There is no uncertainty as to the amount of created and it's  [sic] inflation percentage. Which could allow it to grow as a valid payment mechanism. The unknown is whether enough people will use it this way.""
+
+
+== Elon Musk and Dogecoin ==
+Elon Musk frequently uses his Twitter platform to express his views on Dogecoin, which has led some to claim that his actions amount to market manipulation because the price of Dogecoin frequently experiences price movements shortly after his tweets. Nevertheless, because cryptocurrencies are not regulated like stocks, these actions are not illegal. Musk and his promotion of Dogecoin have been criticized by Dogecoin co-founder Jackson Palmer, who called Musk a ""self-absorbed grifter"".Musk's first Dogecoin-related tweet occurred on December 20, 2020. Musk tweeted ""One Word: Doge"". Shortly after, the value of Dogecoin rose by 20%. This was followed by a series of Dogecoin-related tweets by Musk in early February 2021 captioned ""Dogecoin is the people's crypto"" and ""no highs, no lows, only Doge"". Following these tweets, the value of Dogecoin rose by roughly 40%.On April 15, 2021, the price of Dogecoin rose by more than 100% after Musk tweeted an image of Joan Miró's Dog Barking at the Moon painting captioned ""Doge Barking at the Moon"", a message which was taken by some as a reference to the industry slang term ""to the moon"", meaning a hoped-for increase in a cryptocurrency's value.On May 8, 2021, Dogecoin fell as much as 29.5%, dropping to US$0.49 during Musk’s Saturday Night Live appearance. It then rose by 11% on May 20, 2021, shortly after Musk tweeted a Doge-related meme. In the same month, the price of Dogecoin was up 10% in the hours after Musk tweeted a Reddit link for users to submit proposals to improve the cryptocurrency.On December 14, 2021, Dogecoin spiked more than 20% after Musk said that Tesla will accept the currency as a means of payment for Tesla merchandise.On June 16, 2022, Elon Musk was named in a complaint seeking damages of $258 billion. The complaint was filed in federal court in Manhattan by plaintiff Keith Johnson. Johnson cited Musk's repeated use of his massive social influence to promote the altcoin, which he claims artificially inflated the price.It was reported in 2013 that Musk thinks Dogecoin could be used for Twitter transactions. On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk completed a deal to take Twitter private. This led to a sustained rise in Dogecoin from October 25 to October 29, with Dogecoin increasing as much as 46%.Between April 3 and April 7, 2023, Twitter's bird logo was replaced with an image of the Doge meme for desktop users, leading to a rise in Dogecoin prices. No reason was given for the icon change, with some speculating that it was a late April Fool's joke, or an attempt to troll investors over the Dogecoin lawsuit that Musk was seeking to end that week.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Shiba Inu (cryptocurrency)
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Gridcoin,"Gridcoin (abbreviation: GRC) is an open source cryptocurrency which securely rewards volunteer computing performed on the BOINC network. Originally developed to support SETI@home, it became the platform for many other applications in areas as diverse as medicine, molecular biology, mathematics, linguistics, climatology, environmental science, and astrophysics.Gridcoin requires a significant level of skill in order to begin ""crunching"". Despite this, Gridcoin's ability to monetise idle computing time towards ""crunching"" can modestly help with reducing digital divide and incentivise the public to donate their CPU time towards scientific research.It was created on October 16, 2013, by Rob Halförd. Gridcoin, initially using the energy-intensive proof of work - as used by Bitcoin, before migrating to a proof of stake protocol in 2014, similar to Peercoin, in an attempt to address the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining.An exploit was demonstrated in August 2017 that revealed the emails of Gridcoin users and allowed the theft of other users work. The research team disclosed the vulnerability to the developers in September 2016, and the patch for the vulnerability was released in March 2017 with version 3.5.8.7, however the implementation of the fix introduced other issues.The implementation Gridcoin-Research was created as a fork of Bitcoin and Peercoin and is licensed under the MIT License. It uses Qt 5 for its user interface and prebuilt executables of the wallet are distributed for Windows, macOS, and Debian.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Primecoin,"Primecoin (Abbreviation: XPM; sign: Ψ) is a cryptocurrency that implements a proof-of-work system that searches for chains of prime numbers.
+
+
+== History ==
+Primecoin was launched in 2013 by Sunny King, who also founded Peercoin.Unlike other cryptocurrencies, which are mined using algorithms that solved mathematical problems with no extrinsic value, mining Primecoin involves producing chains of prime numbers (Cunningham and bi-twin chains). These are useful to scientists and mathematicians and meet the requirements for a proof of work system of being hard to compute but easy to verify and having an adjustable difficulty.Shortly after its launch, some trade journals reported that the rush of over 18,000 new users seeking to mine Primecoin overwhelmed providers of dedicated servers.Primecoin has a block time of one minute, changes difficulty every block, and has a block reward that is a function of the difficulty.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Orrell, David; Chlupatý, Roman (2016). The Evolution of Money. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 200–201. ISBN 978-0-231-17372-8. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
+Antonopoulos, Andreas M. (2014). Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies. Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-1-4919-2198-2. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
+Fanning, Kurt; Centers, David P. (13 June 2016). ""Blockchain and Its Coming Impact on Financial Services"". Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance. 27 (5): 54–55. doi:10.1002/jcaf.22179.
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Nxt,"NXT is an open source cryptocurrency and payment network launched in 2013 by anonymous software developer BCNext. It uses proof-of-stake to reach consensus for transactions—as such, there is a static money supply. Unlike Bitcoin, there is no mining. NXT was specifically conceived as a flexible platform around build applications and financial services, and serves as basis for ARDR (Ardor), a blockchain-as-a-service multichain platform developed by Jelurida, and IoTeX (cryptocurrency) the current steward of NXT as of 2021. NXT has been covered extensively in the ""Call for Evidence"" report by ESMA.
+
+
+== History ==
+NXT was created with a total of one billion coins. On 28 September 2013,  BCNext created a forum thread announcing the proposed launch of NXT as a second generation cryptocurrency and asked for small bitcoin donations to determine how to distribute the initial stake. On 18 November 2013, fundraising for NXT was closed.
+The initial coin offering collected 21 bitcoins that were worth US$17,000.In July 2016, NXT launched Smart Transaction templates, which were meant to serve as building blocks for businesses to construct Blockchain solutions for particular problems.
+
+
+== Features ==
+The core infrastructure of NXT is complex, which, compared to the leaner and simpler Bitcoin, creates more potential for flaws or mistakes. However, this allows third parties to contribute to the blockchain with ease.
+NXT's Asset Exchange is a peer-to-peer exchange allowing trading of shares and crypto assets. Since the blockchain is an unalterable public ledger of transactions, it can provide a trading record for items other than NXT. To do this, NXT allows the designation or ""coloring"" of a particular coin, which builds a bridge from the virtual cryptocurrency world to the physical world. The ""colored coin"" can represent property, stocks/bonds, commodities, or even concepts.
+NXT has Arbitrary Messages which can be used to send encrypted or plain text as well as data (up to 1000 bytes of data permanently or 42 kilobytes of data for a limited amount of time). As a result, it can be used to build file-sharing services, decentralized applications, and higher-level NXT services.
+NXT allows the holders of the currency or NXT-Assets to vote in a cryptographically proven and externally verifiable way. This can be used for deciding on future development decisions or for shareholder voting, and it can also be applied to public elections and community-based decision-making.
+NXT Plugins allow external developers to add features or usability enhancements. The plug-ins are not contained in a sandbox.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Peer-to-peer computing
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website"
+Auroracoin,"Auroracoin (Abbreviation:  AUR; sign: ᚠ) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency launched in February 2014 as an Icelandic alternative to bitcoin and the Icelandic króna. The unknown creator or creators use the pseudonym Baldur Friggjar Óðinsson (or Odinsson). They stated that they planned to distribute half of auroracoins that would ever be created to all 330,000 people listed in Iceland's national ID database beginning on March 25, 2014, free of charge, coming out to ᚠ31.8 per person.Auroracoin was created as an alternative currency to address the government restrictions on Iceland's króna, in place since 2008, which severely restricts movement of the currency outside the country.
+
+
+== History ==
+It has been suggested that 'in many ways, Iceland could be seen as an ideal place for a virtual currency' on account of the limited use of cash, extensive familiarity with electronic finance, and extensive interest in Bitcoin in Icelandic society, coupled with the long-term instability of the króna.
+
+
+=== Airdrop ===
+The developers used the Kennitala national identification system to give away 50% of the total issuance of Auroracoins to the population of Iceland, a process known as an airdrop, hoping to bootstrap a network effect and introduce cryptocurrency to a national audience.
+
+
+== Controversy ==
+As of 2015, the legal status of cryptocurrencies in Iceland was unclear, though the Auroracoin airdrop involved government approval of Odinsson's use of the national database of citizens, Íslykill. Some Icelandic politicians have taken a negative view of Auroracoin.  During a parliamentary debate on March 14, 2014, MP Pétur Blöndal, vice-chair of the Parliament's Economic Affairs and Trade Committee (EATC), emphasized that potential tax evasion through the use of Auroracoin could impact Iceland's economy. He also said that the public should realize that Auroracoin ""is not a recognized currency since no-one backs the medium"".MP Frosti Sigurjónsson, a member of the ruling Progressive Party and Chairman of the EATC, suggested in a blog post on his website that there is evidence that Auroracoin is an illegal financial ""scam"".
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Auroracoin Foundation official website"
+Dash,"The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the en dash –, generally longer than the hyphen but shorter than the minus sign; the em dash —, longer than either the en dash or the minus sign; and the horizontal bar ―, whose length varies across typefaces but tends to be between those of the en and em dashes.Typical uses of dashes are to mark a break in a sentence, or to set off an explanatory remark (similar to parenthesis), or to show spans of time or ranges of values. 
+The em dash is sometimes used as a leading character to identify the source of a quoted text. 
+
+
+== History ==
+In the early 17th century, in Okes-printed plays of William Shakespeare, dashes are attested that indicate a thinking pause, interruption, mid-speech realization, or change of subject. The dashes are variously longer ⸺ (as in King Lear reprinted 1619) or composed of hyphens --- (as in Othello printed 1622); moreover, the dashes are often, but not always, prefixed by a comma, colon, or semicolon.In 1733, in Jonathan Swift's On Poetry, the terms break and dash are attested for ⸺ and — marks:
+
+
+== Types of dash ==
+Usage varies both within English and within other languages, but the usual conventions for the most common dashes in printed English text are these:
+
+An (unspaced) em dash or a spaced en dash can be used to mark a break in a sentence, and a pair can be used to set off a parenthetical statement. For example:Glitter, felt, yarn, and buttons—his kitchen looked as if a clown had exploded.A flock of sparrows—some of them juveniles—alighted and sang.  
+Glitter, felt, yarn, and buttons – his kitchen looked as if a clown had exploded.A flock of sparrows – some of them juveniles – alighted and sang.  
+An en dash, but not an em dash, indicates spans or differentiation, where it may replace ""and"", ""to"", or ""through"". For example:The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was fought in western Pennsylvania and along the present US–Canada border 
+An em dash or horizontal bar, but not an en dash, is used to set off the source of a direct quotation. For example:Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.
+A horizontal bar (also called quotation dash) or the em dash, but not the en dash, introduces quoted text.
+In informal contexts, a hyphen-minus (-) is often used as a substitute for an en dash, as is a pair of hyphen-minuses (--) for an em dash, because the hyphen-minus symbol is readily available on most keyboards. The autocorrection facility of word-processing software often corrects these to the typographically correct form of dash.
+
+
+== Figure dash ==
+The figure dash ‒ (U+2012 ‒ FIGURE DASH) has the same width as a numerical digit. (Most fonts have digits of equal width.) It is used within numbers such as the phone number 555‒0199, especially in columns so as to maintain alignment. In contrast, the en dash – (U+2013 – EN DASH) is generally used for a range of values.The minus sign − (U+2212 − MINUS SIGN) glyph is generally set a little higher, so as to be level with the horizontal bar of the plus sign.
+In informal usage, the hyphen-minus - (U+002D - HYPHEN-MINUS), provided as standard on most keyboards, is often used instead of the figure dash. 
+In TeX, the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be a substitution for the figure dash. In XeLaTeX, one can use \char""2012. The Linux Libertine font also has the figure dash glyph.
+
+
+== En dash ==
+The en dash, en rule, or nut dash – is traditionally half the width of an em dash.
+In modern fonts, the length of the en dash is not standardized, and the en dash is often more than half the width of the em dash. The widths of en and em dashes have also been specified as being equal to those of the upper-case letters N and M, respectively,
+and at other times to the widths of the lower-case letters.
+
+
+=== Usage ===
+The three main uses of the en dash are 
+
+to connect symmetric items, such as the two ends of a range or two competitors or alternatives
+to contrast values or illustrate a relationship between two things
+to compound attributes, where one of the connected items is itself a compound
+
+
+==== Ranges of values ====
+The en dash is commonly used to indicate a closed range of values – a range with clearly defined and finite upper and lower boundaries – roughly signifying what might otherwise be communicated by the word ""through"" in American English, or ""to"" in International English. This may include ranges such as those between dates, times, or numbers. Various style guides restrict this range indication style to only parenthetical or tabular matter, requiring ""to"" or ""through"" in running text. Preference for hyphen vs. en dash in ranges varies. For example, the APA style (named after the American Psychological Association) uses an en dash in ranges, but the AMA style (named after the American Medical Association) uses a hyphen:
+
+Some style guides (including the Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) and the AMA Manual of Style) recommend that, when a number range might be misconstrued as subtraction, the word ""to"" should be used instead of an en dash. For example, ""a voltage of 50 V to 100 V"" is preferable to using ""a voltage of 50–100 V"". Relatedly, in ranges that include negative numbers, ""to"" is used to avoid ambiguity or awkwardness (for example, ""temperatures ranged from −18 °C to −34 °C""). It is also considered poor style (best avoided) to use the en dash in place of the words ""to"" or ""and"" in phrases that follow the forms from X to Y and between X and Y.
+
+
+==== Relationships and connections ====
+The en dash is used to contrast values or illustrate a relationship between two things. Examples of this usage include:
+
+Australia beat American Samoa 31–0.
+Radical–Unionist coalition
+Boston–Hartford route
+New York–London flight (however, it may be argued that New York–to-London flight is more appropriate because New York is a single name composed of two valid words; with a single en dash, the phrase is ambiguous and could mean either Flight from New York to London or New flight from York to London; such ambiguity is assuaged when used mid-sentence, though, because of the capital N in ""New"" indicating it is a special noun). If dash–hyphen use becomes too unwieldy or difficult to understand, the sentence can be rephrased for clarity and readability; for example, ""The flight from New York to London was a pleasant experience"".
+Mother–daughter relationship
+The Supreme Court voted 5–4 to uphold the decision.A distinction is often made between ""simple"" attributive compounds (written with a hyphen) and other subtypes (written with an en dash); at least one authority considers name pairs, where the paired elements carry equal weight, as in the Taft–Hartley Act to be ""simple"", while others consider an en dash appropriate in instances such as these to represent the parallel relationship, as in the McCain–Feingold bill or Bose–Einstein statistics. When an act of the U.S. Congress is named using the surnames of the senator and representative who sponsored it, the hyphen-minus is used in the short title; thus, the short title of Public Law 111–203 is ""The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act"", with a hyphen-minus rather than an en dash between ""Dodd"" and ""Frank"". However, there is a difference between something named for a parallel/coordinate relationship between two people –  for example, Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein –  and something named for a single person who had a compound surname, which may be written with a hyphen or a space but not an en dash – for example, the Lennard-Jones potential [hyphen] is named after one person (John Lennard-Jones), as are Bence Jones proteins and Hughlings Jackson syndrome. Copyeditors use dictionaries (general, medical, biographical, and geographical) to confirm the eponymity (and thus the styling) for specific terms, given that no one can know them all offhand.
+Preference for an en dash instead of a hyphen in these coordinate/relationship/connection types of terms is a matter of style, not inherent orthographic ""correctness""; both are equally ""correct"", and each is the preferred style in some style guides. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the AMA Manual of Style, and Dorland's medical reference works use hyphens, not en dashes, in coordinate terms (such as ""blood-brain barrier""), in eponyms (such as ""Cheyne-Stokes respiration"", ""Kaplan-Meier method""), and so on.
+
+
+==== Attributive compounds ====
+In English, the en dash is usually used instead of a hyphen in compound (phrasal) attributives in which one or both elements is itself a compound, especially when the compound element is an open compound, meaning it is not itself hyphenated. This manner of usage may include such examples as:
+The hospital–nursing home connection (the connection between the hospital and the nursing home, not a home connection between the hospital and nursing)
+A nursing home–home care policy (a policy about the nursing home and home care)
+Pre–Civil War era
+Pulitzer Prize–winning novel
+New York–style pizza
+The non–San Francisco part of the world
+The post–World War II era
+(Compare post-war era, which, if not fully compounded (postwar), takes a hyphen, not an en dash. The difference is that war is not an open compound, whereas World War II is.)
+Trans–New Guinea languages
+The ex–prime minister
+a long–focal length camera
+water ice–based bedrock
+The pro-conscription–anti-conscription debate
+Public-school–private-school rivalriesThe disambiguating value of the en dash in these patterns was illustrated by Strunk and White in The Elements of Style with the following example: When Chattanooga News and Chattanooga Free Press merged, the joint company was inaptly named Chattanooga News-Free Press (using a hyphen), which could be interpreted as meaning that their newspapers were news-free.An exception to the use of en dashes is usually made when prefixing an already-hyphenated compound; an en dash is generally avoided as a distraction in this case. Examples of this include:
+non-English-speaking air traffic controllers
+semi-labor-intensive industries
+Proto-Indo-European language
+The post-MS-DOS era
+non-government-owned corporationsAn en dash can be retained to avoid ambiguity, but whether any ambiguity is plausible is a judgment call. AMA style retains the en dashes in the following examples:
+non–self-governing
+non–English-language journals
+non–group-specific blood
+non–Q-wave myocardial infarction
+non–brain-injured subjects
+
+
+==== Differing recommendations ====
+As discussed above, the en dash is sometimes recommended instead of a hyphen in compound adjectives where neither part of the adjective modifies the other—that is, when each modifies the noun, as in love–hate relationship.
+The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), however, limits the use of the en dash to two main purposes:
+
+First, use it to indicate ranges of time, money, or other amounts, or in certain other cases where it replaces the word ""to"".
+Second, use it in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of the elements of the adjective is an open compound, or when two or more of its elements are compounds, open or hyphenated.That is, the CMOS favors hyphens in instances where some other guides suggest en dashes, with the 16th edition explaining that ""Chicago's sense of the en dash does not extend to between"", to rule out its use in ""US–Canadian relations"".In these two uses, en dashes normally do not have spaces around them. Some make an exception when they believe avoiding spaces may cause confusion or look odd. For example, compare ""12 June – 3 July"" with ""12 June–3 July"". However, other authorities disagree and state there should be no space between an en dash and adjacent text. These authorities would not use a space in, for example, ""11:00 a.m.⁠–⁠1:00 p.m."" or ""July 9–August 17"".
+
+
+==== Parenthetic and other uses at the sentence level ====
+
+En dashes can be used instead of pairs of commas that mark off a nested clause or phrase. They can also be used around parenthetical expressions –  such as this one –  rather than the em dashes preferred by some publishers.The en dash can also signify a rhetorical pause. For example, an opinion piece from The Guardian is entitled: 
+
+Who is to blame for the sweltering weather? My kids say it's boomers – and meIn these situations, en dashes must have a single space on each side.
+
+
+===== Itemization mark =====
+Either the en dash or the em dash may be used as a bullet at the start of each item in a bulleted list. (This is a matter of graphic design rather than orthography.)
+
+
+=== Typography ===
+
+
+==== Spacing ====
+In most uses of en dashes, such as when used in indicating ranges, they are closed up to the joined words. It is only when en dashes are used in setting off parenthetical expressions – such as this one – that they take spaces around them. For more on the choice of em versus en in this context, see En dash versus em dash.
+
+
+==== Encoding and substitution ====
+When an en dash is unavailable in a particular character encoding environment—as in the ASCII character set—there are some conventional substitutions. Often two consecutive hyphens are the substitute.
+The en dash is encoded in Unicode as U+2013 (decimal 8211) and represented in HTML by the named character entity –.
+The en dash is sometimes used as a substitute for the minus sign, when the minus sign character is not available since the en dash is usually the same width as a plus sign and is often available when the minus sign is not; see below. For example, the original 8-bit Macintosh Character Set had an en dash, useful for the minus sign, years before Unicode with a dedicated minus sign was available. The hyphen-minus is usually too narrow to make a typographically acceptable minus sign. However, the en dash cannot be used for a minus sign in programming languages because the syntax usually requires a hyphen-minus.
+
+
+== Em dash ==
+The em dash, em rule, or mutton dash — is longer than an en dash. The character is called an em dash because it is one em wide, a length that varies depending on the font size. One em is the same length as the font's height (which is typically measured in points). So in 9-point type, an em dash is nine points wide, while in 24-point type the em dash is 24 points wide. By comparison, the en dash, with its 1 en width, is in most fonts either a half-em wide
+or the width of an upper-case ""N"".The em dash is encoded in Unicode as U+2014 (decimal 8212) and represented in HTML by the named character entity —.
+
+
+=== Usage ===
+The em dash is used in several ways. It is primarily used in places where a set of parentheses or a colon might otherwise be used, and it can also show an abrupt change in thought (or an interruption in speech) or be used where a full stop (period) is too strong and a comma is too weak. Em dashes are also used to set off summaries or definitions. Common uses and definitions are cited below with examples.
+
+
+==== Colon-like use ====
+
+
+===== Simple equivalence (or near-equivalence) of colon and em dash =====
+Three alkali metals are the usual substituents: sodium, potassium, and lithium.
+Three alkali metals are the usual substituents—sodium, potassium, and lithium.
+
+
+===== Inversion of the function of a colon =====
+These are the colors of the flag: red, white, and blue.
+Red, white, and blue—these are the colors of the flag.
+
+
+==== Parenthesis-like use ====
+
+
+===== Simple equivalence (or near-equivalence) of paired parenthetical marks =====
+Compare parentheses with em dashes:
+Three alkali metals (sodium, potassium, and lithium) are the usual substituents.
+Three alkali metals—sodium, potassium, and lithium—are the usual substituents.
+Compare commas, em dashes and parentheses (respectively) when no internal commas intervene:
+The food, which was delicious, reminded me of home.
+The food—which was delicious—reminded me of home.
+The food (which was delicious) reminded me of home.
+
+
+===== Subtle differences in punctuation =====
+It may indicate an interpolation stronger than that demarcated by parentheses, as in the following from Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine (the degree of difference is subjective).
+
+""At that age I once stabbed my best friend, Fred, with a pair of pinking shears in the base of the neck, enraged because he had been given the comprehensive sixty-four-crayon Crayola box—including the gold and silver crayons—and would not let me look closely at the box to see how Crayola had stabilized the built-in crayon sharpener under the tiers of crayons.""
+
+
+==== Interruption of a speaker ====
+
+
+===== Interruption by someone else =====
+""But I'm trying to explain that I—"" ""I'm aware of your mitigating circumstances, but your negative attitude was excessive.""In a related use, it may visually indicate the shift between speakers when they overlap in speech. For example, the em dash is used this way in Joseph Heller's Catch-22:
+
+He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. He was the miracle ingredient Z-147. He was— ""Crazy!"" Clevinger interrupted, shrieking. ""That's what you are! Crazy!""""—immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman.""
+
+
+===== Self-interruption =====
+Simple revision of a statement as one's thoughts evolve on the fly:
+""I believe I shall—no, I'm going to do it.""
+Contemplative or emotional trailing off (usually in dialogue or in first person narrative):
+""I sense something; a presence I've not felt since—"" in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
+""Get out or else—""Either an ellipsis or an em dash can indicate aposiopesis, the rhetorical device by which a sentence is stopped short not because of interruption, but because the speaker is too emotional or pensive to continue. Because the ellipsis is the more common choice, an em dash for this purpose may be ambiguous in expository text, as many readers would assume interruption, although it may be used to indicate great emotion in dramatic monologue.Long pause:
+In Early Modern English texts and afterward, em dashes have been used to add long pauses (as noted in Joseph Robertson's 1785 An Essay On Punctuation):Lord Cardinal! if thou think'st on heaven's bliss, Hold up thy hand, make signal of that hope.— He dies, and makes no sign!
+
+
+==== Quotation ====
+
+
+===== Quotation mark–like use =====
+This is a quotation dash. It may be distinct from an em dash in its coding (see horizontal bar). It may be used to indicate turns in a dialogue, in which case each dash starts a paragraph. It replaces other quotation marks and was preferred by authors such as James Joyce:
+―O saints above! miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I wished I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet.
+―O, miss Douce! miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing!
+
+
+===== Attribution of quote source =====
+Inline quotes:
+A penny saved is a penny earned. — Benjamin Franklin
+Block quotes:
+
+
+==== Redaction ====
+
+An em dash may be used to indicate omitted letters in a word redacted to an initial or single letter or to fillet a word, by leaving the start and end letters whilst replacing the middle letters with a dash or dashes (for censorship or simply data anonymization). It may also censor the end letter. In this use, it is sometimes doubled.
+
+It was alleged that D⸺ had been threatened with blackmail.Three em dashes might be used to indicate a completely missing word.
+
+
+==== Itemization mark ====
+Either the en dash or the em dash may be used as a bullet at the start of each item in a bulleted list, but a plain hyphen is more commonly used.
+
+
+==== Repetition ====
+Three em dashes one after another can be used in a footnote, endnote, or another form of bibliographic entry to indicate repetition of the same author's name as that of the previous work, which is similar to the use of id.
+
+
+=== Typographic details ===
+
+
+==== Spacing and substitution ====
+According to most American sources (such as The Chicago Manual of Style) and some British sources (such as The Oxford Guide to Style), an em dash should always be set closed, meaning it should not be surrounded by spaces. But the practice in some parts of the English-speaking world, including the style recommended by The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage for printed newspapers and the AP Stylebook, sets it open, separating it from its surrounding words by using spaces or hair spaces (U+200A) when it is being used parenthetically. The AP Stylebook rejects the use of the open em dash to set off introductory items in lists. However, the ""space, en dash, space"" sequence is the predominant style in German and French typography. (See En dash versus em dash below.)
+In Canada, The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing, The Oxford Canadian A to Z of Grammar, Spelling & Punctuation: Guide to Canadian English Usage (2nd ed.), Editing Canadian English, and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary all specify that an em dash should be set closed when used between words, a word and numeral, or two numerals.
+The Australian government's Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers (6th ed.), also specifies that em dashes inserted between words, a word and numeral, or two numerals, should be set closed. A section on the 2-em rule (⸺) also explains that the 2-em can be used to mark an abrupt break in direct or reported speech, but a space is used before the 2-em if a complete word is missing, while no space is used if part of a word exists before the sudden break. Two examples of this are as follows:
+
+I distinctly heard him say, ""Go away or I'll ⸺"".
+It was alleged that D⸺ had been threatened with blackmail.
+
+
+==== Approximating the em dash with two or three hyphens ====
+When an em dash is unavailable in a particular character encoding environment—as in the ASCII character set—it has usually been approximated as consecutive double (--) or triple (---) hyphen-minuses. The two-hyphen em dash proxy is perhaps more common, being a widespread convention in the typewriting era. (It is still described for hard copy manuscript preparation in the Chicago Manual of Style as of the 16th edition, although the manual conveys that typewritten manuscript and copyediting on paper are now dated practices.) The three-hyphen em dash proxy was popular with various publishers because the sequence of one, two, or three hyphens could then correspond to the hyphen, en dash, and em dash, respectively.
+Because early comic book letterers were not aware of the typographic convention of replacing a typewritten double hyphen with an em dash, the double hyphen became traditional in American comics. This practice has continued despite the development of computer lettering.
+
+
+== En dash versus em dash ==
+The en dash is wider than the hyphen but not as wide as the em dash. An em width is defined as the point size of the currently used font, since the M character is not always the width of the point size. In running text, various dash conventions are employed: an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — or a spaced en dash – like so – can be seen in contemporary publications.
+Various style guides and national varieties of languages prescribe different guidance on dashes. Dashes have been cited as being treated differently in the US and the UK, with the former preferring the use of an em dash with no additional spacing and the latter preferring a spaced en dash. As examples of the US style, The Chicago Manual of Style and The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association recommend unspaced em dashes. Style guides outside the US are more variable. For example, The Elements of Typographic Style by Canadian typographer Robert Bringhurst recommends the spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash ""belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography"".
+In the United Kingdom, the spaced en dash is the house style for certain major publishers, including the Penguin Group, the Cambridge University Press, and Routledge. However, this convention is not universal. The Oxford Guide to Style (2002, section 5.10.10) acknowledges that the spaced en dash is used by ""other British publishers"" but states that the Oxford University Press, like ""most US publishers"", uses the unspaced em dash.
+The en dash – always with spaces in running text when, as discussed in this section, indicating a parenthesis or pause – and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash. Most typesetting and word processing expects word spacing to vary to support full justification. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words it falls between. This can cause uneven spacing in the text, but can be mitigated by the use of thin spaces, hair spaces, or even zero-width spaces on the sides of the em dash. This provides the appearance of an unspaced em dash, but allows the words and dashes to break between lines. The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words further exaggerated. En dashes may also be preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns, such as in newspapers and similar publications, since the en dash is smaller. In such cases, its use is based purely on space considerations and is not necessarily related to other typographical concerns.
+On the other hand, a spaced en dash may be ambiguous when it is also used for ranges, for example, in dates or between geographical locations with internal spaces.
+
+
+== Horizontal bar ==
+
+The horizontal bar (U+2015 ― ), also known as a quotation dash, is used to introduce quoted text. This is the standard method of printing dialogue in some languages. The em dash is equally suitable if the quotation dash is unavailable or is contrary to the house style being used.
+There is no support in the standard TeX fonts, but one can use \hbox{---}\kern-.5em--- or an em dash.
+
+
+== Swung dash ==
+
+The swung dash (U+2053 ⁓ ) resembles a lengthened tilde and is used to separate alternatives or approximates. In dictionaries, it is frequently used to stand in for the term being defined. A dictionary entry providing an example for the term henceforth might employ the swung dash as follows:
+
+henceforth (adv.) from this time forth; from now on; ""⁓ she will be known as Mrs. Wales""
+
+
+== Typing the characters ==
+Typewriters and computers often have no key that produces a dash. In consequence, it became common to use the hyphen. It is common for a single hyphen surrounded by spaces to represent an en dash, and for two hyphens to represent an em dash. (A hyphen surrounded by other characters is a hyphen, with a space before it or with digits it is a minus sign.)
+Modern word-processing software typically has support for many more characters and is usually capable of rendering both the en and em dashes correctly—albeit sometimes with an inconvenient input method. Techniques for generating em and en dashes in various operating systems, word processors and markup languages are provided in the following table: 
+
+
+== Unicode ==
+
+
+== In other languages ==
+In many languages, such as Polish, the em dash is used as an opening quotation mark. There is no matching closing quotation mark; typically a new paragraph will be started, introduced by a dash, for each turn in the dialogue.Corpus studies indicate that em dashes are more commonly used in Russian than in English. In Russian, the em dash is used for the present copula (meaning 'am/is/are'), which is unpronounced in spoken Russian.
+In French, em or en dashes can be used as parentheses (brackets), but the use of a second dash as a closing parenthesis is optional. When a closing dash is not used, the sentence is ended with a period (full-stop) as usual. Dashes are, however, much less common than parentheses.In Spanish, em dashes can be used to mark off parenthetical phrases. Unlike in English, the em dashes are spaced like brackets, i.e., there is a space between main sentence and dash, but not between parenthetical phrase and dash. For example: ""Llevaba la fidelidad a su maestro —un buen profesor— hasta extremos insospechados."" ('He took his loyalty to his teacher —a good teacher— to unsuspected extremes.')
+
+
+== See also ==
+Leiden Conventions – rules to indicate conditions in texts (usage of ""[— — —]"")
+Signature dashes – signature delimiter in emails (usage of ""-- "" in a single line)
+Whitespace characters – spaces of equivalent sizes to dashes
+
+
+== Explanatory notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Wiktionary list of English phrases with em dash
+Dashes and Hyphens
+Commonly confused characters"
+MazaCoin,"MazaCoin (Maza, MZC) is a cryptocurrency launched in 2014.
+
+
+== History ==
+MazaCoin was developed by Payu Harris in 2014. MazaCoin was specifically designed for the Oglala Lakota tribe in South Dakota. Some Native Americans adopted the use of MazaCoin to battle the US Government.In October 2017, a Mashable article on the Oglala Lakota included a video about Harris's efforts to get MazaCoin accepted.
+
+
+== Recognition and use ==
+The currency was adopted by the Lakota Nation in 2014, with half of its supply reserved by the tribe to minimize the price volatility common in cryptocurrencies.In 2017, The Lakota leadership formally recognized MazaCoin as their national currency, yet this decision encountered skepticism within the community. The concept of digital currencies, heavily reliant on technology such as apps and smartphones, was less accessible to older generations and those without consistent internet access. To counteract this, a system of paper wallets was developed, allowing MazaCoin to be stored and used in a more traditional, physical format. This system allowed tribal members to use MazaCoin in physical form for transactions within the community, converting it back to digital format at the centralized facility.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Indigenous cryptocurrency: Affective capitalism and rhetorics of sovereignty in First Monday (3 October 2016, Volume 21, Number 10) by Cindy Tekobbe and John Carter McKnight
+Decolonization in a Digital Age: Cryptocurrencies and Indigenous Self-Determination in Canada in Canadian Journal of Law and Society (1 April 2017, Volume 32, Issue 1, pp. 19-35) by Christopher Alcantara and Caroline Dick
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Monero,"Monero (; Abbreviation: XMR) is a cryptocurrency which uses a blockchain with privacy-enhancing technologies to obfuscate transactions to achieve anonymity and fungibility. Observers cannot decipher addresses trading Monero, transaction amounts, address balances, or transaction histories.The protocol is open source and based on CryptoNote, a concept described in a 2013 white paper authored by Nicolas van Saberhagen. Developers used this concept to design Monero, and deployed its mainnet in 2014. The Monero protocol includes various methods to obfuscate transaction details, though users can optionally share view keys for third-party auditing. Transactions are validated through a miner network running RandomX, a proof-of-work algorithm. The algorithm issues new coins to miners and was designed to be resistant to application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) mining.
+Monero's privacy features have attracted cypherpunks and users desiring privacy measures not provided in other cryptocurrencies. It is used in illicit activities such as money laundering, darknet markets, ransomware, cryptojacking, and other organized crime. The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has posted bounties for contractors that can develop Monero-tracing technologies.
+
+
+== Background ==
+Monero's roots can be traced back to CryptoNote, a cryptocurrency protocol first described in a white paper published by Nicolas van Saberhagen (presumed pseudonymous) in October 2013. The author described privacy and anonymity as ""the most important aspects of electronic cash"" and called bitcoin's traceability a ""critical flaw"". A Bitcointalk forum user ""thankful_for_today"" coded these ideas into a coin they dubbed BitMonero. Other forum users disagreed with thankful_for_today's direction for BitMonero, so forked it in 2014 to create Monero. Monero translates to coin in Esperanto. Both van Saberhagen and thankful_for_today remain anonymous.Monero has the third-largest community of developers, behind bitcoin and Ethereum. The protocol's lead maintainer was previously South African developer Riccardo Spagni. Much of the core development team chooses to remain anonymous.Improvements to Monero's protocol and features are, in part, the task of the Monero Research Lab (MRL), some of whom are anonymous.
+
+
+== Privacy ==
+Monero's key features are those around privacy and anonymity. Even though it is a public and decentralized ledger, all transaction details are obfuscated. This contrasts to bitcoin, where all transaction details, user addresses, and wallet balances are public and transparent. These features have given Monero a loyal following among crypto anarchists, cypherpunks, and privacy advocates.The transaction outputs, or notes, of users sending Monero are obfuscated through ring signatures, which groups a sender's outputs with other decoy outputs. Encryption of transaction amounts began in 2017 with the implementation of ring confidential transactions (RingCTs). Developers also implemented a zero-knowledge proof method, ""Bulletproofs"", which guarantee a transaction occurred without revealing its value. Monero recipients are protected through ""stealth addresses"", addresses generated by users to receive funds, but untraceable to an owner by a network observer. These privacy features are enforced on the network by default.Monero uses Dandelion++, a protocol which obscures the IP address of devices producing transactions. This is done through a method of transaction broadcast propagation; new transactions are initially passed to one node on Monero's peer-to-peer network, and a repeated probabilistic method is used to determine when the transaction should be sent to just one node or broadcast to many nodes in a process called flooding.
+
+
+=== Efforts to trace transactions ===
+In April 2017, researchers highlighted three major threats to Monero users' privacy. The first relies on leveraging the ring signature size of zero, and ability to see the output amounts. The second, ""Leveraging Output Merging"", involves tracking transactions where two outputs belong to the same user, such as when they send funds to themselves (""churning""). Finally, ""Temporal Analysis"", shows that predicting the right output in a ring signature could potentially be easier than previously thought. According to a blog post from Monero developers, they had already addressed the first concern with the introduction of RingCTs in January 2017, as well as mandating a minimum size of ring signatures in March 2016. In 2018, researchers presented possible vulnerabilities in a paper titled ""An Empirical Analysis of Traceability in the Monero Blockchain"".In September 2020, the United States Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation division (IRS-CI), posted a $625,000 bounty for contractors who could develop tools to help trace Monero, other privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies, the Bitcoin Lightning Network, or other ""layer 2"" protocols. The contract was awarded to blockchain analysis groups Chainalysis and Integra FEC.
+
+
+== Mining ==
+Monero uses a proof-of-work algorithm, RandomX, to validate transactions. The method was introduced in November 2019 to replace the former algorithm CryptoNightR. Both algorithms were designed to be resistant to ASIC mining, which is commonly used to mine other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Monero can be mined somewhat efficiently on consumer-grade hardware such as x86, x86-64, ARM and GPUs, a design decision which was based on Monero project's opposition to mining centralisation which ASIC mining creates, but has also resulted in Monero's popularity among malware-based non-consensual miners.
+
+
+== Illicit use ==
+Monero's privacy features have made it popular for illicit purposes.
+
+
+=== Darknet markets ===
+Monero is a common medium of exchange on darknet markets. In August 2016, dark market AlphaBay permitted its vendors to start accepting Monero as an alternative to bitcoin. The site was taken offline by law enforcement in 2017, but it was relaunched in 2021 with Monero as the sole permitted currency. Reuters reported in 2019 that three of the five largest darknet markets accepted Monero, though bitcoin was still the most widely used form of payment in those markets.
+
+
+=== Mining malware ===
+Hackers have embedded malware into websites and applications that hijack victim CPUs to mine Monero (sometimes called cryptojacking). In late 2017, malware and antivirus service providers blocked Coinhive, a JavaScript implementation of a Monero miner that was embedded in websites and apps, in some cases by hackers. Coinhive generated the script as an alternative to advertisements; a website or app could embed it, and use website visitor's CPU to mine the cryptocurrency while the visitor is consuming the content of the webpage, with the site or app owner getting a percentage of the mined coins. Some websites and apps did this without informing visitors, or in some cases using all possible system resources. As a result, the script was blocked by companies offering ad blocking subscription lists, antivirus services, and antimalware services. Coinhive had been previously found hidden in Showtime-owned streaming platforms and Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspots in Argentina. Researchers in 2018 found similar malware that mined Monero and sent it to Kim Il-sung University in North Korea.
+
+
+=== Ransomware ===
+Monero is sometimes used by ransomware groups. According to CNBC, in the first half of 2018, Monero was used in 44% of cryptocurrency ransomware attacks.The perpetrators of the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, which was attributed by the US government to North Korean threat actors, attempted to exchange the ransom they collected in Bitcoin to Monero. Ars Technica and Fast Company reported that the exchange was successful, but BBC News reported that the service the criminals attempted to use, ShapeShift, denied any such transfer. The Shadow Brokers, who leaked the exploits which were subsequently used in WannaCry but are unlikely to have been involved in the attack, began accepting Monero as payment later in 2017.In 2021, CNBC, the Financial Times, and Newsweek reported that demand for Monero was increasing following the recovery of a bitcoin ransom paid in the Colonial Pipeline cyber attack. The May 2021 hack forced the pipeline to pay a $4.4M ransom in bitcoin, though a large portion was recovered by the United States federal government the following month. The group behind the attack, DarkSide, normally requests payment in either bitcoin or Monero, but charge a 10–20% premium for payments made in bitcoin due to its increased traceability risk. Ransomware group REvil removed the option of paying ransom in bitcoin in 2021, demanding only Monero. Ransomware negotiators, groups that help victims pay ransoms, have contacted Monero developers to understand the technology. Despite this, CNBC reported that bitcoin was still the currency of choice demanded in most ransomware attacks, as insurers refuse to pay Monero ransom payments because of traceability concerns.
+
+
+=== Regulatory responses ===
+The attribution of Monero to illicit markets has influenced some exchanges to forgo listing it. This has made it more difficult for users to exchange Monero for fiat currencies or other cryptocurrencies. Exchanges in South Korea and Australia have delisted Monero and other privacy coins due to regulatory pressure.In 2018, Europol and its director Rob Wainwright wrote that the year would see criminals shift from using bitcoin to using Monero, as well as Ethereum, Dash, and Zcash. Bloomberg and CNN reported that this demand for Monero was because authorities were becoming better at monitoring the Bitcoin blockchain.
+
+
+== Publicity ==
+After many online payment platforms shut down access for white nationalists following the Unite the Right rally in 2017, some of them, including Christopher Cantwell and Andrew Auernheimer (""weev""), started using and promoting Monero.
+In December 2017, the Monero team announced a partnership with 35 musicians for Monero to be used as a form of payment for their online stores.
+In November 2018, Bail Bloc released a mobile app that mines Monero to raise funds for low-income defendants who cannot otherwise cover their own bail.
+In April 2020, the Monero Film Workgroup released Monero Means Money: Cryptocurrency 101, Live from Leipzig, a documentary feature film that was the second highest grossing film in the United States for the weekend of April 10, 2020 according to The Numbers (when theaters were shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Proceeds of the film went to independent theaters.
+
+
+== See also ==
+CryptoNote
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website
+Github repository"
+Titcoin,"Titcoin (Ticker Symbol: TIT) is a cryptocurrency launched in 2014. Titcoin's blockchain is derived from the Bitcoin source code, with modifications to improve transaction speed and efficiency. Titcoin is intended for the adult entertainment industry to allow users to pay for adult products and services without the fear of incriminating payment histories appearing on their credit cards.In 2015, Titcoin received two nominations at the 2015 XBIZ Awards.
+
+
+== History ==
+Titcoin was founded by Edward Mansfield, Richard Allen, and a third anonymous individual. The founders developed Titcoin for the adult entertainment industry as a cash alternative payment system for performing anonymous transactions.On June 21, 2014, the Titcoin cryptocurrency wallet and source code was released with an initial soft launch for the cryptocurrency community followed by a hard launch for the public.In September 2014, Patrick McDonnell joined the Titcoin development team as a business development advisor.On May 29, 2017, Titcoin and its properties were acquired by the adult game development studio Joy-Toilet.On September 5, 2018, Titcoin and its assets were acquired by the TittieCoin Developers.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official Website"
+Verge,"Verge, Le Verge, Vergé or The Verge may refer to:
+
+
+== People ==
+David Vergé
+Jack Verge (died 1915), Australian rugby union player
+John Verge (1782–1861), English architect, builder and pioneer settler of New South Wales, Australia
+Lynn Verge (born c. 1951), Canadian lawyer and politician
+Marianne Le Verge (born 1979), French former swimmer who competed in the 1996 Summer Olympics
+Roger Vergé (1930–2015), French chef and restaurateur
+Wade Verge, 21st century Canadian politician
+William E. Verge (1901–1973), United States Navy rear admiral
+
+
+== Music ==
+Verge (album), musical compilation album by I've Sound
+The Verge (album), a 2011 album by the band There for Tomorrow
+""Verge"" (song), a 2015 song by Owl City
+Verge music festival
+
+
+== Media ==
+The Verge (XM), a Canadian satellite radio station
+The Verge, a technology news network
+The Verge, a live videogame news and review TV programme on Vuzu in South Africa
+
+
+== Other uses ==
+Verge (cryptocurrency), a secure and anonymous cryptocurrency
+Verge, the jurisdiction of the Marshalsea Court
+Verge or virge, a ceremonial rod
+Road verge, a strip of grass or other vegetation beside a road
+The Verge, Singapore, a shopping mall in Singapore
+Verge Rocks, Graham Land, Antarctica
+Verge escapement, a clock escapement mechanism
+Verge3D, a 3D web authoring software
+Verge (royal court) an area of special legal jurisdiction around the English royal court
+
+
+== See also ==
+On the Verge (disambiguation)
+Verges (disambiguation)"
+Stellar,"Stellar means anything related to one or more stars (stella). The term may also refer to:
+
+
+== Arts, entertainment, and media ==
+Stellar (magazine), an Irish lifestyle and fashion magazine
+Stellar Loussier, a character from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny
+Dr. Stellar, a Big Bang Comics superhero
+Stellar 7, a game for the Apple II computer system
+Stellar (film), a Canadian film
+
+
+=== Music ===
+Stellar (group), a South Korean girl group
+Stellar (New Zealand band), a New Zealand-based rock band
+Stellar (musical artist), an American singer, songwriter, and producer
+""Stellar"" (song), a 2000 song by Incubus
+Stellar Awards, awards for the gospel music industry
+
+
+== Brands and enterprises ==
+Stellar (payment network), a system for sending money through the internet
+Stellar Group (construction company), a construction company in Florida, United States
+Hasselblad Stellar, a compact digital camera
+Hyundai Stellar, an automobile model
+O2 XDA Stellar, an HTC mobile phone
+
+
+== Other uses ==
+Stellar Airpark, an airport near Chandler, Arizona, United States
+Stellar Charter School, a school in Redding, California, United States
+Eliot Stellar (1919–1993), American psychologist
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of stellar properties, links to astrophysics pages with the word stellar
+All pages with titles beginning with Stellar
+All pages with titles containing Stellar
+Star or stellum
+Stella (disambiguation)
+Stellar II (disambiguation)
+Stellaris (disambiguation)"
+Vertcoin,"Vertcoin (Abbreviation: VTC) is an open-source cryptocurrency created in early 2014, that focuses on decentralization. Vertcoin uses an ASIC resistant proof-of-work mechanism to issue new coins and incentivize miners to secure the network and validate transactions. Vertcoin's blockchain is maintained by a decentralized coalition of individuals collectively mining using modern graphics cards.
+
+
+== History ==
+Vertcoin aims to be decentralized by being difficult to mine using dedicated processors, known as ASICs. Vertcoin is open source and has a 2.5-minute block time.TechRadar's Jonas Muro wrote in 2018, that two reasons, among others, made Vertcoin ""popula[r]"". One reason is that there is little friction for new users who can use ""one-click software"" to mine. Another reason is that people are very involved in Vertcoin on social media. NBC News's Ben Popken noted in 2018, that Vertcoin has received significant attention on Reddit and that its ""soaring popularity over the last year"" is owing to its being impervious to the specialized machines known as ASICs which are similarly being used to have heavy influence over Bitcoin. Though a December 2018 paper published in The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers said that ""because [Vertcoin] is not a very popular blockchain, the difficulty adjustment algorithm is very sensitive to hash rate change, making it an easy target to timestamp spoofing and cherry-picking attack.""From October through December 2018, Vertcoin suffered from 51% attacks.In response, Vertcoin changed its proof-of-work algorithm to Lyra2REv3 before suffering from another 51% attack on December 1, 2019.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Jed McCaleb,"Jed McCaleb is an American programmer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of aerospace startup Vast and a co-founder and the CTO of Stellar. Prior to co-founding Stellar, McCaleb founded and served as the CTO of the company Ripple until 2013. McCaleb is also known for creating the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange, and the peer-to-peer eDonkey and Overnet networks as well as the eDonkey2000 application.
+As of March 2023, McCaleb is worth US$2.4 billion according to Forbes' Billionaires List.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+McCaleb was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and attended the University of California, Berkeley. He eventually dropped out and moved to New York City.
+
+
+== Career ==
+In 2000, McCaleb founded MetaMachine Inc. and released his eDonkey2000 application. Sam Yagan joined him in 2001 and served as CEO of the company. McCaleb served as the CTO of the company and continued to develop the peer-to-peer eDonkey network as well as the Overnet network and the eDonkey2000 application. At its height, the network grew to have over 4 million active users at any given time. In September 2006, the company reached a settlement with the RIAA and agreed that the company and its top executives would ""immediately cease distributing eDonkey, eDonkey2000, Overnet and other software versions"" and the company would pay $30 million to the RIAA to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits.In 2007, he purchased the domain Mtgox.com with the intent to create a trading site for Magic: The Gathering cards. After moving on from his original idea, McCaleb repurposed the site in late 2010 as a bitcoin exchange that could process bitcoin-to-dollar trades. The website grew in popularity within months. McCaleb sold the company to Mark Karpelès in February 2011 and remained a minority owner in the company until its collapse in 2014.In 2011, McCaleb began developing a digital currency in which transactions were verified by consensus among network members which became known as the Ripple protocol, which differs from the mining technique used in bitcoin. He recruited David Schwartz and secured an investment from Jesse Powell before adding Arthur Britto as the chief strategist. McCaleb recruited Chris Larsen to be CEO of the new company, which became known as Opencoin. He continued development of the Ripple protocol and its currency while securing investments before McCaleb left his active role with the company in July 2013.In 2014, he co-founded the non-profit organization the Stellar Development Foundation with Joyce Kim to develop the Stellar open source protocol to allow cross-border monetary transactions including fiat and digital currencies. The organization debuted on July 31, 2014, and received $3 million loan from the technology company, Stripe. The organization originally based its payment network on the Ripple protocol McCaleb previously developed, but in 2015 adopted the Stellar Consensus Protocol. McCaleb serves as chief technology officer of Stellar.In May 2017, McCaleb also launched Lightyear.io, a commercial endeavor building on the Stellar network. Lightyear facilitates Stellar, becoming a global payment and currency exchange initially directed at the developing world. In October 2017, Lightyear partnered with IBM to launch blockchain banking in the South Pacific using Stellar's lumen currency. In September 2018, McCaleb negotiated the merger of Lightyear and Chain.com, creating the new merged entity named InterStellar.The New York Times named McCaleb one of the top 10 people leading the blockchain revolution in 2018.In 2021, McCaleb founded aerospace company Vast. Vast's announced mission is to develop artificial gravity space stations.  As of 2023, McCaleb is Vast's CEO and sole funder. 
+
+
+== Philanthropy ==
+McCaleb donated US$500,000 worth of XRP (at the time of donation) to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), and remains one of its largest donors, as well as joining its advisory board. In February 2018, McCaleb was announced as a new donor to the artificial intelligence research group OpenAI.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+ Quotations related to Jed McCaleb at Wikiquote"
+Vitalik Buterin,"Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin (Russian: Вита́лий Дми́триевич Буте́рин), better known as Vitalik Buterin (Russian: Вита́лик Буте́рин, born 31 January 1994), is a Russian-Canadian computer programmer, and co-founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011. In 2014, Buterin deployed the Ethereum blockchain with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Buterin was born on 31 January 1994 in Russia, Kolomna, to a Russian family. His father Dmitry was a computer scientist. He and his parents lived in the area until the age of six, when his parents emigrated to Canada in search of better employment opportunities. While in grade three of elementary school in Canada, Buterin was placed into a class for gifted children and was drawn to mathematics, programming, and economics. Buterin then attended The Abelard School, a private high school in Toronto. Buterin learned about Bitcoin from his father, Dimitry Buterin, at the age of 17.After high school, Buterin attended the University of Waterloo. There, he took advanced courses and was a research assistant for cryptographer Ian Goldberg, who co-created Off-the-Record Messaging and was the former board of directors' chairman of the Tor Project. In 2012, Buterin won a bronze medal in the International Olympiad in Informatics in Italy.In 2013, he visited developers in other countries who shared his enthusiasm for code. He returned to Toronto later that year and published a white paper proposing Ethereum. He dropped out of university in 2014 when he was awarded with a grant of $100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship, a scholarship created by venture capitalist Peter Thiel and went to work on Ethereum full-time.On 30 November 2018, Buterin received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Basel.
+
+
+== Career ==
+
+
+=== Bitcoin Magazine ===
+
+In 2011, Buterin began writing for a publication called Bitcoin Weekly after meeting a person on a bitcoin forum with the aim of earning bitcoin. The owner offered five bitcoin (about $3.50 at the time) to anyone who would write an article for him. Buterin wrote for the site until it shut down soon thereafter due to insufficient revenue. In September 2011, Mihai Alisie reached out to Buterin about starting a new print publication called Bitcoin Magazine, a position which Buterin would accept as the first co-founder and contribute to as a leading writer.Bitcoin Magazine in 2012 later began publishing a print edition and has been referred to as the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies. While working for Bitcoin Magazine, Buterin reached out to Jed McCaleb for a job at Ripple who accepted. However, their proposed employment fell apart after Ripple was unable to support a U.S. visa for Buterin.In addition, he held a position on the editorial board of Ledger in 2016, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes full-length original research articles on the subjects of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
+
+
+=== Ethereum ===
+
+Buterin is the inventor of Ethereum, described as a ""decentralised mining network and software development platform rolled into one"" that facilitates the creation of new cryptocurrencies and programs that share a single blockchain (a cryptographic transaction ledger).Buterin first described Ethereum in a white paper in November 2013. Buterin had argued that bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. But when he failed to gain agreement, he proposed development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.: 88 The Ethereum white paper was circulated, and interest grew in the new protocol in late 2013 and early 2014. Buterin announced Ethereum more publicly at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami on 26 January. Buterin delivered a 25-minute speech, describing the general-purpose global computer operating on a decentralized permissionless network, ending with potential uses for Ethereum that ranged from crop insurance to decentralized exchanges to DAOs.: 92, 110–130 About the Ethereum Project, Buterin said in 2020: ""I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to work in such an interesting and interdisciplinary area of industry, where I have the chance to interact with cryptographers, mathematicians and economists prominent in their fields, to help build software and tools that already affect tens of thousands of people around the world, and to work on advanced problems in computer science, economics and philosophy every week."" However, in a 2018 New Yorker article, his father suggests that Buterin is trying to avoid the focus on him as the philosopher king of the blockchain world, stating ""He is trying to focus his time on research. He's not too excited that the community assigns so much importance to him. He wants the community to be more resilient.""
+Buterin has stated that he was driven to create decentralized money because his World of Warcraft character was nerfed, specifically by patch 3.1.0. He went on to say in his about.me bio:I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007–2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.
+
+
+=== Open-source software ===
+Buterin has contributed as a developer to other open-source software projects. He also contributed to DarkWallet by Cody Wilson, Bitcoin Python libraries, and the cryptocurrency marketplace site Egora.
+
+
+=== Ethereum Russia ===
+As Buterin was recognizing the economic and political relevance of the Ethereum enterprise for his native Russia, he met with President Vladimir Putin on 2 June 2017, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). Putin stated that he ""supported the idea of establishing ties with possible Russian partners"".
+
+
+=== Work with Glen Weyl ===
+Buterin came into contact with economist Glen Weyl after tweeting about Weyl's proposal for a new wealth tax. The two then wrote a manifesto Liberation Through Radical Decentralization, where they highlighted the common ground between Buterin's work on cryptocurrencies and Weyl's work on market-based solutions to social problems. Collaborating with Zoe Hitzig, a PhD student at Harvard, they published a paper in 2019 entitled A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods. The paper sets out a method for optimal provision of public goods, using a version of quadratic voting. As of August 2022, quadratic funding had been used to allocate over $20 million to open-source software projects, primarily through Gitcoin Grants.
+
+
+== Awards and recognition ==
+Thiel Fellowship, 2014
+World Technology Award in the IT Software category, 2014
+Fortune 40 under 40 list, 2016
+Forbes 30 under 30 list, 2018
+Fortune the ledger 40 under 40 list, 2018
+University of Basel Honorary doctorate, 2018
+Time 100, 2021
+
+
+== Philanthropy ==
+Donation of $763,970 of Ether to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in 2017.Donation of $2.4 million of Ether to the SENS Research Foundation in 2018, for the research on rejuvenation biotechnologies and human life extension.Donation of $50,000 to the SENS Research Foundation in 2020. Together with Sam Bankman-Fried and Haseeb Qureshi, a total of $150,000 was donated the SENS Research Foundation to combat aging and aging-related diseases at the choice of users of Twitter through open voting.Buterin donated $1.14 billion USD worth of SHIBA coins, which had previously been gifted to him, to India's Crypto Covid relief fund in 2021. This donation was 5% of the coin in circulation and caused a 50% crash in the price at the time.Donation of $336 million worth of Dogelon Mars ($ELON), which had previously been gifted to him, to the Methuselah Foundation, which focuses on extending human lifespan, on 12 May 2021. Buterin's donation of the memecoin caused a 70% drop in its value.
+
+
+=== Philanthropic efforts against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine ===
+Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Buterin has spoken out against the incursion and supported Ukraine. On the first day of the invasion Buterin tweeted that ""Ethereum is neutral, but I am not"", and that the attack was a crime against both the Ukrainian and the Russian peoples. This was followed by a ""go fuck yourself"" (""иди на хуй"") a few days later in response to a tweet by RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan. She claimed that people who said they were ashamed to be Russians because of Moscow's actions against Ukraine were, in fact, not Russians at all (""Если вам сейчас стыдно, что вы русские, не волнуйтесь, вы - не русские."").Buterin has donated crypto to projects supporting the country and endorsed projects helping Ukraine through ""cryptophilanthropy"". These include Ukraine DAO, in which his father Dmitry is one of the key-holders on its multi-signature crypto safe.
+
+
+== Books ==
+Vitalik Buterin. Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains. — Seven Stories Press, 2022. — С. 384. — ISBN 978-1644212486.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of University of Waterloo people
+List of people in blockchain technology
+List of transhumanists
+List of philanthropists
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+=== Citations ===
+
+
+=== Works cited ===
+Leising, Matthew (2020). Out of the Ether: the amazing story of Ethereum and the $55 million heist that almost destroyed it all. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-119-60293-4.
+Russo, Camila (14 July 2020). The infinite machine: how an army of crypto-hackers is building the next internet with Ethereum (First ed.). New York, NY. ISBN 978-0-06-288614-9.{{cite book}}:  CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Ethereum Classic,"Ethereum Classic is a blockchain-based distributed computing platform that offers smart contract (scripting) functionality. It is open source and supports a modified version of Nakamoto consensus via transaction-based state transitions executed on a public Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). 
+Ethereum Classic maintains the original, unaltered history of the Ethereum network. The Ethereum project's mainnet was initially released via Frontier on 30 July 2015. However, due to a hack of a third-party project, The DAO, the Ethereum Foundation created a new version of the Ethereum mainnet on 20 July 2016 with an irregular state change implemented that erased the DAO theft from the Ethereum blockchain history. The Ethereum Foundation applied their trademark to the new, altered version of the Ethereum blockchain (code: ETH). The older, unaltered version of Ethereum was renamed and continued on as Ethereum Classic (code: ETC).Ethereum Classic's native Ether token is a cryptocurrency traded on digital currency exchanges under the currency code ETC. Ether is created as a reward to network nodes for a process known as ""mining"", which validates computations performed on Ethereum Classic's EVM. Implemented on 11 December 2017, the current ETC monetary policy seeks the same goals as bitcoin: being mechanical, algorithmic, and capped. ETC can be exchanged for network transaction fees or other assets, commodities, currencies, products, and services.
+Ethereum Classic provides a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes. The virtual machine's instruction set is Turing-complete, in contrast to others like Bitcoin Script. Gas, an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.
+
+
+== Milestones ==
+
+
+=== Frontier ===
+Several codenamed prototypes of the Ethereum platform were developed by the Ethereum Foundation, as part of their proof-of-concept series, prior to the official launch of the Frontier network. Ethereum Classic followed this codebase after the DAO incident.
+
+
+=== The DAO bailout ===
+
+On 20 July 2016, as a result of the exploitation of a flaw in The DAO project's smart contract software, and subsequent theft of $50 million worth of Ether, the Ethereum network split into two separate blockchains – the altered history was named Ethereum (ETH) and the unaltered history was named Ethereum Classic (ETC).
+The new chain with the altered history was branded as Ethereum (code: ETH) with the BIP-44 Coin Index 60 and EVM Chain ID 1 attributed to it by the trademark-owning Ethereum Foundation. On this new chain, the history of the theft was erased from the Ethereum blockchain.
+Some members of the Ethereum community ignored the change and continued to participate on the original Ethereum network. The non-fork chain with an unaltered history continued on as Ethereum Classic (code: ETC) with the BIP-44 Coin Index 61 and EVM Chain ID 61.
+
+
+==== Security vulnerabilities disclosed ====
+On 28 May 2016, a paper was released detailing security vulnerabilities with the DAO that could allow Ether to be stolen. On 9 June 2016, Peter Vessenes publicly disclosed the existence of a critical security vulnerability overlooked in many Solidity contracts, a recursive call bug. On 12 June 2016, Stephan Tual publicly claimed that the DAO funds were safe despite the newly-discovered critical security flaw.
+
+
+==== Carbon vote ====
+On 15 July 2016, a short notice on-chain vote was held on the DAO hard fork. Of the 82,054,716 ETH in existence, only 4,542,416 voted, for a total voter turn out of 5.5% of the total supply on 16 July 2016; 3,964,516 ETH (87%) voted in favor, 1/4 of which came from a single address, and 577,899 ETH (13%) opposed the DAO fork. The expedited process of the carbon vote drew criticism from opponents of the DAO fork. Proponents of the fork were quick to market the vote as an effective consensus mechanism, pushing forward with the DAO fork four days later.
+
+
+==== Block 1,920,000 ====
+The first Ethereum Classic block that was not included in the forked Ethereum chain was block number 1,920,000, which was generated by Ethereum Classic miners on 20 July 2016.
+
+
+=== Defuse Difficulty Bomb ===
+A mechanism called the ""Difficulty Bomb"" was designed to push the Ethereum chain from proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake in the future by exponentially increasing the difficulty of mining. This Difficulty Bomb was added to the network on block 200,000 in an upgrade named ""Ice Age"". While Ethereum Classic participants debated the merits of the Difficulty Bomb, a network upgrade called ""Die Hard"" at block 3,000,000 delayed the effects of the mechanism. Once the network participants came to consensus on the issue, Ethereum Classic upgraded its network on block 5,900,000 to permanently defuse the Difficulty Bomb. This abandoned a future with proof-of-stake and committed the network to the proof-of-work consensus mechanism.
+
+
+=== Protocol parity ===
+In an attempt to modernize the Ethereum Classic protocol, several protocol upgrades were scheduled to activate features that the Ethereum network already enabled over the past years. Atlantis, activated in September 2019, enabled the Agharta upgrade, which included the outstanding Byzantium changes. Agharta was followed by the incorporation of the Constantinople patches through the January 2020 upgrade. Finally, with the Phoenix upgrade, Ethereum Classic achieved protocol parity with Ethereum, allowing for fully cross-compatible applications between the two networks.
+
+
+=== Mining algorithm ===
+After a series of 51% attacks on the Ethereum Classic network in 2020, a change to the underlying Ethash mining algorithm was considered by the community to prevent being a minority proof-of-work chain in the Ethash mining algorithm where Ethereum is dominating the hashrate. After evaluating various options such as Monero's RandomX or the standardized SHA-3-256, it was eventually decided to double the Ethash epoch duration from 30,000 to 60,000 in order to reduce the DAG size and prevent Ethash miners to easily switch to Ethereum Classic. This modified Ethash is also referred to as ETChash or Thanos upgrade.
+
+
+== Characteristics ==
+
+As with other cryptocurrencies, the validity of each ether is provided by a blockchain, which is a continuously growing list of records, called ""blocks"", which are linked and secured using cryptography. By design, the blockchain is inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum Classic operates using accounts and balances in a manner called state transitions. This does not rely upon unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). The state denotes the current balances of all accounts and extra data. The state is not stored on the blockchain, it is stored in a separate Merkle Patricia tree. A cryptocurrency wallet stores the public and private ""keys"" or ""addresses"" which can be used to receive or spend Ether. These can be generated through BIP 39 style mnemonics for a BIP 32 ""HD wallet"". In the Ethereum tech stack, this is unnecessary as it does not operate in a UTXO scheme. With the private key, it is possible to write in the blockchain, effectively making an ether transaction.
+To send Ether to an account, the Keccak-256 hash of the public key of that account is needed. Ether accounts are pseudonymous in that they are not linked to individual persons, but rather to one or more specific addresses.
+
+
+=== Ether ===
+ETC is a fundamental token for operation of Ethereum Classic, which thereby provides a public distributed ledger for transactions. It is used to pay for Gas, a unit of computation used in transactions and other state transitions. Within the context of Ethereum Classic it might be called ether, but it should not be confused with ETH, which is also called ether.
+It is listed under the currency code ETC and traded on cryptocurrency exchanges, and the Greek uppercase Xi character (Ξ) is generally used for its currency symbol. It is also used to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the Ethereum Classic network.
+
+
+=== Addresses ===
+Ethereum Classic addresses are composed of the prefix ""0x"", a common identifier for hexadecimal, concatenated with the rightmost 20 bytes of the Keccak-256 hash (big endian) of the ECDSA public key (the curve used is the so-called secp256k1, the same as bitcoin). In hexadecimal, two digits represent a byte, meaning addresses contain 40 hexadecimal digits. An example of an Ethereum Classic address is 0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce839613fffba74279579268. Contract addresses are in the same format, however, they are determined by sender and creation transaction nonce. User accounts are indistinguishable from contract accounts given only an address for each and no blockchain data. Any valid Keccak-256 hash put into the described format is valid, even if it does not correspond to an account with a private key or a contract. This is unlike bitcoin, which uses base58check to ensure that addresses are properly typed.
+
+
+=== Monetary policy ===
+On 11 December 2017, the total supply of Ether on Ethereum Classic was hard capped at ETC 210,700,000 via the Gotham hard fork upgrade. This added a bitcoin-inspired deflationary emission schedule that is documented in Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal (ECIP) 1017. The emission schedule, also known as ""5M20"", reduces the block reward by 20% every 5,000,000 blocks. Socially, this block reward reduction event has taken the moniker of ""the fifthening.""
+
+
+=== Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal ===
+The Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal (ECIP) process enables engineers and computer scientists to propose modifications, upgrades, or fixes. Any software developer who is a GitHub user is allowed to make contributions to the ECIP process. There is a number of ECIP types, each listed in the table below.
+
+
+== Code is law ==
+The people who continued with Ethereum Classic advocate for blockchain immutability, and the concept that ""code is law"" against the pro-fork side (Ethereum) which largely argued for extra-protocol intentionality, decentralized decision-making, and conflict resolution. Code is law refers to the idea that the code is above all else including law from outside forces such as a government. The law is written into the code, therefore, anything the code allows is legal.
+
+
+== Attacks ==
+
+
+=== The DAO fork replay attacks ===
+On 20 July 2016, due to reliance on the same clients, the DAO fork created a replay attack where a transaction was broadcast on both the ETC and ETH networks. On 13 January 2017, the Ethereum Classic network was updated to resolve transaction replay attacks. The networks are now officially operating separately.
+
+
+=== RHG sells stolen ETC ===
+On 10 August 2016, the ETH proponent Robin Hood Group transferred 2.9 million stolen ETC to Poloniex in an attempt to sell ETC for ETH on the advice of Bitly SA; 14% was successfully converted to ETH and other currencies, 86% was frozen by Poloniex. On 30 August 2016, Poloniex returned the ETC funds to the RHG. They set up a refund contract on the ETC network.
+
+
+=== Classic Ether Wallet website attack ===
+On 29 June 2017, the Ethereum Classic Twitter account made a public statement indicating reason to believe that the website for Classic Ether Wallet had been compromised. The Ethereum Classic Twitter account confirmed the details released via Threatpost. The Ethereum Classic team worked with Cloudflare to place a warning on the compromised domain warning users of the phishing attack.
+
+
+=== 51% double spend attacks ===
+ETC has experienced multiple 51% double-spending attacks throughout its history. These attacks exploit the decentralized nature of the network by amassing more than 50% of its mining power, enabling attackers to manipulate transactions and double-spend digital assets. The first significant attack occurred in January 2019, when Ethereum Classic was subject to double-spending attacks and an estimated $1.1 million worth of ETC was double-spent. In response, the Ethereum Classic team initiated several network upgrades, including the adoption of a modified version of the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithm called ""ECIP-1049 Keccak256."" Despite these efforts, an additional 51% of attacks were carried out in August and October of 2020, with estimated losses of $5.6 million and $1.68 million, respectively.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+EthereumClassic.org
+Ethereum Classic (ETC) Mining Calculator"
+Nano,"Nano, Nano-, NANO or NaNo may refer to:
+
+
+== People ==
+Nano (singer) (born 1988), Japanese-American J-pop singer
+Nano Omar (born 1986), Swedish singer
+Nano Riantiarno (born 1949), Indonesian director
+Agnese Nano (born 1965), Italian actress
+Fatos Nano (born 1952), former Prime Minister of Albania
+Lourdes Flores Nano (born 1959), Peruvian politician
+Nano Macedo (born 1982), Spanish football winger, full name Fernando Macedo da Silva Rodilla
+Nano Mesa (born 1995), Spanish football forward, full name Alexander Mesa Travieso
+Nano Rivas (born 1980), Spanish football defender, full name Victoriano Rivas Álvaro
+Nano (Egyptian footballer) (born 1985), Egyptian football defender/midfielder, full name Mohamed Mahmoud
+Nano (footballer, born 1982), Spanish football winger, full name Fernando Macedo da Silva Rodilla
+Nano (footballer, born 1984), Spanish football defender, full name Mariano González Maroto
+
+
+== Science and technology ==
+GNU nano, a text editor for Unix-like systems
+iPod Nano, a digital media player
+nano-, a metric prefix denoting a factor of 10−9
+Nano (cryptocurrency)
+NANO (journal),an international peer-reviewed scientific journal
+Nano, an Arduino model (single-board microcontroller)
+Nano receiver, a type of wireless computer mouse technology
+Nanotechnology, a field of study dealing with nano-scale objects
+Radeon R9 Nano, a graphics card
+Silver Nano, an antibacterial technology
+VIA Nano, a central processing unit (CPU)
+Microsoft Nano Server, an installation option for Windows Server 2016
+
+
+== Transport ==
+Tata Nano, a car
+FlyNano Nano, a Finnish ultralight aircraft
+
+
+== Fiction ==
+Nano Shinonome, a character in the Japanese comedy manga series Nichijou
+Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall
+The New Adventures of Nanoboy, an animated TV series
+Nano (comics), a member of the Fearsome Five from DC Comics
+Nano Eiai from the manga Kimi no koto ga Dai Dai Dai Dai Daisuki na 100-nin no Kanojo
+
+
+== Other ==
+Beretta Nano, a micro compact pistol
+Magnetic nano, (often nicknamed 'nano'), a tiny container used in geocaching
+NaNo, National Novel, related to the National Novel Writing Month
+
+
+== See also ==
+Nanos (disambiguation)"
+Tether,"A tether is a cord, fixture, or flexible attachment that characteristically anchors something movable to something fixed; it also may be used to connect two movable objects, such as an item being towed by its tow.
+Applications for tethers include: fall arrest systems, lanyards, balloons, kites, airborne wind-power systems, anchors, floating water power systems, towing, animal constraint, space walks, power kiteing, and anti-theft devices.
+
+
+== Failure ==
+Failure modes for tethers are considered in their design. A cord or rope tether may reach its breaking strength and fail. Outcomes can include an injury or fatal fall, and damage or loss of life to personnel or bystanders caused by  backlash of the ruptured segments. 
+Failure-prevention may be designed into a tethering system. Some safety harnesses are used in combination with a shock-absorbing lanyard, which has break-away stitching designed into it to prevent material failure and regulate deceleration, thereby preventing a serious G-force injury to the user when the end of the rope is reached.  
+Designed-to-fail safety links are sometimes used to prevent excessive tension in a tether involved in towing objects, such as sailplanes. 
+A signal tether is a system in which a constant signal designates a positive condition, and its interruption, whether by discontinuation or jamming, conveys a failure. The signal may be electrically generated, or a physical device such as flying a flag.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Umbilical cable
+Safety lanyard
+
+
+== References =="
+Firo (cryptocurrency),"Firo, formerly known as Zcoin, is a cryptocurrency aimed at using cryptography to provide better privacy for its users compared to other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Zcoin ===
+
+
+==== Creation ====
+In late 2014,  Poramin Insom, a student in Masters in Security Informatics from Johns Hopkins University, wrote a paper on implementing the zerocoin protocol into a cryptocurrency with Matthew Green as a faculty member. The project to create a standalone cryptocurrency implementing the Zerocoin protocol was named ""Moneta"".On 28 September 2016, Zcoin, the first cryptocurrency to implement the zerocoin protocol, was launched by Poramin Insom and team. Roger Ver was the initial investor. Reuben Yap, a former lawyer and founder of virtual private network BolehVPN joined the team as co-founder shortly after the launch of Zcoin.
+
+
+==== 2017–2018 ====
+On 20 February 2017, a malicious coding attack on the Zerocoin protocol created 370,000 fake tokens which perpetrators sold for over 400 Bitcoins ($440,000). Zcoin team announced that a single-symbol error in a piece of code ""allowed an attacker to create Zerocoin spend transactions without a corresponding mint"". Unlike Ethereum during the DAO event, developers have opted not to destroy any coins or attempt to reverse what happened with the newly generated ones.In September 2017, Poramin set up an exchange named ""Satang Pro"" that can convert Thai Baht to Zcoin directly.In April 2018, a cryptographic flaw was found in the Zerocoin protocol which allowed attackers to steal, destroy, and create Zcoins. The Zcoin cryptocurrency team, while acknowledging the flaw, stated the high difficulty in performing such attacks and the low probability of giving economic benefit to the attacker.In August 2018, Boozeat, a liquor delivery service in Malaysia accepted Zcoin as a payment method.In September 2018, Zcoin introduced the Dandelion protocol that hides the origin IP address of a sender without using The Onion Router (Tor) or Virtual Private Network (VPN).In November 2018, Zcoin conducted the world's first large-scale party elections for Thailand Democrat Party using blockchain instead of relying upon the election commission to count the votes. In the same month, a video named ""Rap Against Dictatorship"" was uploaded to Zcoin blockchain after Thailand government's threat of arresting the people involved in the video for speaking against government policies.In December 2018, Zcoin implemented Merkle tree proof, a mining algorithm that deters the usage of Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) in mining coins by being more memory intensive for the miners. This allows ordinary users to use a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics card for mining, so as to enable egalitarianism in coin mining.
+
+
+==== 2019–2020 ====
+In February 2019, Zcoin was added to wallet supported by Binance cryptocurrency exchange. In the same month, Zcoin partnered with Binance Charity Foundation to raise funds for ""Lunch for Children"" program in Africa. The charity used blockchain to track and verify the progress of funds from donor to receiver. On 25 April 2019, Zcoin was listed on the Indonesian digital exchange KoinX.On 30 July 2019, Zcoin formally departed from the zerocoin protocol by adopting a new protocol called ""Sigma"" that prevents counterfeit privacy coins from inflating coin supply. This is achieved by removing a feature called ""trusted setup"" from the zerocoin protocol. In August 2019, Zcoin was added to an African cryptocurrency exchange named OVEX.  In December 2019, Zcoin introduced a decentralised crowdfunding and decision-making system to fund ancillary tasks for the project. In July 2020, using the crowdfunding system, Zcoin raised US$22,500 from 89 contributors to fund the first phase of its third-party audit of Lelantus protocol.In May 2020, Zcoin announced that all founder rewards will be ceased, while at the same time increase development funding to 15% of the block reward, and allocated 35% of the block reward to masternodes. Besides, a US$100,000 reserve fund was set up to protect against price volatility. In September 2020, Zcoin completed first halving of block rewards. In the same month, Zcoin was added to Stakehound for easy accessibility to Decentralized finance (DeFi) while earning staking rewards.
+
+
+=== Firo ===
+In October 2020, Zcoin announced rebranding to new name called ""Firo"" which signifies a unique way of burn (destroy) and redeem coins. Firo suffered 51% attack in January 2021. In June 2021, Firo was added to NOBI trading platform based in Indonesia. Firo implemented Receiver Address Privacy (RAP) in June 2021. In August 2021, Firo announced the Lelantus Spark protocol. This protocol offers additional privacy features, including generating new one-time addresses for receiving payments, efficient multisignature operations, and the availability of view keys for authorised third parties to view a transaction.
+
+
+== Design ==
+
+
+=== Zero-knowledge proofs ===
+Firo initially implemented the Zerocoin protocol. Unlike bitcoin, money does not travel from one block to another. Instead, it is traded as Zerocoin and redeem for a new coin without any history of transaction. However, the disadvantage of this system is that the transaction amount cannot be hidden. There had been little research interest into Zerocoin protocol because of its similarity to Zerocash protocol.There are three phases of a Lelantus transaction. Since trusted setup is not needed, it makes the algorithm faster. In the first phase, a block with transaction history is deleted, while generating a new block with no previous history (minting). A serial number is added to the minted coin to prevent double spending. In the second phase, all previous minted coins are parsed and the serial number are published to the blockchain (spending). In the third phase, the participants can verify the block without any actual inputs.
+
+
+=== Dandelion++ protocol ===
+Firo implemented the Dandelion++ protocol in 2018. It is a protocol that helps to increase the anonymity of a sender during the dissemination of a transaction. There are two phases in the Dandelion protocol: stem phase and fluff phase. In the stem phase, a message is forwarded to a single, randomly chosen neighbour. Then, in the fluff phase, the message is broadcast to all the neighbours except forwarder of the message. Dandelion ++ is an improved version of the Dandelion protocol where the problem of transactions lost due to defective or malicious nodes is avoided by broadcasting the message if a node does not receive the message after a certain period of time in the fluff phase. These steps shuffles the IP addresses of the nodes to help to protect users' anonymity.
+
+
+=== Receiver Address Privacy (RAP) ===
+In June 2021, Firo introduced Receiver Address Privacy (RAP) addresses, an adaptation of BIP47. RAP allows users to be able to publicly post their wallet addresses without having to worry about privacy. In the past, wallet users had to create and share freshly generated addresses to attempt to maintain their privacy.
+
+
+=== Mining ===
+Firo implemented the MTP algorithm in December 2018. Using video cards, mining Firo can be more profitable than mining ethereum. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is able to churn out 6 to 6.5 Mhash/s of hash rate, earning about US$5 per day. Meanwhile, GeForce RTX 3080 is only able to churn out 5. 3 Mhash/s on this cryptocurrency. The algorithm has been changed to FiroPoW on October 26, 2021.
+
+
+== Regulatory responses ==
+In February 2021, Thailand Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mooted an idea of banning privacy coins from exchanges. Poramin Insom argued that such ban lacks rationale and clarity because all cryptocurrencies including bitcoin have some privacy features in it. Besides, exchanges can easily track customers' details by using Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-money laundering (AML) procedures. In September 2022, Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi delisted Firo because of financial regulations.
+
+
+== Price and volatility ==
+In October 2018, Firo was ranked top 25, with fully diluted market capitalisation of US$194,506,940. Firo had an all-time high price of US$170 per coin in 2017–2018. In February 2020, Firo price dropped to US$3 to US$5 per coin. Firo was priced at US$7.5 in September 2021.
+
+
+== Analysis ==
+According to researchers from Technical University of Denmark, Sigma and Lelantus protocols both contributed to the area of specialised trustless zero-knowledge proofs but seldom offered strong anonymity guarantees when compared to zk-SNARKS because of performance limitations. However, ZK-SNArK-like proof is complicated and research into simpler zero-knowledge protocols can provide practical and anonymous payments in the future.  A cryptographic audit was done in September 2020. According to the audit, Lelantus protocol offers good privacy without trusted setup and reasonable proving time within 2 seconds and anonymity set size of 216. According to R.E Shibai et al., Lelantus was described as ""promising"" in ensuring privacy and anonymity in cryptocurrency transactions. However, according to a master thesis written by Bontekoe, T.H from University of Twente, he would prefer zk-SNARKS for digital payments because as ""the used primitives in Zcoin (Lelantus) do currently not allow for the extensive statements that we most likely require to make our scheme anonymous and auditable.""Lelantus was also implemented into the Mimble Wimble protocol to produce a new protocol named Oscausi.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Legality of bitcoin by country
+
+
+== References =="
+Zcash,"Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency which is based on Bitcoin's codebase. It shares many similarities, such as a fixed total supply of 21 million units.Transactions can be transparent, similar to bitcoin transactions, or they can be shielded transactions which use a type of zero-knowledge proof to provide anonymity in transactions. Zcash coins are either in a transparent pool or a shielded pool. 
+Zcash offers private transactors the option of ""selective disclosure"", allowing a user to prove payment for auditing purposes. One such reason is to make it easier for private transactors to comply with anti-money laundering laws and tax regulations.
+
+
+== Use ==
+Zcash transactions can be transparent, similar to bitcoin transactions, in which case they are controlled by a ""t-addr"", or they can be shielded and are controlled by a ""z-addr"". A shielded transaction uses a type of zero-knowledge proof, specifically a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof, called ""zk-SNARK"", which provides anonymity to the coin holders in the transaction. Zcash coins are either in a transparent pool or a shielded pool. As of December 2017 only around 4% of Zcash coins were in the shielded pool and at that time most cryptocurrency wallet programs did not support z-addrs and no web-based wallets supported them. The shielded pool of Zcash coins were further analyzed for security and it was found that the anonymity set can be shrunk considerably by heuristics-based identifiable patterns of usage.While miners receive 80% of a block reward, 20% is given to the ""Zcash development fund"": 8% to Zcash Open Major Grants, 7% to Electric Coin Co., and 5% to The Zcash Foundation.
+
+
+== History ==
+Development work on Zcash began in 2013 by Johns Hopkins professor Matthew Green and some of his graduate students. The development was completed by the for-profit Zcash Company, led by Zooko Wilcox, a Colorado-based computer security specialist and cypherpunk. In October 2016, The Zcash Company raised over $3 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalists to complete the development of Zcash.Zcash was first mined in late October 2016. The initial demand was high, and within a week Zcash coins were trading for five thousand dollars a piece. Ten percent of all coins mined for the first four years were to be allotted to the Zcash Company, its employees, the investors, and the non-profit Zcash Foundation.The setup of Zcash required the careful execution of a trusted setup procedure — something that subsequently became known as ""The Ceremony"" — to create the Zcash private key. In order to ensure the privacy a truly random enormous number needed to be generated to be used as the private key, while also ensuring that no person or computer retains a copy of the key, or could subsequently regenerate the key. If the private key were available counterfeit Zcash coins could be generated. The Ceremony was a two-day process, executed simultaneously during a short-window of time in six different locations globally, by persons who did not know in advance who else was going to be participating in the event. The private key was generated, and used to instantiate Zcash, and the computers used in the process were reportedly destroyed. In 2022, Edward Snowden claimed to have participated in The Ceremony under a pseudonym.On February 21, 2019, the ""Zcash Company"" announced a re-branding as the Electric Coin Company (ECC).On May 19, 2020, a paper titled ""Alt-Coin Traceability"" investigated the privacy of both Zcash and Monero. This paper concluded that ""more academic research is needed in Zcash overall"" and that the privacy guarantees of Zcash are ""questionable"". The paper claimed that since the current heuristics from a 2018 Usenix Security Symposium paper entitled ""An Empirical Analysis of Anonymity in Zcash"" still continue today that the result is making Zcash less anonymous and more traceable.
+On June 8, 2020, Chainalysis added support for Zcash to their Chainalysis Reactor and ""Know Your Transaction"" (KYT) technologies. This permits Chainalysis to trace and provide transaction values and at least the sender or receiver address for over 99% of Zcash activity. According to Chainalysis it is able to accomplish this since most Zcash users do not use privacy-enhancing features. Chainalysis also cites a research report by the RAND corporation which revealed that less than 0.2% of the cryptocurrency addresses on the dark web were Zcash addresses.On October 12, 2020, the ECC announced a new non-profit 501(c)3 organization called the Bootstrap Project (Bootstrap) in a company blog post titled ""ECC’s owners to donate ECC"". A majority of the investors and owners of Zerocoin Electric Coin Company LLC (ECC) have agreed to donate the ECC company as the wholly owned property of Bootstrap. ECC's blog post claims that nothing will change within the company other than the ownership including the Board of Directors. On October 27, 2020, ECC announced that its shareholders have officially voted in favor of donating 100 percent of the company's shares to Bootstrap. On March 30, 2021, the company's transparency report said that it is ""now a wholly owned entity of the 501(c)3 Bootstrap"".In September 2023, a mining pool named ViaBTC had seized control of over half the hashing power on Zcash. This 51% dominance, raised worries about an attack where they could potentially manipulate transactions and harm the network. To shield users from the potential fallout, Coinbase swiftly enacted a series of defensive measures, including placing Zcash markets into ""limit-only"" mode, effectively quelling significant price swings while the situation unfolded. 
+
+
+== See also ==
+Legality of bitcoin by country
+Zerocoin protocol
+SNARK
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Bitcoin Cash,"Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that is a fork of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash is a spin-off or altcoin that was created in 2017.In November 2018, Bitcoin Cash split further into two cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV.
+
+
+== History ==
+Since its inception, Bitcoin users had maintained a common set of rules for the cryptocurrency. On 21 July 2017, bitcoin miners locked-in a software upgrade referred to as Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 91, which meant that the Segregated Witness upgrade would activate at block 477,120. Segwit controversially would enable second layer solutions on Bitcoin such as the Lightning Network. A key difference of opinion between Bitcoin users was over the running of nodes. Bitcoin supporters wanted to keep blocks small so that nodes could be operated with fewer resources, while some large block supporters find it acceptable that (due to large block sizes), nodes might only be run by universities, private companies and nonprofits.A group of Bitcoin activists, developers, and China-based miners were unhappy with Bitcoin's proposed SegWit improvement plans meant to  increase Bitcoin's capacity; these stakeholders pushed forward alternative plans which would increase the block size limit to eight megabytes through a hard fork. Supporters of a block size increase were more committed to an on-chain medium of exchange function.In June 2017, hardware manufacturer Bitmain, described the would-be hard fork with the increased block size as a ""contingency plan"", should the Bitcoin community decide to fork implementing SegWit. The first implementation of the software was proposed under the name Bitcoin ABC at a conference that month.  In July 2017, mining pool ViaBTC proposed the name Bitcoin Cash. In July 2017 Roger Ver and others stated they felt that adopting BIP 91 (that would later activate SegWit) favored people who wanted to treat Bitcoin as a digital investment rather than as a transactional currency.  The fork that created Bitcoin Cash took effect on 1 August 2017. In relation to Bitcoin it is characterized variously as a spin-off, a strand, a product of a hard fork, an offshoot, a clone, a second version or an altcoin.
+A Hong Kong newspaper likened this to a new version of word processing software saying:
+Bitcoin cash is like a new version of Microsoft Word, which generates documents that can no longer be opened via the older versions.
+At the time of the fork anyone owning bitcoin came into  possession of the same number of Bitcoin Cash units. The technical difference between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin is that Bitcoin Cash allows larger blocks in its blockchain than Bitcoin which, in theory, allows it to process more transactions per second. Bitcoin Cash was the first of the Bitcoin forks, in which software-development teams modified the original Bitcoin computer code and released coins with “Bitcoin"" in their names, with ""the goal of creating money out of thin air"". On 1 August 2017 Bitcoin Cash began trading at about $240, while bitcoin traded at about $2,700. On 20 December 2017 it reached an intraday high of $4,355.62 and then fell 88% to $519.12 on 23 August 2018.In 2018 Bitcoin Core developer Cory Fields found a bug in the Bitcoin ABC software that would have allowed an attacker to create a block causing a chain split. Fields notified the development team about it, and the bug was fixed.In November 2020, there was a second contested hard fork where the leading node implementation, BitcoinABC, created BCHA.
+
+
+== Controversy ==
+
+In 2017 there were two factions of Bitcoin supporters: those that supported large blocks and those who preferred small blocks. The Bitcoin Cash faction favors the use of its currency as a medium of exchange for commerce, while the Bitcoin-supporting faction view Bitcoin's primary use as that of a store of value. Bitcoin Cash is sometimes also referred to as Bcash. Bitcoin Cash detractors call the cryptocurrency ""Bcash"", ""Btrash"", or ""a scam"", while its supporters maintain that ""it is the pure form of Bitcoin"".Bryan Kelly, a stock analyst likened it to a software upgrade:
+Bitcoin cash is doing a “hard fork” or “effectively a software upgrade”, Kelly said on “Fast Money”. “When you do a software upgrade, everybody usually agrees. But in this particular case, everybody is not agreeing.”
+Samson Mow of Blockstream pointed to Bitcoin Cash's use of the ""Bitcoin"" name as a source of animosity between the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash camps. Emin Gün Sirer, a professor at Cornell stated that Bitcoin Cash was focused on use and Bitcoin was ""enormously"" focused on store of value.
+
+
+== Trading and usage ==
+Bitcoin Cash trades on digital currency exchanges using the Bitcoin Cash name and the BCH currency code for the cryptocurrency. On 26 March 2018, OKEx removed all Bitcoin Cash trading pairs except for BCH/BTC, BCH/ETH and BCH/USDT due to ""inadequate liquidity"". As of May 2018, daily transaction numbers for Bitcoin Cash are about one-tenth of those of bitcoin. Coinbase listed Bitcoin Cash on 19 December 2017 and the Coinbase platform experienced price abnormalities that led to an insider trading investigation. As of August 2018, Bitcoin Cash payments are supported by payment service providers such as BitPay, Coinify and GoCoin.
+
+
+== Difficulty adjustment algorithm ==
+Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash both use a proof-of-work algorithm to timestamp every new block. The proof of work algorithm used is the same in both cases. It can be described as a partial inversion of a hash function. Additionally, both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash target a new block to be generated every ten minutes on average. The time needed to calculate a new block is influenced by a parameter called the mining difficulty. If the total amount of mining power increases, an increase of the mining difficulty can keep the block time roughly constant. Vice versa, if the mining power decreases, a decrease of the mining difficulty can keep the block time roughly constant.To keep the block generation time equal to ten minutes on average, both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash use an algorithm adjusting the mining difficulty parameter. This algorithm is called the difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA). Originally, both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash used the same difficulty adjustment algorithm, adjusting the mining difficulty parameter every 2016 blocks. Since 1 August 2017, Bitcoin Cash also used an addition to the DAA, called an Emergency Difficulty Adjustment (EDA) algorithm. EDA was used alongside the original DAA and it was designed to decrease the mining difficulty of Bitcoin Cash by 20%, if the time difference between 6 successive blocks was greater than 12 hours.EDA adjustments caused instabilities in mining difficulty of the Bitcoin Cash system, resulting in Bitcoin Cash being thousands of blocks ahead of Bitcoin. To address the problem with stability, a change of the Bitcoin Cash DAA was implemented and the EDA canceled. The change took effect on 13 November 2017. After the change, the Bitcoin Cash DAA adjusts the mining difficulty after each block. To calculate the difficulty for a new block, the Bitcoin Cash DAA uses a moving window of last 144 blocks.A group of researchers demonstrated that, as of June 2019, Bitcoin DAA fails to generate new blocks at a constant rate as long as the hash supply is elastic. In contrast to that, the group demonstrated that Bitcoin Cash DAA is stable even when the cryptocurrency price is volatile and the supply of hash power is highly elastic.
+
+
+== 2018 split to create Bitcoin SV ==
+On 15 November 2018, a hard fork chain split of Bitcoin Cash occurred between two rival factions called Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV. On 15 November 2018 Bitcoin Cash traded at about $289, and Bitcoin SV traded at about $96.50, down from $425.01 on 14 November for the un-split Bitcoin Cash.The split originated from what was described as a ""civil war"" in two competing Bitcoin Cash camps. The first camp, supported by entrepreneur Roger Ver and Jihan Wu of Bitmain, promoted the software entitled Bitcoin ABC (short for Adjustable Blocksize Cap), which would maintain the block size at 32 MB. The second camp led by Craig Steven Wright and billionaire Calvin Ayre put forth a competing software version Bitcoin SV, short for ""Bitcoin Satoshi Vision"", which would increase the block size limit to 128 MB. The Bitcoin SV blockchain is the largest of all Bitcoin forks, exceeding 2.5 terabytes in size.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitcoin scalability problem
+List of bitcoin forks
+List of cryptocurrencies
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website"
+EOS.IO,"EOS.IO is a blockchain protocol based on the cryptocurrency EOS. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second. It was developed by the private company Block.one and launched in 2017. The platform was later released as open-source software. 
+
+
+== History ==
+Based on a white paper published in 2017, the EOSIO platform was developed by the private company Block.one and released as open-source software on June 1, 2018. At the launch of the blockchain, one billion tokens were distributed as ERC-20 tokens by Block.one. The CEO of Block.one, Brendan Blumer, announced that the company would support the EOSIO blockchain with over one billion USD in funding from the token sale and ultimately Block.one raised over four billion USD to support the blockchain during the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) period.The original test net, Dawn 1.0, was released on September 3, 2017, with test net versions Dawn 2.0 released on December 4, 2017, Dawn 3.0 on January 25, 2018, and Dawn 4.0 on May 7, 2018. The name of the cryptocurrency EOS comes from Ancient Greek Ἠώς, ""dawn"".EOSIO's Dawn 1.0 was launched on the EOSIO mainnet on June 1, 2018, and is currently operating under version 2.1.0.In September 2019, Block.one agreed to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges related to the $4 billion unregistered ICO for a $24 million penalty. The settlement did not require a restitution offer, registration of tokens, or any disqualifications.
+
+
+== EOS Network Foundation ==
+In August 2021, Yves La Rose founded the organization EOS Network Foundation (ENF). La Rose is an EOS enthusiast who disputes the way Block.one has managed to blockchain and its tokens. The organization has attempted to pressure Block.one into reinvesting its profits into development of the blockchain, and to support new development.
+
+
+== Block.one, EOSIO ecosystem and Everipedia ==
+Block.one is a company registered in the Cayman Islands, which began offering EOS tokens in June 2017 to the public, raising over $4 billion (a record for an ICO). Daniel Larimer was the Chief Technology Officer of Block.one. Larimer had previously worked on the decentralized exchange Bitshares from 2013 to 2016. After that, he worked on Steemit, a blockchain-based social media platform. On January 10, 2021, Larimer announced his resignation from Block.one.On December 6, 2017, Everipedia, a for-profit, wiki-based online encyclopedia, announced plans using EOS blockchain technology and work on an airdrop of a cryptocurrency called IQ to encourage generating information. The IQ tokens are intended to be exchangeable for Bitcoin. One of the goals of the company is to stop certain countries from blocking the content, by the integration of the blockchain model. The goal is that once Everipedia is decentralized and hosted on the EOSIO platform, countries such as Turkey and Iran that block Wikipedia will no longer be able to block it, via Everipedia's fork. Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Investment LP, a cryptocurrency investment firm, and Block.one led a group of institutions that invested $30 million in Everipedia on February 8, 2018. Novogratz also funds EOSIO Ecosystem, a $325-million joint venture between his Galaxy Digital LP and Block.one.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Cardano,"Cardano may refer to:
+
+Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576), Italian mathematician and physician
+Fazio Cardano (1444–1524), Italian jurist and mathematician, father of Gerolamo
+Cardano al Campo, town in Lombardy
+11421 Cardano, minor planet
+Cardano (blockchain platform)
+
+
+== See also ==
+Cardano's method of solving a cubic equation
+Baguenaudier, aka Cardano's rings, mechanical puzzle
+Cardanus (crater), lunar crater
+Cardona (disambiguation)"
+Charles Hoskinson,"Charles Hoskinson (born 1987 or 1988) is an American entrepreneur who is a co-founder of the blockchain engineering company Input Output Global, Inc. (formerly IOHK), and the Cardano blockchain platform, and was a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Hoskinson attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and the University of Colorado Boulder ""to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure"".Hoskinson has claimed that he had entered a PhD program but had dropped out. However, Denver did not have a graduate  program in mathematics. Colorado Boulder verified that he had attended as a half-time undergraduate math major, but did not earn a degree. He also claimed repeatedly to have worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), though DARPA confirmed he had not.
+
+
+== Career ==
+In 2013, Hoskinson quit a consulting job to begin a project called the Bitcoin Education Project. According to Hoskinson, the limited supply makes Bitcoin like a digital form of gold.
+He joined the Ethereum team as one of five original founders with Vitalik Buterin in late 2013 and held the position of chief executive. Buterin and the Ethereum team removed Hoskinson in 2014 after a dispute over whether the project should be commercial (Hoskinson's view) or a nonprofit (Buterin's view).In late 2014, Hoskinson and former Ethereum colleague Jeremy Wood formed IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), an engineering and research company, to build cryptocurrencies and blockchains. IOHK's key project is Cardano, a public blockchain and smart contract platform that hosts the ADA cryptocurrency. Hoskinson did not pursue venture capital for Cardano, saying that it ran counter to the blockchain's principles. Hoskinson has also said that venture capital involvement might lead to an outsized control of a project.IOHK has sponsored research focused on blockchain technology at the University of Edinburgh, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Wyoming.Forbes estimated Hoskinson's wealth as $500m–$600m in 2018.In 2020, Hoskinson spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he said that blockchain may eventually cause social change. In 2022, he appeared as a witness before the commodity exchanges, energy, and credit subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, where he advocated for decentralization and balanced regulation.
+
+
+== Philanthropy ==
+In September 2021, Hoskinson donated $20 million to Carnegie Mellon University to establish and run the Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics as part of the university's philosophy department.In late 2022 Hoskinson and his family assisted in creating the Hoskinson Health and Wellness Clinic in Gilette, Wyoming.Hoskinson contributed $1.5 million to fund a 2023 Galileo Project expedition led by astronomer and ""alien hunter"" Avi Loeb to explore debris from the meteorite CNEOS 2014-01-08 (also called IM1) that crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2014. Loeb argued that this object could have been created by alien life, a claim which lacks widespread support from the scientific community. The expedition reported finding tiny metallic spheres from the object on the ocean floor. Loeb said analysis of these ""spherules"" did not match any known alloy, though it was unclear whether they were artificial or natural in origin. Hoskinson said, ""This is a historic discovery, marking the first time that humans hold materials from a large interstellar object"" and that he was ""pleased with the results"".
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+As of 2022, Hoskinson purchased a ranch near Wheatland, Wyoming, donated equipment to the Platte County Sheriff's Office, and purchased a restaurant in Wheatland.In 2023, Wyoming Public Radio said Hoskinson, along with his father, Dr. Mark Hoskinson, and brother, Dr. William Hoskinson, had opened a clinic focusing on anti-ageing and regenerative medicine in Gillette, a town in Campbell County, Wyoming. Mark and William Hoskinson had both formerly worked for Campbell County Health. The director of the Hoskinson Health and Wellness Clinic said it had cost $18 million. Charles Hoskinson said cryptocurrency would be accepted in the future.Hoskinson was criticised after his private jet was ranked among the top 15 biggest polluters in the US on the Climate Jets website. Commentators contrasted the ""green"" reputation of Cardano with his personal travel. He defended his jet use, saying the plane had been used for charters for the band Metallica and film industry workers.
+
+
+== External links ==
+Input Output Global
+Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+IOHK Page"
+Justin Sun,"Justin Sun (Chinese: 孙宇晨; pinyin: Sūn Yǔchén; born July 30, 1990) is a Chinese-born Grenadian cryptocurrency entrepreneur and business executive. He is the founder of TRON, a blockchain DAO ecosystem. He also works as an advisor to HTX.Sun once served as Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Sun was born in 1990. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in history from Peking University and a Master of Arts degree in East Asian studies from the University of Pennsylvania.At University of Pennsylvania Sun became interested in cryptocurrency and invested early in bitcoin. He studied at Jack Ma's Zhejiang Hupan Entrepreneurship Research Center. He became the cover figure of Yazhou Zhoukan in 2011 and a Davos Global Shaper in 2014.
+
+
+== Career ==
+
+
+=== Blockchain and technology ===
+In late 2013, Sun joined Ripple Labs as chief representative and adviser. In 2014, he founded Peiwo, a Chinese voice-based social networking app. He was named CNTV's most noteworthy new entrepreneur in 2015, and was included in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list from 2015 to 2017.
+Sun founded the blockchain-based operating platform Tron and launched the TRX token in 2017. In September 2017 his company Tron held an initial coin offering (ICO) for the TRX token, a few days before the Chinese government banned ICOs. According to The Verge, Sun was aware of the impending ban, and pushed for the sale to occur before the ban could be announced. Shortly afterwards, Sun left China for the United States. Tron raised about $70 million at its ICO.In June 2018, Sun acquired the company BitTorrent, Inc (later renamed Rainberry Inc.) for $140 million. The company is best known for developing the BitTorrent protocol. During his tenure leading BitTorrent as CEO, the BitTorrent network launched its own utility token, BTT.Sun later acquired the crypto exchange Poloniex. The Verge alleged in 2021 that Sun demanded that he should be given personal ownership of misplaced Poloniex customer funds that users accidentally sent to wrong wallet addresses, totalling about 300 bitcoin, despite the objections of Poloniex employees. In November 2023 Poloniex had $120 million stolen by hackers. Sun offered to let the hackers keep $6.5 million if they returned the rest of the money within 7 days.Sometime between 2018 and 2020, Sun acquired a Maltese residency card as a result of investing in the country.In October 2021, Sun participated in a $65 million funding round in Hong Kong-based Animoca, a maker of crypto and blockchain video games such as The Sandbox.On behalf of non-fungible token (NFT) related projects and funds, he has spent more than $100 million at auction for artworks from Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Alberto Giacometti, and Pak.
+
+
+=== Diplomacy ===
+Sun was appointed Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2021. As a result, Sun phased out of his daily roles at his crypto-related projects such as Tron in order to focus on his diplomatic role at the WTO in Geneva. Sun told Bloomberg he would use his role to advocate cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to countries and promote technology development in Grenada. Sun said the Caribbean has ""become a very good place for entrepreneurship"" because of its close proximity to the U.S., with less strict regulations regarding cryptocurrency.In December 2021, Justin Sun retired as a CEO of TRON to become a diplomat for Grenada.In March 2023, Sun stepped down from his position as Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization. 
+
+
+=== Pending Civil Cases ===
+In March 2023, Sun was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for selling unregistered securities related to the sale and promotion of Tron (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) tokens, alleging that Sun had engaged in wash trading in the secondary market for TRX in order to raise its price. Eight celebrities, including Akon, Ne-Yo, Austin Mahone, Soulja Boy, Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul and Lil Yachty were charged with promoting these cryptocurrencies without disclosing that they were sponsored. All defendants excluding Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone settled with payments in excess of $400,000 without admitting liability. Prior reporting by The Verge also alleged that Tron, at the direction of Sun, had engaged in market manipulation by buying/selling TRX tokens based on non-public internal information.These are allegations and have not been proven in a court of law.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+Sun placed the winning $4.6 million bid to have a private meal with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett in June 2019, before canceling it to widespread surprise. The dinner with Buffett eventually occurred in early 2020. Sun met with Buffett, a critic of cryptocurrency, at the Happy Hollow Club in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 23, 2020. Sun was joined by other cryptocurrency executives, including leaders of Litecoin, eToro, Huobi, and Binance Charity Foundation. At the dinner, Sun gifted Buffett a phone with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The money from the charity auction benefited the Glide Foundation, which Buffett's late wife Susan introduced to Buffett after volunteering there.In December 2021, Sun won an auction with a bid of $28 million to be the first paying passenger to fly on Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle in July 2021, but he was not able to fly on the mission due to a scheduling conflict.
+
+
+== Bibliography ==
+Brave New World (2017)
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+Justin Sun on Twitter"
+Tron,"Tron (stylized as TRON) is a 1982 American science fiction action adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer and video game developer who is transported inside the software world of a mainframe computer where he interacts with programs in his attempt to escape; it also stars Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, and Barnard Hughes. Tron, along with The Last Starfighter, has the distinction of being one of cinema's earliest films to use extensive computer-generated imagery (CGI).
+The inspiration for Tron dates back to 1976, when Lisberger became intrigued with video games after seeing Pong. He and producer Donald Kushner set up an animation studio to develop Tron with the intention of making it an animated film. To promote the studio itself, Lisberger and his team created a 30-second animation featuring the first appearance of the title character. Eventually, Lisberger decided to include live-action elements with both backlit and computer animation for the actual feature-length film. Various studios had rejected the storyboards for the film before Walt Disney Productions agreed to finance and distribute Tron. There, backlit animation was finally combined with the 2D computer animation and the live action.
+Tron was released on July 9, 1982. The film was a moderate success at the box office, and received positive reviews from critics, who praised its groundbreaking visuals and acting but criticized its storyline as being incoherent. Tron received nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Sound at the 55th Academy Awards, but was not nominated in the Best Visual Effects category. Tron spawned multiple video games (including an arcade tie-in released shortly after the film), and as it became a cult film, a multimedia franchise including comic books. A sequel titled Tron: Legacy, directed by Joseph Kosinski, was released in 2010, with Bridges and Boxleitner reprising their roles and Lisberger acting as producer. This was followed by the XD animated series Tron: Uprising in 2012, set between the two films.
+
+
+== Plot ==
+Kevin Flynn is a leading software engineer, formerly employed by large technology corporation ENCOM. He now runs a video game arcade, and attempts to hack into ENCOM's mainframe system; however, ENCOM's Master Control Program (MCP) halts his progress. Within ENCOM, programmer Alan Bradley and his girlfriend, engineer Lora Baines, discover that the MCP has closed off their access to projects. When Alan confronts the senior executive vice president, Ed Dillinger, Dillinger says the security measures are an effort to stop outside hacking attempts. However, when Dillinger privately questions the MCP through his computerized desk, he realizes the MCP has expanded into a powerful virtual intelligence and has been illegally appropriating personal, business, and government programs to increase its own capabilities. As Dillinger rose to the top of ENCOM by presenting Flynn's games as his own, the MCP blackmails Dillinger by threatening to expose his plagiarism if he does not comply with its directives.
+Lora deduces that Flynn is the hacker, and she and Alan go to his arcade to warn him. Flynn reveals that he has been trying to locate evidence proving Dillinger's plagiarism. Together, the three form a plan to break into ENCOM and unlock Alan's ""Tron"" program, a self-governing security measure designed to protect the system and counter the functions of the MCP. Once inside ENCOM, the three split up, and Flynn comes into direct conflict with the MCP through a laboratory terminal. Before Flynn can get the information he needs, the MCP uses an experimental laser to digitize and upload him into the ENCOM mainframe cyberspace. There, computer programs are living entities appearing in the likeness of the human ""Users"" (programmers) who created them. The space is ruled by the MCP and its second-in-command, Sark, who coerce programs to renounce their belief in the Users and force those who resist to compete in deadly games. 
+Flynn is put into the games and plays well; between matches, he befriends two other captured programs, Ram and Tron. The three escape into the mainframe during a round of Light Cycle (an arcade game Flynn created and is skilled at), but Flynn and Ram become separated from Tron by an MCP pursuit party. While attempting to help a badly injured Ram, Flynn learns that he can manipulate portions of the mainframe by accessing his programmer knowledge. Just before Ram ""derezzes"" (dies), he recognizes Flynn as a User, and encourages him to find Tron and free the system. Using his newfound ability, Flynn rebuilds a broken vehicle and disguises himself as one of Sark's soldiers.
+Tron enlists help from Yori, a sympathetic program, and at an I/O tower receives information from Alan necessary to destroy the MCP. Flynn rejoins them, and the three board a hijacked solar sailer to reach the MCP's core. However, Sark's command ship destroys the sailer, capturing Flynn and Yori and presumably killing Tron. Sark leaves the command ship and orders its deresolution, but Flynn keeps it intact by manipulating the mainframe again.
+Sark reaches the MCP's core on a shuttle carrying captured programs deemed powerful or useful. While the MCP attempts to absorb these programs, Tron, who is still alive, confronts Sark and critically injures him, prompting the MCP to give Sark all its functions. Realizing that his ability to manipulate the mainframe might give Tron an opening, Flynn leaps into the beam of the MCP, distracting it. Seeing a break in the MCP's shield, Tron attacks through the gap and destroys the MCP and Sark, ending the MCP's control over the mainframe and allowing the captured programs to communicate with users again.
+Flynn reappears in the real world, rematerialized at the terminal. Tron's victory in the mainframe has released all lockouts on computer access, and a nearby printer produces the evidence that Dillinger had plagiarized Flynn's creations. The next morning, Dillinger enters his office to find the MCP deactivated and the proof of his theft publicized. Flynn is subsequently promoted to CEO of ENCOM and is happily greeted by Alan and Lora as their new boss.
+
+
+== Cast ==
+
+Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a video arcade proprietor, and former programmer and video game developer at ENCOM, who is beamed into the ENCOM mainframe via a digitizing laser by the Master Control Program (MCP).
+Bridges also portrays Clu (Codified Likeness Utility), a hacking program developed by Flynn to find evidence of Dillinger's theft in the mainframe.
+Bruce Boxleitner as Alan Bradley, Flynn's work partner and fellow programmer at ENCOM
+Boxleitner also portrays Tron, a security program developed by Bradley to self-monitor communications between the MCP and the real world.
+David Warner as Ed Dillinger, the Senior Executive Vice President of ENCOM and former coworker of Flynn's who used the MCP to steal Flynn's work and pass it off as his own, earning himself a series of undeserved promotions
+Warner also portrays Sark, a command program developed by Dillinger to serve as the MCP's second-in-command.
+Warner also provides the uncredited voice of the Master Control Program (MCP), a rogue artificial intelligence operating system (originally a chess program created by Dr. Gibbs and ""improved"" by Dillinger) which monitors and controls ENCOM's mainframe.
+Cindy Morgan as Dr. Lora Baines, Bradley's co-worker and girlfriend, as well as assistant to Dr. Gibbs on the digitization experiment.
+Morgan also portrays Yori, an input/output program developed by Dr. Baines and an ally of Tron.
+Barnard Hughes as Dr. Walter Gibbs, a co-founder of ENCOM running the company's science division, who creates the SHV 20905 digitizing laser with Dr. Baines's assistance.
+Hughes also portrays Dumont, a ""guardian"" program developed by Dr. Gibbs to protect input/output junctions in the mainframe.
+Hughes also provides the uncredited voice of the Master Control Program's original incarnation.
+Dan Shor as Roy Kleinberg, an ENCOM employee
+Shor also portrays Ram, an actuarial program possibly developed by Kleinberg to sort out connections between ENCOM and an unnamed insurance company, who is a close ally of Tron and Flynn.
+Peter Jurasik as Crom, a compound interest program matched against Flynn on the Game Grid
+Tony Stephano as Peter, Ed Dillinger's assistant.
+Stephano also portrays Sark's Lieutenant.
+
+
+== Production ==
+
+
+=== Origins ===
+The inspiration for Tron occurred in 1976 when Steven Lisberger, then an animator of drawings with his own studio, looked at a sample reel from a computer firm called MAGI and saw Pong for the first time. He was immediately fascinated by video games and wanted to do a film incorporating them. According to Lisberger, ""I realized that there were these techniques that would be very suitable for bringing video games and computer visuals to the screen. And that was the moment that the whole concept flashed across my mind"". The film's concept of entering a parallel game world was also inspired by the classic tale Alice in Wonderland.Lisberger had already created an early version of the character 'Tron' for a 30 second long animation which was used to promote both Lisberger Studios and a series of various rock radio stations. This backlit cel animation depicted Tron as a character who glowed yellow; the same shade that Lisberger had originally intended for all the heroic characters developed for the feature-length Tron. This was later changed to blue for the finished film (see Pre-production below). The prototype Tron was bearded and resembled the Cylon Centurions from the 1978 TV series Battlestar Galactica. Also, Tron was armed with two ""exploding discs"", as Lisberger described them on the 2-Disc DVD edition (see Rinzler).
+Lisberger elaborates: ""Everybody was doing backlit animation in the 70s, you know. It was that disco look. And we thought, what if we had this character that was a neon line, and that was our Tron warrior – Tron for electronic. And what happened was, I saw Pong, and I said, well, that's the arena for him. And at the same time I was interested in the early phases of computer generated animation, which I got into at MIT in Boston, and when I got into that I met a bunch of programmers who were into all that. And they really inspired me, by how much they believed in this new realm.""He was frustrated by the clique-like nature of computers and video games and wanted to create a film that would open this world up to everyone. Lisberger and his business partner Donald Kushner moved to the West Coast in 1977 and set up an animation studio to develop Tron. They borrowed against the anticipated profits of their 90-minute animated television special Animalympics to develop storyboards for Tron with the notion of making an animated film. But after Variety mentioned the project briefly during its early phase, it caught the attention of computer scientist Alan Kay. He contacted Lisberger and convinced him to use him as an adviser on the movie, then persuaded him to use real CGI instead of just hand-animation.Bonnie MacBird wrote the first drafts of Tron with extensive input from Lisberger, basing the original personality of Alan on Alan Kay. As a result of working together, Kay and MacBird became close and later married. She also created Tron as a character (rather than a visual demo) and Flynn. Originally, MacBird envisioned Flynn more comedically, suggesting the then 30-year-old Robin Williams for the role. Besides many story changes after the script went to Disney, including giving it ""a more serious tone with quasi religious overtones"", and removing most of the scientific elements, none of her dialogue remains in the final film, and there was a ""rather bitter credits dispute.""The film was eventually conceived as an animated film bracketed with live-action sequences. The rest involved a combination of computer-generated visuals and back-lit animation. Lisberger planned to finance the movie independently by approaching several computer companies but had little success. However, one company, Information International Inc., was receptive. He met with Richard Taylor, a representative, and they began talking about using live-action photography with back-lit animation in such a way that it could be integrated with computer graphics. At this point, there was a script and the film was entirely storyboarded, with some computer animation tests completed. He had spent approximately $300,000 developing Tron and had also secured $4–5 million in private backing before reaching a standstill. Lisberger and Kushner took their storyboards and samples of computer-generated films to Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Columbia Pictures – all of which turned them down.In 1980, they decided to take the idea to Walt Disney Productions, which was interested in producing more daring productions at the time. Tom Wilhite, Disney's vice president for creative development, watched Lisberger's test footage and convinced Ron Miller to give the movie a chance. However, Disney executives were uncertain about giving $10–12 million to a first-time producer and director using techniques which, in most cases, had never been attempted. The studio agreed to finance a test reel which involved a flying disc champion throwing a rough prototype of the discs used in the film. It was a chance to mix live-action footage with back-lit animation and computer-generated visuals. It impressed the executives at Disney and they agreed to back the film. MacBird and Lisberger's script was subsequently re-written and re-storyboarded with the studio's input. At the time, Disney rarely hired outsiders to make films for them, and Kushner found that he and his group were given a chilly reception because they ""tackled the nerve center – the animation department. They saw us as the germ from outside. We tried to enlist several Disney animators, but none came. Disney is a closed group."" As a result, they hired Wang Film Productions for the animation.
+
+
+=== Production ===
+Because of the many special effects, Disney decided in 1981 to film Tron completely in 65-mm Super Panavision (except for the computer-generated layers, which were shot in VistaVision and both anamorphic 35mm and Super 35 which were used for some scenes in the ""real"" world and subsequently ""blown up"" to 65 mm). Three designers were brought in to create the look of the computer world. French comic book artist Jean Giraud (also known as Moebius) was the main set and costume designer for the film. Most of the vehicle designs (including Sark's aircraft carrier, the light cycles, the tank, and the solar sailer) were created by industrial designer Syd Mead. Peter Lloyd, a high-tech commercial artist, designed the environments. Nevertheless, these jobs often overlapped, leaving Giraud working on the solar sailer and Mead designing terrain, sets and the film's logo. The original 'Program' character design was inspired by Lisberger Studios' logo of a glowing bodybuilder hurling two discs.To create the computer animation sequences of Tron, Disney turned to the four leading computer graphics firms of the day: Information International, Inc. of Culver City, California, who owned the Super Foonly F-1 (the fastest PDP-10 ever made and the only one of its kind); MAGI of Elmsford, New York; Robert Abel and Associates of California; and Digital Effects of New York City. Bill Kovacs worked on the film while working for Robert Abel before going on to found Wavefront Technologies. The work was not a collaboration, resulting in very different styles used by the firms.
+Tron was one of the first films to make extensive use of any form of computer animation, and it is celebrated as a milestone in the industry though only fifteen to twenty minutes of such animation were used, mostly scenes that show digital ""terrain"" or patterns, or include vehicles such as light-cycles, tanks and ships. Because the technology to combine computer animation and live action did not exist at the time, these sequences were interspersed with the filmed characters. One of the computers used had only 2 MB of memory and no more than 330 MB of storage. This put a limit on detail of background; and at a certain distance, they had a procedure of mixing in black to fade things out, a process called ""depth cueing"". The film's Computer Effects Supervisor Richard Taylor told them ""When in doubt, black it out!"", which became their motto. Originally the film was meant to use white backgrounds like in THX 1138 inside the Grid, but it would require such huge amounts of lights that it was decided to use black backgrounds instead.The computers at the time could not do animation, so the frames had to be produced one by one. In some of the more complex sequences, like the Solar Sailer moving through metal canyons, each frame could take up to six hours to produce. There was no way to digitally print them on film, either; rather, a motion picture camera was placed in front of a computer screen to capture each individual frame.Most of the scenes, backgrounds, and visual effects in the film were created using more traditional techniques and a unique process known as ""backlit animation"". In this process, live-action scenes inside the computer world were filmed in black-and-white on an entirely black set, placed in an enlarger for blow-ups and transferred to large format Kodalith high-contrast film. These negatives were then used to make Kodalith sheets with a reverse (positive) image. Clear cels were laid over each sheet and all portions of the figure except the areas that were exposed for the later camera passes were manually blacked out. Next the Kodalith sheets and cel overlays were placed over a light box while a VistaVision camera mounted above it made separate passes and different color filters. A typical shot normally required 12 passes, but some sequences, like the interior of the electronic tank, could need as many as 50 passes. About 300 matte paintings were made for the film, each photographed onto a large piece of Ektachrome film before colors were added by gelatin filters in a similar procedure as in the Kodaliths. The mattes, rotoscopic and CGI were then combined and composed together to give them a ""technological"" appearance. With multiple layers of high-contrast, large format positives and negatives, this process required truckloads of sheet film and a workload even greater than that of a conventional cel-animated feature. The Kodalith was specially produced as large sheets by Kodak for the film and came in numbered boxes so that each batch of the film could be used in order of manufacture for a consistent image. However, this was not understood by the filmmakers and, as a result, glowing outlines and circuit traces occasionally flicker as the film speed varied between batches. After the reason was discovered, this was no longer a problem as the batches were used in order and ""zinger"" sounds were used during the flickering parts to represent the computer world malfunctioning as Lisberger described it. Lisberger later had these flickers and sounds digitally corrected for the 2011 restored Blu-ray release as they were not included in his original vision of the film. Due to its difficulty and cost, this process of back-lit animation was not repeated for another feature film.
+Sound design and creation for the film was assigned to Frank Serafine, who was responsible for the sound design on Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.
+At one point in the film, a small entity called ""Bit"" advises Flynn with only the words ""yes"" and ""no"" created by a Votrax speech synthesizer.
+BYTE wrote: ""Although this film is very much the personal expression of Steven Lisberger's vision, nevertheless [it] has certainly been a group effort"". More than 569 people were involved in the post-production work, including 200 inkers and hand-painters, 85 of them from Taiwan's Cuckoo's Nest Studio. Unusual for an English-language production, in the end credits the Taiwanese personnel were listed with their names written in Chinese characters.This film features parts of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the multi-story ENCOM laser bay was the target area for the SHIVA solid-state multi-beamed laser. Also, the stairway that Alan, Lora, and Flynn use to reach Alan's office is the stairway in Building 451 near the entrance to the main machine room. The cubicle scenes were shot in another room of the lab. At the time, Tron was the only film to have scenes filmed inside this lab.The original script called for ""good"" programs to be colored yellow and ""evil"" programs (those loyal to Sark and the MCP) to be colored blue. Partway into production, this coloring scheme was changed to blue for good and red for evil, but some scenes were produced using the original coloring scheme: Clu, who drives a tank, has yellow circuit lines, and all of Sark's tank commanders are blue (but appear green in some presentations). Also, the light-cycle sequence shows the heroes driving yellow (Flynn), orange (Tron), and red (Ram) cycles, while Sark's troops drive blue cycles; similarly, Clu's tank is red, while tanks driven by crews loyal to Sark are blue.
+Because of all the personal information about citizens which exist inside computer networks, such as social security number and driver's license, the idea was that each real world person has a digital counterpart inside the Grid based on information about them, which is why it was decided to use some of the same actors in both worlds.Budgeting the production was difficult by reason of breaking new ground in response to additional challenges, including an impending Directors Guild of America strike and a fixed release date. Disney predicted at least $400 million in domestic sales of merchandise, including an arcade game by Bally Midway and three Mattel Intellivision home video games.The producers also added Easter eggs: during the scene where Tron and Ram escape from the Light Cycle arena into the system, Pac-Man can be seen behind Sark (with the corresponding sounds from the Pac-Man arcade game being heard in the background), while a ""Hidden Mickey"" outline (located at time 01:12:29 on the re-release Blu-ray) can be seen below the solar sailer during the protagonists' journey. The film set also included the arcade games Space Invaders (1978), Asteroids (1979) and Pac-Man (1980).Tron was originally meant to be released during the Christmas season of 1982, but when chairman of the Disney board Card Walker found out the release date of Don Bluth's film The Secret of NIMH was in early July, he rushed it into a summer release to be able to compete with Bluth, and it ended up competing with films like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner and Poltergeist.
+
+
+=== Music ===
+
+The soundtrack for Tron was written by pioneer electronic musician Wendy Carlos, who is best known for her album Switched-On Bach and for the soundtracks to many films, including the Stanley Kubrick-directed films A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. The music, which was the first collaboration between Carlos and her partner Annemarie Franklin, featured a mix of an analog Moog synthesizer and Crumar's GDS digital synthesizer (complex additive and phase modulation synthesis), along with non-electronic pieces performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (hired at the insistence of Disney, which was concerned that Carlos might not be able to complete her score on time). Two additional musical tracks (""1990's Theme"" and ""Only Solutions"") were provided by the American band Journey after British band Supertramp pulled out of the project. An album featuring dialogue, music and sound effects from the film was also released on LP by Disneyland Records in 1982.
+
+
+== Reception and legacy ==
+
+
+=== Box office ===
+Tron was released on July 9, 1982, in 1,091 theaters in the United States and Canada grossing USD $4 million on its opening weekend. It went on to gross $33 million in the United States and Canada and $17 million overseas, for a worldwide gross of approximately $50 million, which was Disney's highest-grossing live action film for 5 years.In addition, the film had $70 million in wholesale merchandise sales.Despite the gross and merchandise sales, it was seen as a financial disappointment, and the studio wrote off some of its $17 million budget.
+
+
+=== Critical response ===
+The film was well received by critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars and described it as ""a dazzling movie from Disney in which computers have been used to make themselves romantic and glamorous. Here's a technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish and fun"". However, near the end of his review, he noted (in a positive tone), ""This is an almost wholly technological movie. Although it's populated by actors who are engaging (Bridges, Cindy Morgan) or sinister (Warner), it's not really a movie about human nature. Like Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back but much more so, this movie is a machine to dazzle and delight us"". Ebert closed his first annual Overlooked Film Festival with a showing of Tron. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also awarded four out of four stars, calling it ""a trip, and a terrifically entertaining one at that...It's a dazzler that opens up our minds to our new tools, all in a traditional film narrative."" Each gave the film two thumbs up. Tron was also featured in Siskel and Ebert's video pick of the week in 1993.InfoWorld's Deborah Wise was impressed, writing that ""it's hard to believe the characters acted out the scenes on a darkened soundstage... We see characters throwing illuminated Frisbees, driving 'lightcycles' on a video-game grid, playing a dangerous version of jai alai and zapping numerous fluorescent tanks in arcade-game-type mazes. It's exciting, it's fun, and it's just what video-game fans and anyone with a spirit of adventure will love—despite plot weaknesses.""On the other hand, Variety disliked the film and said in its review, ""Tron is loaded with visual delights but falls way short of the mark in story and viewer involvement. Screenwriter-director Steven Lisberger has adequately marshalled a huge force of technicians to deliver the dazzle, but even kids (and specifically computer game geeks) will have a difficult time getting hooked on the situations"". In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin criticized the film's visual effects: ""They're loud, bright and empty, and they're all this movie has to offer"". The Washington Post's Gary Arnold wrote, ""Fascinating as they are as discrete sequences, the computer-animated episodes don't build dramatically. They remain a miscellaneous form of abstract spectacle"". In his review for The Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote, ""It's got momentum and it's got marvels, but it's without heart; it's a visionary technological achievement without vision"".Colin Greenland reviewed the home video release of Tron for Imagine magazine, and stated that ""three plucky young programmers descend into the micro-world to battle the Master Control Program with a sacred frisbee. Loses much of its excitement on the little screen.""On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 72% rating based on the reviews of 67 critics, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The website's consensus states: ""Though perhaps not as strong dramatically as it is technologically, TRON is an original and visually stunning piece of science fiction that represents a landmark work in the history of computer animation."" Metacritic gave the film a score of 58 based on 13 reviews, indicating ""mixed or average reviews"".In the year it was released, the Motion Picture Academy refused to nominate Tron for a special-effects award because, as director Steven Lisberger puts it, ""The Academy thought we cheated by using computers"". The film did, however, earn Oscar nominations in the categories of Best Costume Design (Elois Jenssen and Rosanna Norton) and Best Sound (Michael Minkler, Bob Minkler, Lee Minkler, and James LaRue).
+
+
+=== Cultural effect ===
+In 1997, Ken Perlin of the Mathematical Applications Group, Inc. won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for his invention of Perlin noise for Tron.The film, considered groundbreaking, has inspired several individuals in numerous ways. John Lasseter, head of Pixar and Disney's animation group, described how the film helped him see the potential of computer-generated imagery in the production of animated films, stating ""without Tron, there would be no Toy Story.""The two members of the French house music group Daft Punk, who scored the sequel, have held a joint, lifelong fascination with the film. Also, in Gorillaz' music video for the song ""Feel Good Inc."", Russel, the fictional drummer of the band, can be seen wearing an Encom hat.Tron developed into a cult film and was ranked as 13th in a 2010 list of the top 20 cult films published by The Boston Globe.The film heavily inspired the music video for Danish pop/dance group Infernal's 2006 hit single ""From Paris to Berlin"". The music video for Australian rock band Regurgitator's 1997 song ""Everyday Formula"" was also heavily inspired by the film and recreates several scenes.In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated this film for its Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.
+
+
+== Books ==
+A novelization of Tron was released in 1982, written by American science fiction novelist Brian Daley. It included eight pages of color photographs from the movie. In the same year, Disney Senior Staff Publicist Michael Bonifer authored a book entitled The Art of Tron which covered aspects of the pre-production and post-production aspects of Tron. A nonfiction book about the making of the original film, The Making of Tron: How Tron Changed Visual Effects and Disney Forever, was written by William Kallay and published in 2011.
+
+
+== Television ==
+Tron made its television debut as part of the Disney Channel's first day of programming, on April 18, 1983, at 7:00PM (ET).
+
+
+== Home media ==
+Tron was originally released on VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, and CED Videodisc in 1983. As with most video releases from the 1980s, the film was cropped to the 4:3 pan and scan format. The film saw multiple re-releases throughout the 1990s, most notably an ""Archive Collection"" LaserDisc box set, which featured the first release of the film in its original widescreen 2.20:1 format. By 1993, Tron had grossed $17 million in video rentals.Tron saw its first DVD release on December 12, 2000. This bare-bones release utilized the same non-anamorphic video transfer used in the Archive Collection LaserDisc set, and it did not include any of the LD's special features. On January 15, 2002, the film received a 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition release in the forms of a VHS and a special 2-Disc DVD set. This set featured a new THX mastered anamorphic video transfer and included all of the special features from the LD Archive Collection release, plus an all-new 90 minute ""Making of Tron"" documentary.
+To tie in with the home video release of Tron: Legacy, the movie was finally re-released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Special Edition DVD and for the first time on Blu-ray Disc on April 5, 2011, with the subtitle ""The Original Classic"" to distinguish it from its sequel. Tron was also featured in a 5-Disc Blu-ray Combo with the 3D copy of Tron: Legacy. The film was re-released on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK on June 27, 2011.
+
+
+== Sequels ==
+
+
+=== Tron: Legacy ===
+
+On January 12, 2005, Disney announced it had hired screenwriters Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal to write a sequel to Tron. In 2008, director Joseph Kosinski negotiated to develop and direct TRON, described as ""the next chapter"" of the 1982 film and based on a preliminary teaser trailer shown at that year's San Diego Comic-Con, with Lisberger co-producing. Filming began in Vancouver, British Columbia in April 2009. During the 2009 Comic-Con, the title of the sequel was revealed to be changed to Tron: Legacy. The second trailer (also with the Tron: Legacy logo) was released in 3D with Alice In Wonderland. A third trailer premiered at Comic-Con 2010 on July 22. At Disney's D23 Expo on September 10–13, 2009, they also debuted teaser trailers for Tron: Legacy as well as having a light cycle and other props from the film there. The film was released on December 17, 2010, with Daft Punk composing the score.
+
+
+=== Tron: Uprising (TV series) ===
+
+Tron: Uprising takes place during the time period between the events of Tron and Tron: Legacy. In the series, young program Beck becomes the leader of a revolution inside the computer world of the Grid, tasked with the mission of freeing his home and friends from the reign of Clu and his henchman, Gen. Tesler. To prepare for the challenge, Beck is trained by Tron – the greatest warrior The Grid has ever known – who mentors Beck as he grows beyond his youthful nature into a courageous and powerful leader. Destined to become the system's new protector, Beck adopts Tron's persona to battle the forces of evil.
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+
+
+== See also ==
+Tron (franchise)
+Tron (hacker)
+Demoscene
+Isekai
+Golden age of arcade video games
+Automan - Early eighties TV series inspired by the film.
+Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad
+Digimon Adventure
+Code Lyoko
+Zixx
+ReBoot
+ReBoot: The Guardian Code
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website
+Tron at the American Film Institute Catalog
+Tron at Disney A to Z 
+Tron at IMDb 
+Tron at AllMovie 
+Tron at Box Office Mojo 
+Tron at Rotten Tomatoes 
+Tron at the TCM Movie Database"
+AmbaCoin,"AmbaCoin is the official cryptocurrency of Ambazonia. It is said to be backed by the ""rich natural resources"" of the breakaway region. The AmbaCoin was launched on in 2018, and the ICO was from December 2018 to 2019. The Ambazonian Government claims that all profits go towards their independence struggle and humanitarian aid.
+
+
+== Proposal ==
+In 2018, AmbaCoin was created with the intention of being the official currency of Ambazonia. Despite the AmbaCoin being a crypto currency, it cannot be used as an official currency due to many Ambazonians not having access to the internet, low internet literacy and lack of proper electricity infrastructure, as not everyone has access to electricity. Hence a new currency will be introduce, if independence is attained, for day-to-day transactions and business matters. Several names have been tossed around but nothing has been decided. Examples include: the Amba (AMB/A), the Ambazonian Shilling (AMS/AmS), the Amba-Dollar (AMD/Am$), Southern Cameroonian Pound (SCP/SC£), Ambazonian  Cowry (AMC/Am𐤀) (the historical currency that circulated along the coast of West Africa, mostly by traders and merchants, before the colonization of Africa), Njangi (Nj), Ambazonian Dinar (AMD/AmƉ), Ambazonian Qwid (AMQ/AmΦ) and the West African Eco (provided it joins the ECOWAS along with the WAMZ if or once independence is attained).
+
+
+== References =="
+Nervos Network,"Nervos Network is a blockchain platform which consists of multiple blockchain layers that are designed for different functions. The foundational layer is known as the Common Knowledge Base, whilst the native cryptocurrency of this layer is called CKB. This foundational layer uses a proof-of-work consensus model. Smart contracts and decentralized applications can be deployed on any layer.
+Nervos Network was founded in 2018 by Jan Xie, Terry Tai, Kevin Wang, Daniel Lv, and Cipher Wang.
+
+
+== Architecture ==
+Nervos Network utilizes multiple blockchain layers to for different functions. The base layer prioritizes security and decentralization, and is optimized to verify transactions. It can settle transactions submitted from upper layers and resolves disputes. Layer 2 and above are able to favor greater throughput demands of software applications.
+
+
+=== NC MAX ===
+Layer 1 achieves cryptographic consensus through proof of work, using a modified version of Bitcoin's Nakamoto consensus algorithm: NC-MAX. NC-MAX was presented at the Internet Society's Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium in 2022. The consensus process uses a novel hash function called ""Eaglesong.""  Several manufacturers produce ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) machines to utilize the Eaglesong protocol to mine CKB token, including Bitmain Goldshell, and iBeLink.
+
+
+=== Cell Model ===
+The accounting method on layer 1 is an expansion of Bitcoin's UTXO model, and is dubbed the ""Cell model"". This model is programmable, thereby supporting smart contracts. Additionally, a cell is able to store data on-chain, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), compiled code, or serialized data like JSON strings.
+
+
+=== CKB-VM ===
+The CKB virtual machine (CKB-VM) is a software-based emulated computer that executes smart contracts on Nervos Network's base layer.  
+Like the Ethereum virtual machine, CKB is a Turing-complete development environment, but also integrates the RISC-V instruction set.
+
+
+=== Layer 2 ===
+Two layer 2 blockchainsexist on Nervos Network: Godwoken and Axon. Godwoken is a blockchain protocol that can be configured to run virtual machines or consensus models. With this framework, larger numbers of transactions are processed and are then submitted in batches to layer 1 for subsequent verification. Godwoken runs the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), allowing developers to use of tools and software developed for Ethereum while directly interfacing with Nervos and utilizing CKB. Axon is an EVM-compatible sidechain protocol optimized for higher transaction throughput.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Bu, Hao; Sun, Meng (March 2020). ""Towards Modeling and Verification of the CKB Block Synchronization Protocol in Coq"". Formal Methods and Software Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 12531. pp. 287–296. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-63406-3_17. ISBN 978-3-030-63405-6. S2CID 229344990. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
+Szepieniec, Alan; Ashur, Tomer (2020). ""Eaglesong: An ARX hash with fast diffusion"" (PDF). Proceedings of the Romanian Academy, Series A. Romanian Academy. 21 (1): 69���76. Retrieved 2022-10-05.
+Zhang, Ren; Zhang, Dingwei; Wang, Quake; Wu, Sichen; Xie, Jan; Preneel, Bart (2019-04-01). ""NC-Max: Breaking the Security-Performance Tradeoff in Nakamoto Consensus"" (PDF). Network and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS) Symposium 2022. ISBN 978-1-891562-74-7.
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Algorand,"Algorand is a cryptocurrency protocol providing proof-of-stake on a blockchain. Algorand's native cryptocurrency is called ALGO.
+
+
+== History ==
+Algorand was founded in 2017 by Silvio Micali, a professor at MIT.The Algorand test network was launched to the public in April 2019, and the main network was launched in June 2019.Algorand has a negligible energy consumption per transaction.
+
+
+== Governance ==
+Algorand is composed of the company Algorand, a private corporation based in Boston,
+and the nonprofit Algorand Foundation Ltd., incorporated in Singapore.
+Algorand Foundation Ltd. manages award funding, cryptographic research, on-chain governance, and decentralization of the Algorand network including nodes.
+The core development of the Algorand protocol is overseen by Algorand Inc..Algorand Foundation Ltd. is led by CEO Staci Warden.Algorand Foundation Ltd. issues quarterly votes for the stakes of ALGO to vote on. These proposals often revolve around the implementation of DeFi within the Algorand community.
+
+
+== Design ==
+Algorand is intended to solve the ""blockchain trilemma"": the claim that any blockchain system can have at most two of three desirable properties: decentralization, scalability, and security. A system with all three could run on nodes that each have only moderate consumer-grade resources (i.e., does not need a data center or large cluster of virtual machines), has transaction processing which scales with the total network resources (rather than the resources available per-node), and could not be subverted by attackers who individually possess a large fraction of the network's total resources.
+
+
+=== Consensus algorithm ===
+Algorand uses a Byzantine agreement protocol that leverages proof of stake. As long as a supermajority of the stake is in non-malicious hands, the protocol can tolerate malicious users, achieving consensus without a central authority.
+Consensus on Algorand requires three steps to propose, confirm, and write the block to the blockchain. The steps are proposed soft vote and certified vote.
+The first phase (the block proposal phase) uses proof of stake principles. During this phase, a committee of users in the system is selected randomly, though in a manner that is weighted, to propose the new block. The selection of the committee is made via a process called ""cryptographic sortition"", where each user determines whether they are on the committee by locally executing a Verifiable random function  (VRF). If the VRF indicates that the user is chosen, the VRF returns a cryptographic proof that can be used to verify that the user is on the committee. The likelihood that a given user will be on the committee is influenced by the number of ALGO tokens held by that user (the stake).After determining a user is on the block selection committee, that user can build a proposed block and disseminate it to the network for review/analysis during the second phase. The user includes the cryptographic proof from the VRF in their proposed block to demonstrate committee membership.In the second phase (the block finalization phase), a Byzantine Agreement protocol (called ""BA*"") is used to vote on the proposed blocks. In this second phase, a new committee is formed via cryptographic sortition. When users have determined that they are in this second-phase voting committee, they analyze the proposed blocks they have received (including verification of first-phase committee membership) and vote on whether any of the blocks should be adopted. If the voting committee achieves consensus on a new block, then the new block is disseminated across the network.Within the Algorand consensus algorithm, membership in both committees changes every time the phase is run. This protects users against targeted attacks, as an attacker will not know in advance which users are going to be on a committee. Two different Algorand blocks must reach consensus in a different round. According to an external security audit, the model also accounts for timing issues and adversary actions, e.g., when the adversary has control over message delivery.
+
+
+== References =="
+Silvio Micali,"Silvio Micali (born October 13, 1954) is an Italian computer scientist, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder of Algorand, a proof-of-stake blockchain cryptocurrency protocol. Micali's research at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory centers on cryptography and information security.In 2012, he received the Turing Award for his work in cryptography.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+Micali graduated in mathematics at La Sapienza University of Rome in 1978 and earned a PhD degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982; for research supervised by Manuel Blum. Micali has been on the faculty at MIT, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, since 1983. He's also served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, University of Toronto, and Tsinghua University. His research interests are cryptography, zero knowledge, pseudorandom generation, secure protocols, and mechanism design.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Micali is best known for some of his fundamental early work on public-key cryptosystems, pseudorandom functions, digital signatures, oblivious transfer, secure multiparty computation, and is one of the co-inventors of zero-knowledge proofs. His former doctoral students include Mihir Bellare, Bonnie Berger, Shai Halevi, Rafail Ostrovsky, Jing Chen, Rafael Pass, Chris Peikert, and Phillip Rogaway.In 2001 Micali co-founded CoreStreet Ltd, a software company originally based in Cambridge, Massachusetts which implemented Micali's patents involving checking the status of digital certificates (mainly applicable to large enterprise and government-sized digital and physical identity projects). Micali served as Chief Scientist at CoreStreet. CoreStreet was bought by ActivIdentity in 2009.In the early 2000s Micali also founded Peppercoin, a micro-payments system which was acquired in 2007.
+In 2017, Micali founded Algorand.
+
+
+=== Awards and honors ===
+Micali won the Gödel Prize in 1993. He received the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics in 2004. In 2007, he was selected to be a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the Turing Award for the year 2012 along with Shafi Goldwasser for their work in the field of cryptography.
+In 2015 the University of Salerno acknowledged his studies by giving him an honoris causa degree in Computer Science.
+He was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2017.
+
+
+== References =="
+Avalanche,"An avalanche  is a rapid flow of snow down a slope, such as a hill or mountain.Avalanches can be set off spontaneously, by factors such as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, other animals, and earthquakes. Primarily composed of flowing snow and air, large avalanches have the capability to capture and move ice, rocks, and trees.
+Avalanches occur in two general forms, or combinations thereof: slab avalanches made of tightly packed snow, triggered by a collapse of an underlying weak snow layer, and loose snow avalanches made of looser snow. After being set off, avalanches usually accelerate rapidly and grow in mass and volume as they capture more snow. If an avalanche moves fast enough, some of the snow may mix with the air, forming a powder snow avalanche.
+Though they appear to share similarities, avalanches are distinct from slush flows, mudslides, rock slides, and serac collapses. They are also different from large scale movements of ice.
+Avalanches can happen in any mountain range that has an enduring snowpack. They are most frequent in winter or spring, but may occur at any time of the year. In mountainous areas, avalanches are among the most serious natural hazards to life and property, so great efforts are made in avalanche control.
+There are many classification systems for the different forms of avalanches, which vary according to their users' needs. Avalanches can be described by their size, destructive potential, initiation mechanism, composition, and dynamics.
+
+
+== Formation ==
+Most avalanches occur spontaneously during storms under increased load due to snowfall and/or erosion. The second largest cause of natural avalanches is metamorphic changes in the snowpack such as melting due to solar radiation. Other natural causes include rain, earthquakes, rockfall and icefall. Artificial triggers of avalanches include skiers, snowmobiles, and controlled explosive work. Contrary to popular belief, avalanches are not triggered by loud sound; the pressure from sound is orders of magnitude too small to trigger an avalanche.Avalanche initiation can start at a point with only a small amount of snow moving initially; this is typical of wet snow avalanches or avalanches in dry unconsolidated snow. However, if the snow has sintered into a stiff slab overlying a weak layer then fractures can propagate very rapidly, so that a large volume of snow, that may be thousands of cubic metres, can start moving almost simultaneously.
+A snowpack will fail when the load exceeds the strength. The load is straightforward; it is the weight of the snow. However, the strength of the snowpack is much more difficult to determine and is extremely heterogeneous. It varies in detail with properties of the snow grains, size, density, morphology, temperature, water content; and the properties of the bonds between the grains. These properties may all metamorphose in time according to the local humidity, water vapour flux, temperature and heat flux. The top of the snowpack is also extensively influenced by incoming radiation and the local air flow. One of the aims of avalanche research is to develop and validate computer models that can describe the evolution of the seasonal snowpack over time. A complicating factor is the complex interaction of terrain and weather, which causes significant spatial and temporal variability of the depths, crystal forms, and layering of the seasonal snowpack.
+
+
+=== Slab avalanches ===
+Slab avalanches form frequently in snow that has been deposited, or redeposited by wind. They have the characteristic appearance of a block (slab) of snow cut out from its surroundings by fractures. Elements of slab avalanches include the following: a crown fracture at the top of the start zone, flank fractures on the sides of the start zones, and a fracture at the bottom called the stauchwall. The crown and flank fractures are vertical walls in the snow delineating the snow that was entrained in the avalanche from the snow that remained on the slope. Slabs can vary in thickness from a few centimetres to three metres. Slab avalanches account for around 90% of avalanche-related fatalities in backcountry users.
+
+
+=== Powder snow avalanches ===
+
+The largest avalanches form turbulent suspension currents known as powder snow avalanches or mixed avalanches, a kind of gravity current. These consist of a powder cloud, which overlies a dense avalanche. They can form from any type of snow or initiation mechanism, but usually occur with fresh dry powder. They can exceed speeds of 300 km/h (190 mph), and masses of 10,000,000 tonnes; their flows can travel long distances along flat valley bottoms and even uphill for short distances.
+
+
+=== Wet snow avalanches ===
+In contrast to powder snow avalanches, wet snow avalanches are a low velocity suspension of snow and water, with the flow confined to the track surface (McClung,  1999, p. 108). The low speed of travel is due to the friction between the sliding surface of the track and the water saturated flow. Despite the low speed of travel (≈10–40 km/h), wet snow avalanches are capable of generating powerful destructive forces, due to the large mass and density. The body of the flow of a wet snow avalanche can plough through soft snow, and can scour boulders, earth, trees, and other vegetation; leaving exposed and often scored ground in the avalanche track. Wet snow avalanches can be initiated from either loose snow releases, or slab releases, and only occur in snowpacks that are water saturated and isothermally equilibrated to the melting point of water. The isothermal characteristic of wet snow avalanches has led to the secondary term of isothermal slides found in the literature (for example in Daffern, 1999, p. 93). At temperate latitudes wet snow avalanches are frequently associated with climatic avalanche cycles at the end of the winter season, when there is significant daytime warming.
+
+
+=== Ice avalanche ===
+An ice avalanche occurs when a large piece of ice, such as from a serac or calving glacier, falls onto ice (such as the Khumbu Icefall), triggering a movement of broken ice chunks. The resulting movement is more analogous to a rockfall or a landslide than a snow avalanche. They are typically very difficult to predict and almost impossible to mitigate.
+
+
+=== Avalanche pathway ===
+As an avalanche moves down a slope it follows a certain pathway that is dependent on the slope's degree of steepness and the volume of snow/ice involved in the mass movement. The origin of an avalanche is called the Starting Point and typically occurs on a 30–45 degree slope. The body of the pathway is called the Track of the avalanche and usually occurs on a 20–30 degree slope. When the avalanche loses its momentum and eventually stops it reaches the Runout Zone. This usually occurs when the slope has reached a steepness that is less than 20 degrees. These degrees are not consistently true due to the fact that each avalanche is unique depending on the stability of the snowpack that it was derived from as well as the environmental or human influences that triggered the mass movement.
+
+
+== Injuries and deaths ==
+People caught in avalanches can die from suffocation, trauma, or hypothermia.
+From ""1950–1951 to 2020–2021"" there were 1,169 people who died in avalanches in the United States.  For the 11-year period ending April 2006 445 people died in avalanches throughout North America. On average, 28 people die in avalanches every winter in the United States.In 2001 it was reported that globally an average of 150 people die each year from avalanches. Three of the deadliest recorded avalanches have killed over a thousand people each.
+
+
+== Terrain, snowpack, weather ==
+Doug Fesler and Jill Fredston developed a conceptual model of the three primary elements of avalanches: terrain, weather, and snowpack. Terrain describes the places where avalanches occur, weather describes the meteorological conditions that create the snowpack, and snowpack describes the structural characteristics of snow that make avalanche formation possible.
+
+
+=== Terrain ===
+Avalanche formation requires a slope shallow enough for snow to accumulate but steep enough for the snow to accelerate once set in motion by the combination of mechanical failure (of the snowpack) and gravity. The angle of the slope that can hold snow, called the angle of repose, depends on a variety of factors such as crystal form and moisture content. Some forms of drier and colder snow will only stick to shallower slopes, while wet and warm snow can bond to very steep surfaces. In particular, in coastal mountains, such as the Cordillera del Paine region of Patagonia, deep snowpacks collect on vertical and even overhanging rock faces. The slope angle that can allow moving snow to accelerate depends on a variety of factors such as the snow's shear strength (which is itself dependent upon crystal form) and the configuration of layers and inter-layer interfaces.
+The snowpack on slopes with sunny exposures is strongly influenced by sunshine. Diurnal cycles of thawing and refreezing can stabilize the snowpack by promoting settlement. Strong freeze-thaw cycles result in the formation of surface crusts during the night and of unstable surface snow during the day. Slopes in the lee of a ridge or of another wind obstacle accumulate more snow and are more likely to include pockets of deep snow, wind slabs, and cornices, all of which, when disturbed, may result in avalanche formation. Conversely, the snowpack on a windward slope is often much shallower than on a lee slope.
+
+Avalanches and avalanche paths share common elements: a start zone where the avalanche originates, a track along which the avalanche flows, and a runout zone where the avalanche comes to rest. The debris deposit is the accumulated mass of the avalanched snow once it has come to rest in the run-out zone. For the image at left, many small avalanches form in this avalanche path every year, but most of these avalanches do not run the full vertical or horizontal length of the path. The frequency with which avalanches form in a given area is known as the return period.
+The start zone of an avalanche must be steep enough to allow snow to accelerate once set in motion, additionally convex slopes are less stable than concave slopes, because of the disparity between the tensile strength of snow layers and their compressive strength. The composition and structure of the ground surface beneath the snowpack influences the stability of the snowpack, either being a source of strength or weakness. Avalanches are unlikely to form in very thick forests, but boulders and sparsely distributed vegetation can create weak areas deep within the snowpack through the formation of strong temperature gradients. Full-depth avalanches (avalanches that sweep a slope virtually clean of snow cover) are more common on slopes with smooth ground, such as grass or rock slabs.
+Generally speaking, avalanches follow drainages down-slope, frequently sharing drainage features with summertime watersheds. At and below tree line, avalanche paths through drainages are well defined by vegetation boundaries called trim lines, which occur where avalanches have removed trees and prevented regrowth of large vegetation. Engineered drainages, such as the avalanche dam on Mount Stephen in Kicking Horse Pass, have been constructed to protect people and property by redirecting the flow of avalanches. Deep debris deposits from avalanches will collect in catchments at the terminus of a run out, such as gullies and river beds.
+Slopes flatter than 25 degrees or steeper than 60 degrees typically have a lower incidence of avalanches. Human-triggered avalanches have the greatest incidence when the snow's angle of repose is between 35 and 45 degrees; the critical angle, the angle at which human-triggered avalanches are most frequent, is 38 degrees. When the incidence of human triggered avalanches is normalized by the rates of recreational use, however, hazard increases uniformly with slope angle, and no significant difference in hazard for a given exposure direction can be found.  The rule of thumb is: A slope that is flat enough to hold snow but steep enough to ski has the potential to generate an avalanche, regardless of the angle.
+
+
+=== Snowpack structure and characteristics ===
+The snowpack is composed of ground-parallel layers that accumulate over the winter. Each layer contains ice grains that are representative of the distinct meteorological conditions during which the snow formed and was deposited. Once deposited, a snow layer continues to evolve under the influence of the meteorological conditions that prevail after deposition.
+For an avalanche to occur, it is necessary that a snowpack have a weak layer (or instability) below a slab of cohesive snow. In practice the formal mechanical and structural factors related to snowpack instability are not directly observable outside of laboratories, thus the more easily observed properties of the snow layers (e.g. penetration resistance, grain size, grain type, temperature) are used as index measurements of the mechanical properties of the snow (e.g. tensile strength, friction coefficients, shear strength, and ductile strength). This results in two principal sources of uncertainty in determining snowpack stability based on snow structure: First, both the factors influencing snow stability and the specific characteristics of the snowpack vary widely within small areas and time scales, resulting in significant difficulty extrapolating point observations of snow layers across different scales of space and time. Second, the relationship between readily observable snowpack characteristics and the snowpack's critical mechanical properties has not been completely developed.
+While the deterministic relationship between snowpack characteristics and snowpack stability is still a matter of ongoing scientific study, there is a growing empirical understanding of the snow composition and deposition characteristics that influence the likelihood of an avalanche. Observation and experience has shown that newly fallen snow requires time to bond with the snow layers beneath it, especially if the new snow falls during very cold and dry conditions. If ambient air temperatures are cold enough, shallow snow above or around boulders, plants, and other discontinuities in the slope, weakens from rapid crystal growth that occurs in the presence of a critical temperature gradient. Large, angular snow crystals are indicators of weak snow, because such crystals have fewer bonds per unit volume than small, rounded crystals that pack tightly together. Consolidated snow is less likely to slough than loose powdery layers or wet isothermal snow; however, consolidated snow is a necessary condition for the occurrence of slab avalanches, and persistent instabilities within the snowpack can hide below well-consolidated surface layers. Uncertainty associated with the empirical understanding of the factors influencing snow stability leads most professional avalanche workers to recommend conservative use of avalanche terrain relative to current snowpack instability.
+
+
+=== Weather ===
+Avalanches only occur in a standing snowpack. Typically winter seasons at high latitudes, high altitudes, or both have weather that is sufficiently unsettled and cold enough for precipitated snow to accumulate into a seasonal snowpack. Continentality, through its potentiating influence on the meteorological extremes experienced by snowpacks, is an important factor in the evolution of instabilities, and consequential occurrence of avalanches faster stabilization of the snowpack after storm cycles. The evolution of the snowpack is critically sensitive to small variations within the narrow range of meteorological conditions that allow for the accumulation of snow into a snowpack. Among the critical factors controlling snowpack evolution are: heating by the sun, radiational cooling, vertical temperature gradients in standing snow, snowfall amounts, and snow types. Generally, mild winter weather will promote the settlement and stabilization of the snowpack; conversely, very cold, windy, or hot weather will weaken the snowpack.
+At temperatures close to the freezing point of water, or during times of moderate solar radiation, a gentle freeze-thaw cycle will take place. The melting and refreezing of water in the snow strengthens the snowpack during the freezing phase and weakens it during the thawing phase. A rapid rise in temperature, to a point significantly above the freezing point of water, may cause avalanche formation at any time of year.
+Persistent cold temperatures can either prevent new snow from stabilizing or destabilize the existing snowpack. Cold air temperatures on the snow surface produce a temperature gradient in the snow, because the ground temperature at the base of the snowpack is usually around 0 °C, and the ambient air temperature can be much colder. When a temperature gradient greater than 10 °C change per vertical meter of snow is sustained for more than a day, angular crystals called depth hoar or facets begin forming in the snowpack because of rapid moisture transport along the temperature gradient. These angular crystals, which bond poorly to one another and the surrounding snow, often become a persistent weakness in the snowpack. When a slab lying on top of a persistent weakness is loaded by a force greater than the strength of the slab and persistent weak layer, the persistent weak layer can fail and generate an avalanche.
+Any wind stronger than a light breeze can contribute to a rapid accumulation of snow on sheltered slopes downwind. Wind slabs form quickly and, if present, weaker snow below the slab may not have time to adjust to the new load. Even on a clear day, wind can quickly load a slope with snow by blowing snow from one place to another. Top-loading occurs when wind deposits snow from the top of a slope; cross-loading occurs when wind deposits snow parallel to the slope. When a wind blows over the top of a mountain, the leeward, or downwind, side of the mountain experiences top-loading, from the top to the bottom of that lee slope. When the wind blows across a ridge that leads up the mountain, the leeward side of the ridge is subject to cross-loading. Cross-loaded wind-slabs are usually difficult to identify visually.
+Snowstorms and rainstorms are important contributors to avalanche danger. Heavy snowfall will cause instability in the existing snowpack, both because of the additional weight and because the new snow has insufficient time to bond to underlying snow layers. Rain has a similar effect. In the short-term, rain causes instability because, like a heavy snowfall, it imposes an additional load on the snowpack; and, once rainwater seeps down through the snow, it acts as a lubricant, reducing the natural friction between snow layers that holds the snowpack together. Most avalanches happen during or soon after a storm.
+Daytime exposure to sunlight will rapidly destabilize the upper layers of the snowpack if the sunlight is strong enough to melt the snow, thereby reducing its hardness. During clear nights, the snowpack can re-freeze when ambient air temperatures fall below freezing, through the process of long-wave radiative cooling, or both. Radiative heat loss occurs when the night air is significantly cooler than the snowpack, and the heat stored in the snow is re-radiated into the atmosphere.
+
+
+== Dynamics ==
+When a slab avalanche forms, the slab disintegrates into increasingly smaller fragments as the snow travels downhill. If the fragments become small enough the outer layer of the avalanche, called a saltation layer, takes on the characteristics of a fluid. When sufficiently fine particles are present they can become airborne and, given a sufficient quantity of airborne snow, this portion of the avalanche can become separated from the bulk of the avalanche and travel a greater distance as a powder snow avalanche. Scientific studies using radar, following the 1999 Galtür avalanche disaster, confirmed the hypothesis that a saltation layer forms between the surface and the airborne components of an avalanche, which can also separate from the bulk of the avalanche.Driving an avalanche is the component of the avalanche's weight parallel to the slope; as the avalanche progresses any unstable snow in its path will tend to become incorporated, so increasing the overall weight. This force will increase as the steepness of the slope increases, and diminish as the slope flattens. Resisting this are a number of components that are thought to interact with each other: the friction between the avalanche and the surface beneath; friction between the air and snow within the fluid; fluid-dynamic drag at the leading edge of the avalanche; shear resistance between the avalanche and the air through which it is passing, and shear resistance between the fragments within the avalanche itself. An avalanche will continue to accelerate until the resistance exceeds the forward force.
+
+
+=== Modelling ===
+Attempts to model avalanche behaviour date from the early 20th century, notably the work of Professor Lagotala in preparation for the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix. His method was developed by A. Voellmy and popularised following the publication in 1955 of his Ueber die Zerstoerungskraft von Lawinen (On the Destructive Force of Avalanches).Voellmy used a simple empirical formula, treating an avalanche as a sliding block of snow moving with a drag force that was proportional to the square of the speed of its flow:
+
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          
+            Pref
+          
+        
+        =
+        
+          
+            1
+            2
+          
+        
+        
+        
+          ρ
+        
+        
+        
+          
+            v
+            
+              2
+            
+          
+        
+        
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle {\textrm {Pref}}={\frac {1}{2}}\,{\rho }\,{v^{2}}\,\!}
+  He and others subsequently derived other formulae that take other factors into account, with the Voellmy-Salm-Gubler and the Perla-Cheng-McClung models becoming most widely used as simple tools to model flowing (as opposed to powder snow) avalanches.Since the 1990s many more sophisticated models have been developed. In Europe much of the recent work was carried out as part of the SATSIE (Avalanche Studies and Model Validation in Europe) research project supported by the European Commission which produced the leading-edge MN2L model, now in use with the Service Restauration des Terrains en Montagne (Mountain Rescue Service) in France, and D2FRAM (Dynamical Two-Flow-Regime Avalanche Model), which was still undergoing validation as of 2007. Other known models are the SAMOS-AT avalanche simulation software and the RAMMS software.
+
+
+== Human involvement ==
+
+
+=== Prevention ===
+
+Preventative measures are employed in areas where avalanches pose a significant threat to people, such as ski resorts, mountain towns, roads, and railways. There are several ways to prevent avalanches and lessen their power and develop preventative measures to reduce the likelihood and size of avalanches by disrupting the structure of the snowpack, while passive measures reinforce and stabilize the snowpack in situ. The simplest active measure is repeatedly traveling on a snowpack as snow accumulates; this can be by means of boot-packing, ski-cutting, or machine grooming. Explosives are used extensively to prevent avalanches, by triggering smaller avalanches that break down instabilities in the snowpack, and removing overburden that can result in larger avalanches. Explosive charges are delivered by a number of methods including hand-tossed charges, helicopter-dropped bombs, Gazex concussion lines, and ballistic projectiles launched by air cannons and artillery. Passive preventive systems such as snow fences and light walls can be used to direct the placement of snow. Snow builds up around the fence, especially the side that faces the prevailing winds. Downwind of the fence, snow build-up is lessened. This is caused by the loss of snow at the fence that would have been deposited and the pickup of the snow that is already there by the wind, which was depleted of snow at the fence. When there is a sufficient density of trees, they can greatly reduce the strength of avalanches. They hold snow in place and when there is an avalanche, the impact of the snow against the trees slows it down. Trees can either be planted or they can be conserved, such as in the building of a ski resort, to reduce the strength of avalanches.
+In turn, socio-environmental changes can influence the occurrence of damaging avalanches: some studies linking changes in land-use/land-cover patterns and the evolution of snow avalanche damage in mid latitude mountains show the importance of the role played by vegetation cover, that is at the root of the increase of damage  when the protective forest is deforested (because of demographic growth, intensive grazing and industrial or legal causes), and at the root of the decrease of damage because of the transformation of a traditional land-management system based on overexploitation into a system based on land marginalization and reforestation, something that has happened mainly since the mid-20th century in mountain environments of developed countries
+
+
+=== Mitigation ===
+In many areas, regular avalanche tracks can be identified and precautions can be taken to minimize damage, such as the prevention of development in these areas. To mitigate the effect of avalanches the construction of artificial barriers can be very effective in reducing avalanche damage. There are several types: One kind of barrier (snow net) uses a net strung between poles that are anchored by guy wires in addition to their foundations. These barriers are similar to those used for rockslides. Another type of barrier is a rigid fence-like structure (snow fence) and may be constructed of steel, wood or pre-stressed concrete. They usually have gaps between the beams and are built perpendicular to the slope, with reinforcing beams on the downhill side. Rigid barriers are often considered unsightly, especially when many rows must be built. They are also expensive and vulnerable to damage from falling rocks in the warmer months. In addition to industrially manufactured barriers, landscaped barriers, called avalanche dams stop or deflect avalanches with their weight and strength. These barriers are made out of concrete, rocks, or earth. They are usually placed right above the structure, road, or railway that they are trying to protect, although they can also be used to channel avalanches into other barriers. Occasionally, earth mounds are placed in the avalanche's path to slow it down. Finally, along transportation corridors, large shelters, called snow sheds, can be built directly in the slide path of an avalanche to protect traffic from avalanches.
+
+
+=== Early warning systems ===
+Warning systems can detect avalanches which develop slowly, such as ice avalanches caused by icefalls from glaciers. Interferometric radars, high-resolution cameras, or motion sensors can monitor instable areas over a long term, lasting from days to years. Experts interpret the recorded data and are able to recognize upcoming ruptures in order to initiate appropriate measures. Such systems (e.g. the monitoring of the Weissmies glacier in Switzerland) can recognize events several days in advance.
+
+
+=== Alarm systems ===
+Modern radar technology enables the monitoring of large areas and the localization of avalanches at any weather condition, by day and by night. Complex alarm systems are able to detect avalanches within a short time in order to close (e.g. roads and rails) or evacuate (e.g. construction sites) endangered areas. An example of such a system is installed on the only access road of Zermatt in Switzerland. Two radars monitor the slope of a mountain above the road. The system automatically closes the road by activating several barriers and traffic lights within seconds such that no people are harmed.
+
+
+=== Survival, rescue, and recovery ===
+
+Avalanche accidents are broadly differentiated into 2 categories: accidents in recreational settings, and accidents in residential, industrial, and transportation settings. This distinction is motivated by the observed difference in the causes of avalanche accidents in the two settings. In the recreational setting most accidents are caused by the people involved in the avalanche. In a 1996 study, Jamieson et al. (pages 7–20) found that 83% of all avalanches in the recreational setting were caused by those who were involved in the accident. In contrast, all of the accidents in the residential, industrial, and transportation settings were due to spontaneous natural avalanches. Because of the difference in the causes of avalanche accidents, and the activities pursued in the two settings, avalanche and disaster management professionals have developed two related preparedness, rescue, and recovery strategies for each of the settings.
+
+
+== Notable avalanches ==
+
+Two avalanches occurred in March 1910 in the Cascade and Selkirk Mountain ranges; on 1 March the Wellington avalanche killed 96 in Washington state, United States. Three days later 62 railroad workers were killed in the Rogers Pass avalanche in British Columbia, Canada.
+During World War I, an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 soldiers died as a result of avalanches during the mountain campaign in the Alps at the Austrian-Italian front, many of which were caused by artillery fire. Some 10,000 men, from both sides, died in avalanches in December 1916.In the northern hemisphere winter of 1950–1951 approximately 649 avalanches were recorded in a three-month period throughout the Alps in Austria, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. This series of avalanches killed around 265 people and was termed the Winter of Terror.
+A mountain climbing camp on Lenin Peak, in what is now Kyrgyzstan, was wiped out in 1990 when an earthquake triggered a large avalanche that overran the camp. Forty-three climbers were killed.In 1993, the Bayburt Üzengili avalanche killed 60 individuals in Üzengili in the province of Bayburt, Turkey.
+A large avalanche in Montroc, France, in 1999, 300,000 cubic metres of snow slid on a 30° slope, achieving a speed in the region of  100 km/h (62 mph). It killed 12 people in their chalets under 100,000 tons of snow, 5 meters (16 feet) deep. The mayor of Chamonix was convicted of second-degree murder for not evacuating the area, but received a suspended sentence.The small Austrian village of Galtür was hit by the Galtür avalanche in 1999. The village was thought to be in a safe zone but the avalanche was exceptionally large and flowed into the village. Thirty-one people died.
+On 1 December 2000, the Glory Bowl Avalanche formed on Mt. Glory which is located within the Teton Mountain Range in Wyoming, United States. Joel Roof was snowboarding recreationally in this backcountry, bowl-shaped run and triggered the avalanche. He was carried nearly 2,000 feet to the base of the mountain and was not successfully rescued.On 3 July 2022 a serac collapsed on the Marmolada Glacier, Italy, causing an avalanche that killed 11 alpinists and injured 8.
+
+
+== Classification of avalanches ==
+
+
+=== European avalanche risk ===
+In Europe, the avalanche risk is widely rated on the following scale, which was adopted in April 1993 to replace the earlier non-standard national schemes. Descriptions were last updated in May 2003 to enhance uniformity.In France, most avalanche deaths occur at risk levels 3 and 4. In Switzerland most occur at levels 2 and 3. It is thought that this may be due to national differences of interpretation when assessing the risks.
+[1] Stability:
+
+Generally described in more detail in the avalanche bulletin (regarding the altitude, aspect, type of terrain etc.)[2] additional load:
+
+heavy: two or more skiers or boarders without spacing between them, a single hiker or climber, a grooming machine, avalanche blasting
+light: a single skier or snowboarder smoothly linking turns and without falling, a group of skiers or snowboarders with a minimum 10 m gap between each person, a single person on snowshoesGradient:
+
+gentle slopes: with an incline below about 30°
+steep slopes: with an incline over 30°
+very steep slopes: with an incline over 35°
+extremely steep slopes: extreme in terms of the incline (over 40°), the terrain profile, proximity of the ridge, smoothness of underlying ground
+
+
+=== European avalanche size table ===
+Avalanche size:
+
+
+=== North American Avalanche Danger Scale ===
+In the United States and Canada, the following avalanche danger scale is used. Descriptors vary depending on country.
+
+
+=== Avalanche Problems ===
+There are nine different types of avalanche problems:
+Storm slab
+Wind slab
+Wet slab avalanches
+Persistent slab
+Deep persistent slab
+Loose dry avalanches
+Loose wet avalanches
+Glide avalanches
+Cornice fall
+
+
+=== Canadian classification for avalanche size ===
+The Canadian classification for avalanche size is based upon the consequences of the avalanche. Half sizes are commonly used.
+
+
+=== United States classification for avalanche size ===
+The size of avalanches are classified using two scales; size relative to destructive force or D-scale and size relative to the avalanche path or R-scale. Both size scales range from 1 to 5 with the D size scale half sizes can be used.
+
+
+=== Rutschblock Test ===
+Slab avalanche hazard analysis can be done using the Rutschblock Test. A 2 m wide block of snow is isolated from the rest of the slope and progressively loaded. The result is a rating of slope stability on a seven step scale.
+(Rutsch means slide in German).
+
+
+== Avalanches and climate change ==
+Avalanche formation and frequency is highly affected by weather patterns and the local climate. Snowpack layers will form differently depending on whether snow is falling in very cold or very warm conditions, and very dry or very humid conditions.  Thus, climate change may affect when, where, and how often avalanches occur, and may also change the type of avalanches that are occurring.
+
+
+=== Impacts on avalanche type and frequency ===
+Overall, a rising seasonal snow line and a decrease in the number of days with snow cover are predicted. Climate change-caused temperature increases and changes in precipitation patterns will likely differ between the different mountain regions, and the impacts of these changes on avalanches will change at different elevations. In the long term, avalanche frequency at lower elevations is expected to decline corresponding to a decrease in snow cover and depth, and a short-term increase in the number of wet avalanches are predicted.Precipitation is expected to increase, meaning more snow or rain depending on the elevation. Higher elevations predicted to remain above the seasonal snow line will likely see an increase in avalanche activity due to the increases in precipitation during the winter season. Storm precipitation intensity is also expected to increase, which is likely to lead to more days with enough snowfall to cause the snowpack to become unstable. Moderate and high elevations may see an increase in volatile swings from one weather extreme to the other. Predictions also show an increase in the number of rain on snow events, and wet avalanche cycles occurring earlier in the spring during the remainder of this century.
+
+
+=== Impacts on burial survival rate ===
+The warm, wet snowpacks that are likely to increase in frequency due to climate change may also make avalanche burials more deadly. Warm snow has a higher moisture content and is therefore denser than colder snow. Denser avalanche debris decreases the ability for a buried person to breath and the amount of time they have before they run out of oxygen. This increases the likelihood of death by asphyxia in the event of a burial. Additionally, the predicted thinner snowpacks may increase the frequency of injuries due to trauma, such as a buried skier striking a rock or tree.
+
+
+== Avalanches on Mars ==
+
+
+== See also ==
+
+
+=== Related flows ===
+
+
+=== Avalanche disasters ===
+
+1999 Galtür avalanche
+Montroc
+2012 Gayari Sector avalanche
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+=== Bibliography ===
+McClung, David. Snow Avalanches as a Non-critical, Punctuated Equilibrium System: Chapter 24 in Nonlinear Dynamics in Geosciences, A.A. Tsonsis and J.B. Elsner (Eds.), Springer, 2007
+Daffern, Tony: Avalanche Safety for Skiers, Climbers and Snowboarders, Rocky Mountain Books, 1999, ISBN 0-921102-72-0
+Billman, John: Mike Elggren on Surviving an Avalanche. Skiing magazine February 2007: 26.
+McClung, David and Shaerer, Peter: The Avalanche Handbook, The Mountaineers: 2006. ISBN 978-0-89886-809-8
+Tremper, Bruce: Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain, The Mountaineers: 2001. ISBN 0-89886-834-3
+Munter, Werner: Drei mal drei (3x3) Lawinen. Risikomanagement im Wintersport, Bergverlag Rother, 2002. ISBN 3-7633-2060-1 (in German) (partial English translation included in PowderGuide: Managing Avalanche Risk ISBN 0-9724827-3-3)
+Michael Falser: Historische Lawinenschutzlandschaften: eine Aufgabe für die Kulturlandschafts- und Denkmalpflege In: kunsttexte 3/2010, unter: Historische Lawinenschutzlandschaften: eine Aufgabe für die Kulturlandschafts- und Denkmalpflege
+
+
+=== Notes ===
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+The Avalanche Education Project
+Surviving an Avalanche – A guide for children and youth Archived 26 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine
+Avalanche Defense Photographs
+Avalanche Canada
+Canadian Avalanche Association Archived 21 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine
+Colorado Avalanche Information Center
+Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies
+EAWS – European Avalanche Warning Services
+Directory of European avalanche services
+Avalanches collected news and commentary at The New York Times
+Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research
+Scottish Avalanche Information Service
+Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). ""Avalanche"" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. But note the myths cited above
+Utah Avalanche Center
+New Zealand Avalanche Advisory
+Gulmarg Avalanche Center
+US Avalanche.org
+Sierra Avalanche Center (Tahoe National Forest)"
+Emin Gün Sirer,"Emin Gün Sirer is a Turkish-American computer scientist. Sirer developed the Avalanche Consensus protocol underlying the Avalanche blockchain platform, and is currently the CEO and co-founder of Ava Labs. He was an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University, and is the former co-director of The Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts (IC3). He is known for his contributions to peer-to-peer systems, operating systems and computer networking. 
+
+
+== Education ==
+Emin Gün Sirer attended high school at Robert College, received his undergraduate degree in computer science at Princeton University, and finished his graduate studies at the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering in 2002 under the supervision of Brian N. Bershad.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Prior to his appointment as a professor at Cornell University, Sirer worked at AT&T Bell Labs on Plan 9, at DEC SRC, and at NEC.
+Sirer is known for his contributions to operating systems, distributed systems, and fundamental cryptocurrency research. He co-developed the SPIN (operating system), where the implementation and interface of an operating system could be modified at run-time by type-safe extension code. He also led the Nexus OS effort, where he developed new techniques for attesting to and reasoning about the semantic properties of remote programs.In March 2023, Sirer was appointed to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Technical Advisory Committee.  
+In June 2023, Sirer was an expert witness before the United States House Committee on Financial Services for a hearing on blockchain and digital assets.
+
+
+=== Cryptocurrency ===
+Introduced by Sirer and co-authors in 2003, five years before Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper, Karma is a virtual currency for peer-to-peer systems, introduced by Sirer and co-authors in 2003. It is designed to eliminate the free-loader problem, i.e. preventing malicious users from consuming resources without giving anything in return. It is the first peer-to-peer currency with a distributed mint.Sirer and Ittay Eyal wrote and published the paper ""Majority is not Enough, Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable"" which describes the selfish mining attack, an attack on Bitcoin which is profitable even for an attacker with only 33% of total hash power, which is less than the 50% required by the original security analysis in Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper. Sirer, Eyal, and other co-authors developed Bitcoin-NG, a bitcoin scaling solution, and Bitcoin Covenants, a security solution.Sirer is also co-founder of bloXroute, a company offering a solution to the scalability bottleneck of the Layer-0 network layer. In 2020, he was the co-director of IC3, the Initiative for Cryptocurrency And Contracts.
+
+
+=== Avalanche protocol ===
+Sirer led development of the Avalanche Consensus protocol, and its native token, AVAX. The Avalanche project was incubated at Cornell University, where Emin Gün Sirer was assisted by PhD candidates Maofan Yin and Kevin Sekniqi. Ava Labs is a technology company founded by Sirer in 2019, with the express purpose of developing an alternative blockchain technology for the financial sector.In August 2022, whistleblower ""Crypto Leaks"" published a report accusing Ava Labs and CEO Emin Gün Sirer of secret deals with a law firm, Roche Freedman, aimed at attacking Avalanche's competitors. Sirer denied any sort of illegal or unethical deal but the alleged partner Kyle Roche was subsequently forced out of his law firm.
+
+
+== Awards ==
+Brilliant-10 by Popular Science
+National Science Foundation CAREER Award
+
+
+== Patents ==
+""A Process for Rewriting Executable Content on a Network Server or Desktop Machine in Order to Enforce Site-Specific Properties."" Emin Gun Sirer and Brian N. Bershad. US Patent #6865735, issued February 3, 2005.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of people in blockchain technology
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Emin Gün Sirer publications indexed by Google Scholar
+Official Blog"
+Shiba Inu,"The Shiba Inu (柴犬, Japanese: [ɕiba inɯ]) is a breed of hunting dog from Japan. A small-to-medium breed, it is the smallest of the six original breed of dogs native to Japan. Its name literally translates to ""brushwood dog"", as it is used to flush game.
+A small, alert, and agile dog that copes very well with mountainous terrain and hiking trails, the Shiba Inu was originally bred for hunting. It looks similar to other Japanese dog breeds such as the Akita Inu or Hokkaido, but the Shiba Inu is a different breed with a distinct bloodline, temperament, and smaller size than other Japanese dog breeds.
+
+
+== Appearance ==
+The Shiba's frame is compact with well-developed muscles.The Shiba Inu is double coated, with the outer coat being stiff and straight and the undercoat soft and thick. Fur is short and even on the foxlike face, ears, and legs. Guard hairs stand off the body and are about 4 to 5 cm (1+1⁄2 to 2 in) long at the withers. The purpose of the guard hairs is to protect their underlying skin and to repel rain or snow. Tail hair is slightly longer and stands open in a brush. Their tails are a defining characteristic and make them stand apart from other dog breeds.
+The cream color is considered a ""major fault"" by both the Japan Kennel Club and American Kennel Club. It should never be intentionally bred in a show dog, as the required markings known as ""urajiro"" (裏白) are not visible; ""Urajiro"" literally translates to ""underside white"". Conversely, a white (cream) coat is perfectly acceptable according to the British Kennel Club breed standard.The urajiro (cream to white ventral color) is required in the following areas on all coat colors: on the sides of the muzzle, on the cheeks, inside the ears, on the underjaw and upper throat inside of legs, on the abdomen, around the vent and the ventral side of the tail. On reds: commonly on the throat, fore chest, and chest. On blacks and sesames: commonly as a triangular mark on both sides of the fore chest.
+
+			
+			
+		
+		
+			
+			
+		
+		
+			
+			
+		
+		
+			
+			
+		
+		
+			
+			
+		
+
+
+== Temperament ==
+Shibas tend to exhibit an independent nature. From the Japanese breed standard:
+
+The dog has a spirited boldness and is fiercely proud with a good nature and a feeling of artlessness. The Shiba is able to move quickly with nimble, elastic steps.
+The terms ""spirited boldness"" (悍威, kan'i), ""good nature"" (良性, ryōsei), and ""artlessness"" (素朴, soboku) have subtle interpretations that have been the subject of much commentary.The Shiba is a relatively fastidious breed and feels the need to maintain itself in a clean state. They can often be seen licking their paws and legs, much as cats do. They generally go out of their way to keep their coats clean. Because of their fastidious and proud nature, Shiba puppies are easy to housetrain and in many cases will housebreak themselves. Having their owner simply place them outside after meal times and naps is generally enough to teach the Shiba the appropriate method of toileting.They are not known to be friendly and are prone to attack other dogs when not trained properly. Shiba is not suitable for first time dog owners.
+A distinguishing characteristic of the breed is the so-called ""shiba scream"". When sufficiently provoked or unhappy, the dog will produce a loud, high-pitched scream. This can occur when attempting to handle the dog in a way that it deems unacceptable.
+
+
+== History ==
+The Shiba Inu has been identified as a basal breed that predates the emergence of the modern breeds in the 19th century. Dogs with a similar appearance to the Shiba Inu were represented in dogū made during the prehistoric Jōmon period of Japanese history.The Shiba Inu was bred to hunt and flush small game, such as birds and rabbits. Shiba lived in the mountainous areas of the Chūbu region. During the Meiji Restoration, western dog breeds were imported and crosses between these and native Japanese breeds became popular. From 1912 to 1926, almost no pure Shiba remained. From around 1928, hunters and intellectuals began to show interest in the protection of the remaining pure Shiba.Despite efforts to preserve the breed, the Shiba nearly became extinct during World War II due to a combination of food shortage and a post-war distemper epidemic. All subsequent dogs were bred from the only three surviving bloodlines. These bloodlines were the Shinshu Shiba from Nagano Prefecture, the Mino Shiba from the former Mino Province in the south of present-day Gifu Prefecture, and the San'in Shiba from Tottori and Shimane Prefectures.The Shinshu Shibas possessed a solid undercoat, with a dense layer of guard-hairs, and were small and red in color. The Mino Shibas tended to have thick, prick ears, and possessed a sickle tail, rather than the common curled tail found on most modern Shibas. The San'in Shibas were larger than most modern shibas, and tended to be black, without the common tan and white accents found on modern black-and-tan shibas.When the study of Japanese dogs was formalized in the early and mid-20th century, these three strains were combined into one overall breed, the Shiba Inu. The first Japanese breed standard for the Shiba, the Nippo Standard, was published in 1934. In December 1936, the Shiba Inu was recognized as a Natural Monument of Japan through the Cultural Properties Act, largely due to the efforts of Nippo (Nihon Ken Hozonkai), the Association for the Preservation of the Japanese Dog.In 1954, an armed service family brought the first Shiba Inu to the United States. In 1979, the first recorded litter was born in the United States. The Shiba was recognized by the American Kennel Club in 1992 and added to the AKC Non-Sporting Group in 1993. It is now primarily kept as a pet both in Japan and abroad. According to the American Kennel Club, the Shiba Inu is the number one companion dog in Japan. In the United States, the growing popularity of the Shiba Inu is evident as the American Kennel Club Registration Statistics ranked the breed in 44th place in 2016, a rise from 50th place in 2012.
+
+
+== Health ==
+Overall, the Shiba Inu is a healthy dog breed. Health conditions known to affect this breed are allergies, glaucoma, cataracts, hip dysplasia, entropion, and luxating patella. Periodic joint examinations are recommended throughout the dog's life.  Eye tests should be performed yearly as eye problems can develop over time. By two years of age, Shiba Inus may be considered fully free from joint problems if none have previously been discovered, since at this age the skeleton is fully developed.As with most dog breeds, Shibas should be walked or otherwise exercised daily.
+
+
+=== Life span ===
+Their average life expectancy is from 12 to 15 years. Exercise, especially daily walks, is preferred for this breed to live a long and healthy life. The oldest known Shiba, Pusuke, died at age 26 in early December 2011. Pusuke was the oldest known dog alive at the time and lived 5 years less than the world record for the longest living dog.
+
+
+=== Grooming ===
+Shiba Inus are very clean, so grooming needs will likely be minimal. They naturally tend to hate to be wet or bathed, thus, it is very important to get them accustomed when they are young. A Shiba Inu's coat is coarse (short to medium length), with the outer coat being 2.5 to 3.2 cm (1 to 1+1⁄4 in) long, and is naturally waterproof so there is little need for regular bathing. They have a thick undercoat that can protect them from temperatures well below freezing.Shedding, also known as blowing coat, can be a nuisance. Shedding is heaviest during the seasonal change and particularly during the summer season, but daily brushing can temper this problem. It is recommended that owners never shave or cut the coat of a Shiba Inu, as the coat is needed to protect them from both cold and hot temperatures.
+
+
+== In popular culture ==
+Despite not being a popular dog breed outside of Japan, the Shiba Inu has become popular on the Internet. Doge is an Internet meme from 2013 including a Shiba Inu and broken English. A popular cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, is named after this meme and its logo bears an image of the Shiba Inu. The race is often referred to as Shibe in memes. According to Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies at Queens College of the City University of New York, the Shiba Inu breed has had a significant presence in online culture since at least 2010.Another Shiba Inu dog that went viral was a dog known as 'Cheems'. He had gone viral during the COVID-19 pandemic and had gained worldwide attention. Cheems died during cancer surgery on August 18, 2023 at the age of 12½ years.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of dog breeds
+Japan Kennel Club
+Mameshiba
+Nihon Ken Hozonkai
+Shiba Inu Puppy Cam
+Cheems
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Shiba Inu at Curlie"
+Polkadot (cryptocurrency),"Polkadot is a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency. The native cryptocurrency for the Polkadot blockchain is the DOT. It is designed to allow blockchains to exchange messages and perform transactions with each other without a trusted third-party. This allows for cross-chain transfers of data or assets, between different blockchains, and for decentralized applications (DApps) to be built using the Polkadot Network.
+
+
+== History ==
+The protocol was created by the Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban, raising over $144.3 million in its Initial coin offering in October 2017. Another private sale in 2019 raised an additional $43 million. The white paper for Polkadot was published by Wood in 2016.Polkadot's initial block (the ""genesis block"") was released in May 2020. The DOT is its native token, and DOTs were released with the launch of the genesis block.
+
+
+== Technical details ==
+The Polkadot network has a primary blockchain named the ""relay chain"" and many user-created parallel chains called ""parachains"". The relay chain acts as the governance layer of the network, while parachains are auctioned, enabling users to create and operate their own blockchains that use Polkadot's infrastructure. The relay chain is responsible for validating data, achieving consensus and executing transactions. It is estimated that 1,000 transactions per second can be processed by the network.
+
+
+=== Proof of stake ===
+The network uses a nominated proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. The protocol used, Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension (BABE), is derived from Ouroboros, a protocol created by Aggelos Kiayias.
+
+
+=== Bridges and Parathreads ===
+The Polkadot network contains bridges, which connect blockchains and allow data transfer. Bridges provide interoperability with other blockchain networks. Parathreads operate in a similar manner to parachains but follow a ""pay as you go"" model, not requiring continuous connectivity to the Polkadot network.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Sybil attack
+Proof of stake
+List of cryptocurrencies
+List of blockchains
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Gavin Wood,"Gavin James Wood is an English computer scientist, a co-founder of Ethereum and creator of Polkadot and Kusama.
+
+
+== Early life ==
+Wood was born in Lancaster, England, United Kingdom. He attended the Lancaster Royal Grammar School. He graduated from the University of York with a Master of Engineering (MEng) in Computer Systems and Software Engineering in 2002 and completed his PhD entitled ""Content-based visualisation to aid common navigation of musical audio"" in 2005.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Before working on Ethereum, Wood was a research scientist at Microsoft. He was one of the founders of the Ethereum blockchain, which he has described as ""one computer for the entire planet,"" with Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin during 2013–2014. Wood proposed and helped develop Solidity, a programming language for writing smart contracts. He also released the paper defining the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the runtime system for smart contracts in Ethereum, in 2014. He also served as the Ethereum Foundation's first chief technology officer. Wood left the Ethereum Foundation in January 2016.Wood founded Parity Technologies (formerly Ethcore), which developed a client for the Ethereum network and creates software for companies using blockchain technology, with Jutta Steiner, who also previously worked at the Ethereum Foundation. The company released the Parity Ethereum software client, written in Rust, in early 2016. He held the title of chief web officer at Parity in 2018.
+He founded the Web3 Foundation, a nonprofit organization focusing on decentralised internet infrastructure and technology, starting with the Polkadot network. In comparison to Bitcoin's proof of work mechanism, Polkadot relies on proof of stake mechanism and allows developers to create their own blockchain that can talk to other ledgers, forming a system of parachains. Developers can decide what kind of transaction fees to charge and how fast to confirm blocks of transactions across the digital ledgers. In 2019, he founded Kusama, an early stage experimental development environment for Polkadot.
+
+
+== Charity ==
+Amid 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Wood donated $5.8 million in cryptocurrency to support Ukraine.
+
+
+== Publications ==
+Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger
+Polkadot: Vision for a Heterogenous Multi-Chain Framework
+
+
+== References =="
+BitClout,"BitClout is an open source blockchain-based social media platform. On the platform, users can post short-form writings and photos, award money to posts they particularly like by clicking a diamond icon, as well as buy and sell ""creator coins"" (personalized tokens whose value depends on people's reputations). BitClout runs on a custom proof of work blockchain, and is a prototype of what can be built on DeSo (short for ""Decentralized Social""). BitClout's founder and primary leader is known pseudonymously as ""diamondhands""; his real name is Nader al-Naji. 
+Under development since 2019, BitClout's blockchain created its first block in January 2021, and BitClout itself launched publicly in March 2021. The platform launched with 15,000 ""reserved"" accounts - a move intended to prevent impersonation, but which backfired as some people with reserved accounts tried to actively distance themselves. Later, in September 2021, BitClout was revealed to be the flagship product of the DeSo blockchain.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Origins (2019 - March 2021) ===
+In early 2019, Nader al-Naji became interested in ""mixing investing and social media"". He started creating a custom blockchain in May 2019, but didn't tell anyone else until November 2020. However, in the fall of 2020, al-Naji pitched BitClout's own investors under his real name and began posting job listings for a ""new operation"".Although BitClout was not originally intended to launch until mid-2021, its development was sped up due to ""zeitgeist about decentralized social media"" in January 2021.BitClout's first block was mined on 18 January 2021. Its next block was mined on 1 March 2021.
+
+
+=== As BitClout (March - September 2021) ===
+In early March 2021, about fifty investors received links to a password-protected website with the BitClout white paper. They were encouraged to explore the site and send the same link to ""two or three other 'trusted contacts'"". Within weeks users were spending millions of dollars per day on the platform. The platform's founders said they were ""completely unprepared"", having planned to have a ""soft-launch"". The leader went by the name ""diamondhands"" on the platform.On 24 March 2021, BitClout launched out of private beta. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm Social Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital Management, Alexis Ohanian, Polychain, Pantera, and Digital Currency Group (CoinDesk's parent company). During its initial launch, BitClout's currency could be bought with bitcoin, but not sold except on Discord servers or Twitter threads. A single bitcoin wallet related to BitClout received more than $165M worth of deposits.In March 2021, law firm Anderson Kill P.C. sent Nader al-Naji, the presumed leader of the BitClout platform, a cease-and-desist letter, demanding the removal of Brandon Curtis's account and alleging that BitClout violated sections 1798 and 3344 of the California Civil Code by using Curtis's name and likeness without his consent. Curtis also tweeted, ""Adopting Bitcoin's aesthetic to raise VC funding to carry out unethical and blatantly illegal schemes like BitClout: not cool"". (However, Curtis's coin, despite not being listed on the official website, can still be bought by users searching for the original username.) Additionally, in April 2021, Lee Hsien Loong asked for his name and photograph to be removed from the site, stating that he has ""nothing to do with the platform"" and that ""it is misleading and done without [his] permission"".On 18 May 2021, diamondhands announced that 100% of the BitClout code went public.On 12 June 2021, the supply of BitClout was capped at around 11 million coins.On 18 July 2021, BitClout added the ability for users to mint and purchase NFTs within the platform.
+
+
+=== As part of DeSo (September 2021 - present) ===
+On 21 September 2021, it was revealed that BitClout was a prototype built on DeSo, short for ""Decentralized Social"". As a part of this revelation, diamondhands confirmed his identity as Nader al-Naji. (As early as April 2021, it had been believed that diamondhands indeed that person.)The Bitclout project raised $200M in funding, which went to setting up the DeSo Foundation.
+
+
+== Design ==
+BitClout is a social media platform. Its users can post short-form writings and photos (similarly to Twitter). They can award money to posts they particularly like by clicking a diamond icon (similarly to Twitch Bits).
+
+The prices of each account's ""creator coin"" goes up and down with the popularity of the celebrity behind it. For example, if someone says something negative, the value of their corresponding account may go down. This price is computed automatically according to the formula 
+  
+    
+      
+        p
+        r
+        i
+        c
+        e
+        _
+        i
+        n
+        _
+        b
+        i
+        t
+        c
+        l
+        o
+        u
+        t
+        =
+        .003
+        ∗
+        c
+        r
+        e
+        a
+        t
+        o
+        r
+        _
+        c
+        o
+        i
+        n
+        s
+        _
+        i
+        n
+        _
+        c
+        i
+        r
+        c
+        u
+        l
+        a
+        t
+        i
+        o
+        
+          n
+          
+            2
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle price\_in\_bitclout=.003*creator\_coins\_in\_circulation^{2}}
+  .At launch time, BitClout scraped 15,000 profiles of celebrities from Twitter to create ""reserved"" accounts in their names. To claim a reserved account, the account holder would need to tweet about it (which also serves as a marketing strategy). At least 80 such reserved profiles have been claimed.BitClout uses proof of work, but is planning to switch to proof of stake.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+BitClout official website"
+SafeMoon,"SafeMoon LLC was a cryptocurrency and blockchain company created in March 2021. The company also has a SafeMoon token (SFM) which trades on the BNB Chain blockchain. The token charges a 10% fee on transactions, with 5% redistributed (or reflected) to token holders and 5% directed to wallets in a different currency, Binance Coin (BNB), controlled by the coin's authors. The token reached its all time high market cap in April 2021 of $17b. As of December 2022, it has since dropped 98.7% in value to $223m.The SafeMoon company has released a minimal-function cryptocurrency wallet and has announced plans to release other cryptocurrency products. The company and the token have been the subject of several controversies since conception; by being compared to a ponzi-scheme, not delivering on products, having multiple class-action lawsuits filed against them, and facing serious fraud allegations. In November 2023, the SEC and the DoJ charged SafeMoon and its executive team with fraud, the unregistered offering of securities, and money laundering.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== 2021: SafeMoon version 1 ===
+SafeMoon was released in March 2021. A compound of ""Safe"" and ""Moon"". The token was released with the slogan of landing ""Safely to the moon"", derived from the slang phrase used in the cryptocurrency community; ""To the moon"" which is used to describe a crypto token ""to quickly rise in price"".  The token had no utility and team when it was launched. Upon release, Vice reported that between March 14 and April 21 of 2021, SafeMoon increased in value by 23,225% following celebrity endorsements from musicians Lil' Yachty and Nick Carter, YouTuber Logan Paul, social media hype, new exchange listings, and retail investors. At that time, Vice said that ""cryptocurrencies like SafeMoon still have no real-world use."" These celebrities were later sued by many SafeMoon investors as part of a class-action lawsuit branding SafeMoon to be a part of a pump and dump scheme. After the substantial rise in price, the unknown developers of the token appointed Braden John Karony as the CEO of Safemoon and registered as a Limited liability company with aims of providing utility to the token. Before this appointment, Karony served as a former analyst for the United States Department of Defense from January 2015 to January 2021.In May 2021, SafeMoon announced making a presentation to The Gambia to provide ""technology for innovation and learning purposes"". The project was dubbed ""Project Pheonix"" (the misspelling of Phoenix being intentional), SafeMoon released a familiar crypto pitch of serving the ""unbanked"" and claimed to be working with local governments to adopt the token as a local currency. A company run by John Karony's mother ECG LC, was set up in May 2021 to deliver this project. On August 27, 2022, John stated that his reasons for discontinuing his work in West Africa were due to supply chain problems, which is disputed by his mother in the ongoing Project Pheonix lawsuit.In June 2021, the project began beta testing of the SafeMoon wallet. The app was officially released on Google Play in September 2021 and the App Store in October 2021. Critics dubbed the wallet to be a copy of the Trust Wallet owned by Binance. Thomas Smith, who was the CTO for Safemoon, left the company in December 2021 for a role as a blockchain advisor for StrikeX, however, was dismissed by the company after the fraud allegations uncovered by Stephen Findeisen.
+
+
+=== 2022: Migration to SafeMoon V2 ===
+In December 2021, SafeMoon developed Version 2 of their token (SafeMoon V2), an updated version of the SafeMoon contract. As part of consolidating to V2, the SafeMoon team implemented a deadline to migrate their tokens, or else investors would be faced with a 100% tax. The team also released a decentralised exchange titled ""Safemoon Swap"" as the only place where this migration could happen. In April 2022, Safemoon announced a new product, the Safemoon card. The Safemoon card was promoted as a debit card that can be used to pay for goods using SafeMoon (and other cryptocurrencies) for a 2.5% fee. Some experts criticized paying an additional fee to pay for goods, contrasting it to Crypto.com's card which instead rewards users with a percentage return in crypto depending on how much of their native token they are holding. Although the card was supposed to be released in July 2022, as of December 2022 its release has been delayed.
+Since the appointment of Karony in 2021, SafeMoon has announced plans to launch its own cryptocurrency exchange by October 2021, however, this was pushed to December 2022 and has again been pushed back to the end of 2023. The company also has plans to launch a blockchain, hardware wallet, and to become a macro Internet of things infrastructure on its own blockchain.
+
+
+=== 2023: LP hack and Fraud Indictment ===
+On March 29 2023, hackers exploited a security flaw in the smart contract of SafeMoon’s liquidity pool which saw USD 9 million worth of SFM tokens depleted from SafeMoon's liquidity pool causing a drop in the token’s price. After negotiations with the SafeMoon team, the hacker agreed to return only 80% ($7 million) of the stolen liquidity and kept $2 million of the stolen tokens.On November 1, 2023, a Federal indictment was unsealed, charging SafeMoon’s CEO Braden John Karony, Token Founder Kyle Nagy, and former SafeMoon employee Thomas Smith with conspiracies involving securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering in connection with SafeMoon. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York alleged that the defendants misled SafeMoon investors about the accessibility of 'locked' liquidity and engaged in personal trading. The charges reported that as SafeMoon's market capitalization exceeded $8 billion, they fraudulently diverted millions of dollars from the 'locked' liquidity for personal gain. Karony and Smith were arrested, while Nagy remained at large. The charges were brought by the SEC and the Department of Justice with FBI assistance.In December 2023, SafeMoon declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy and shut down.
+
+
+== Criticisms and legal issues ==
+
+
+=== Parallels to a meme coin ===
+The token has been described pejoratively in May 2021 as a ""meme coin"" alongside Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, with much of its value attributed to the result of the 2021 crypto market frenzy.The developers of SafeMoon have been described as having ""little proof of previous success"", with the token having been described by some financial experts as ""the furthest thing from safe"" and that it ""doesn't do anything"".
+
+
+=== Security issues ===
+In May 2021, the V1 version of the token was audited by security auditing firm CertiK, which identified a ""major issue"" that the project's owners have ""control over tokens funded by SafeMoon's seller fee"". An owner address acquire's the liquidity pool tokens generated by the Safemoon-BNB pool. This gives the owner control over tokens funded by Safemoon's seller fee. This feature was later the subject of the 2022 Safemoon fraud allegations. London Capital's head of research Jasper Lawler also noted that the Manual Burn aspect of Safemoon paired with the controlling companies' large stake in the coins opens the project up to manipulation by the project controllers.
+
+
+=== Ponzi-scheme comparisons ===
+After the price of a SafeMoon token multiplied by 12x during a single week in April 2021, opinion columnists in various financial magazines likened SafeMoon to a ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme, where gains to early investors were paid only by incoming investors who expected a similar rate of return, with some citing the fact that each transaction sends a portion of the transacted value to existing holders of the token, as well as a portion of the transacted value to a wallet controlled by the coin's authors. Furthermore, Safemoon's token economics utilises a 10% sell tax. This means that for every $1000 sale, an investor would be charged $100. Many critics argue that this discourages investors to sell as they are at a loss as soon as they invest. The tax from the new investors is used for many things including distributing a small percentage of it to existing investors.
+
+
+=== 2022 fraud allegations ===
+In April 2022,  Stephen ""Coffeezilla"" Findeisen, a prominent independent researcher who investigates crypto scams, accused the SafeMoon team of misappropriating millions of dollars. According to Findeisen, Safemoon CEO Karony had been removing funds from the liquidity pool which is the primary explanation of the crypto's price pattern (Figure 1). Findeisen found evidence of transactions which showed Safemoon's liquidity wallet moving funds to a wallet dubbed the ""Gabe (6abe) wallet"" which withdrew funds to a separate company run by John Karony. Former SafeMoon CTO; Thomas ""Papa"" Smith was the only person who responded to Findeisen's claims stating that funds were taken from the “locked liquidity pool” before Karony’s appointment. He sent Smith evidence of this in the form of a blockchain transaction showing an outflow of 36.7 trillion tokens from the liquidity pool, dated March 5, 2021.
+
+
+=== Class-action lawsuits ===
+On February 18, 2022, in a class-action lawsuit filed against SafeMoon it was alleged that the company was a pump and dump scheme. Paul was named as a defendant along with musician Nick Carter, rappers Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty, and social media personality Ben Phillips for promoting the SafeMoon token on their social media accounts with misleading information. On the same day, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit against Bitconnect that the Securities Act of 1933 extends to targeted solicitation using social media. Findeisen, who had just shone a light on the 2022 SafeMoon fraud allegations supported the claims that Paul and Phillips were pumping and dumping Safemoon tokens during this time which saw a decline of 96% in token price. On August 22, 2022, it was documented that David Portnoy, who was also a defendant in this case, was dismissed from the lawsuit after it was revealed that he never received any compensation from Safemoon for promoting the token and that he also lost his investment from buying SFM.In May 2022, multiple SafeMoon investors filed another class action lawsuit against SafeMoon for security fraud. The lawsuit which is represented by Scott+Scott, was voluntarily terminated by the plaintiff without prejudice per notice in November 2022. This means the case can be retried if the plaintiff wishes to in the future.
+
+
+=== Project Pheonix lawsuit ===
+As part of Project Pheonix, a separate company Emanations Communications Group LC (ECG) was set up and led by SafeMoon CEO John Karony's mother, Jennifer, to provide antenna technology to The Gambia. The company has since been seized by Lex Vest Ltd. As part of this venture, John invested $5 million into the project in June 2021. It was claimed that Karony funded this investment from SafeMoon's liquidity pool which was supposedly locked up. As part of this capital investment John agreed 33.34% stake in the company & future profits, as well as his own personal bills, to come out of the company. ECG determined that John Karony created too many regulatory risks and that due to multiple lawsuits filed against him and his company (SafeMoon), were uncomfortable accepting any more capital investments from him. As a result, John Karony filed a lawsuit against ECG for breach of contract and accused his mother of legal trickery to remove him from ECG.ECG developed technology relating to Project Pheonix which was presented to John in December 2021. According to court documents, John had been disclosing information about developing technology for the benefit of SafeMoon to make claims on SafeMoon’s website and social media accounts about the technology. He was counselled not to do so by ECG (particularly his mother) because of potential adverse effects on pending patents and other intellectual property. In March 2022, John and his counsel met with Project Pheonix partners Sankung Jawara and Pa Alieu Jawara, and offered them an upfront payment of $350,000 to cut Jennifer Karony out of the transaction, which they refused. John then negotiated an offer to pay them of up to $4.5 million, to be paid out over time, with the understanding that Jennifer was again removed from consideration. Sankung and Pa Alieu once more refused, due to the proposed circumvention of the business partnership and John's assertion that there was a way to circumvent the legal and parliamentary procedures required for John's desired bank project.Karony's mother stated that John had not provided a plan for Project Pheonix and was not interested in the content of the financial documents, but was looking for ""opportunities to take pictures of the lab to substantiate his published claims of owning ECG labs which he called 'Area 32' or 'DarkMoon'"". Due to the lawsuit, Project Pheonix has since been abandoned. On August 27, 2022, John stated that his reasons for discontinuing his work in West Africa were due to supply chain problems, which is disputed by his mother.
+
+
+=== Liquidity pool hack ===
+On March 29 2023, it was reported that almost $9 million USD worth of SafeMoon tokens were depleted from SafeMoon's liquidity pool after hackers exploited a security flaw in its smart contracts. As a result, the price of the token fell further in value. The hacker agreed to return only 80% ($7 million) of the stolen liquidity after striking a deal with the team to keep $2 million of the stolen tokens.
+
+
+=== Fraud indictment ===
+On November 1, 2023, a Federal indictment was unsealed charging Braden John Karony, Kyle Nagy, and Thomas Smith with conspiracies to commit securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering through SafeMoon. According to the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, ""As alleged, the defendants lied to SFM investors concerning whether SFM's use of 'locked' liquidity was inaccessible to the defendants, as well as their personal holding and trading of SFM.  As SFM's market capitalization grew to more than $8 billion, the defendants fraudulently diverted and misappropriated millions of dollars' worth of purportedly 'locked' SFM liquidity for their personal benefit."" At the time Karony and Smith had been arrested while Nagy remained at large. The charges were brought in parallel by the SEC and the Department of Justice with assistance from the FBI.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Decentralized finance
+Meme coin
+Binance Smart Chain
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Coinye,"Coinye, formerly Coinye West, is a scrypt-based cryptocurrency. Cease and desist letters were issued against it for its use of the American hip hop artist Kanye West, as its mascot despite West having no affiliation with the project. The project was abandoned by the original developers following West's filing of a trademark infringement lawsuit against them.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Release ===
+Coinye was originally slated for release on January 11, 2014, but legal pressure prompted David P. McEnery Jr. and his development team to release the source code and mining software on January 7, a few days ahead of schedule. Early press materials promised a proper and fair release, with no pre-allocation of coins. However, later statements from the developers confirmed that approximately 0.37% of the maximum money supply of Coinye had been reserved for the creators of the coin before launch. The developers claimed that this was to cover unexpected legal and development costs.
+
+
+=== Trademark infringement lawsuit ===
+On January 6, 2014, Kanye West's lawyers sent the development team a cease and desist order on the basis that the then-unreleased currency constituted trademark infringement, unfair competition, cyberpiracy and dilution. In response to the legal threats, the development team changed the name of the currency from ""Coinye West"" to ""Coinye"" and moved to a new domain name. By January 10, 2014, the development team stated that they had removed all references to West but instead ""to a half-man-half-fish hybrid,"" a nod to a South Park episode in which West fails to realize why people are jokingly calling him a ""gay fish."" These actions were not sufficient to appease West's legal team, and a lawsuit was filed against the creators of the coin, prompting them to sell their Coinye holdings and leave the project.
+
+
+=== Developer departure and community takeover ===
+On January 14, 2014, a representative of Coinye announced on Reddit that ""the developers basically dumped all their coins on the one exchange and left the scene."" Coinye's official site was replaced with text reading ""Coinye is dead. You win, Kanye."" and the original website is now down.
+
+
+=== Decline (2014-2020) ===
+Coinye has been called ""defunct"" by numerous publications. Coinye's global block difficulty fell from 78 to 1.012 between January 18, 2014,  and May 7, 2014, indicating that the network's total processing power fell by roughly 99% during that time. Had West not sued Coinye, some predictions put the hypothetical value at approximately twenty times its original worth, as of 2017. By 2017, few were trading or mining Coinye.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Meme coin
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Archived website"
+OneCoin,"OneCoin is a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme conducted by offshore companies OneCoin Ltd, based in Bulgaria and registered in Dubai, and OneLife Network Ltd (registered in Belize), both founded by Ruja Ignatova in concert with Sebastian Greenwood. OneCoin is considered a Ponzi scheme due to its organisational structure of paying early investors using money obtained from newer ones. It was also a pyramid scheme due to the recruiting of investors without providing any actual product. The company secretly conducted database entry scam simulating transactions not registered by an actual blockchain, and with no mining behind the apparent cryptocurrency release and circulation. Many of those characters central to OneCoin had been previously involved in similar and different other schemes and business malpractices separate from each other. OneCoin was described by The Times as ""one of the biggest scams in history"".US prosecutors have alleged the scheme brought in approximately $4 billion worldwide. In China, law enforcement recovered 1.7 billion yuan (US$267.5 million) while prosecuting 98 people. Ignatova disappeared in 2017 near the time a secret US warrant was filed for her arrest and her brother, Konstantin Ignatov, took her position. Most of the leaders have now disappeared or been arrested, though Ignatova has escaped arrest. Greenwood was arrested in 2018, as was Konstantin Ignatov in March 2019. In November 2019, Ignatov pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and fraud. The total maximum sentence for the charges is 90 years in prison. In 2022 Greenwood pleaded guilty, and in 2023 was sentenced to 20 years for wire fraud and money laundering.
+
+
+== Concept ==
+OneCoin was launched in late 2014. It was not a decentralized cryptocurrency but rather a centralized pyramid scheme hosted on OneCoin Ltd's servers which was marketed as a cryptocurrency. The scheme was set up by Ruja Ignatova with Sebastian Greenwood acting as the lead distributor in the pyramid.According to OneCoin, its main business was selling educational material for cryptocurrency trading: investors could buy ""educational packages"" costing anywhere from 100 euros to 118,000 euros, or—according to one industry blog—225,500 euros. According to a suit filed by former investors, much of the content in those packages was plagiarized from various free sources, including Wikipedia. Investors also received ""tokens"" that could be assigned to mine OneCoins. Mining was said to be taking place at two sites in Bulgaria and one in Hong Kong.In typical OneCoin recruiting meetings, recruiters would focus on cryptocurrency investment, and the ""educational material"" was barely mentioned.The only way to exchange OneCoins for other currencies was the OneCoin Exchange (""xcoinx""), an internal marketplace for members who had invested more than a set amount. OneCoins could be exchanged for euros, which were placed in a ""virtual wallet"", from which they could request a wire transfer. The marketplace had daily selling limits based on which package the seller had invested in, greatly limiting the amount of OneCoins which could be exchanged by the scam's victims. As lead distributor, 5% of all OneCoin sales went to Greenwood, who made over US$300 million.On 1 March 2016, without notice, OneCoin issued an internal notice that the marketplace would be closed for two weeks for maintenance, explaining that this was necessary due to the ""high number of miners"" and for ""better integration with blockchain"". On 15 March 2016, the market re-opened. It was shut down again without notice in January 2017, though individuals affiliated with the company continued to accept funds.
+
+
+== Legal issues and criticism ==
+
+
+=== 2015 ===
+On 30 September 2015, Bulgaria's Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) issued a warning of potential risks in new cryptocurrencies, citing OneCoin as an example. After the warning, OneCoin ceased all activity in Bulgaria and started to use banks in foreign countries to handle wire transfers from participants.
+
+
+=== 2016 ===
+In February 2016, the British newspaper Daily Mirror wrote that OneCoin / OneLife is a get-rich-quick scheme scam and a cult, calling it ""virtually worthless"".
+The company and the scheme is on the observation lists of many authorities; among them are authorities in Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Latvia. Authorities in many countries have warned of potential risks involved in businesses like OneCoin and undertaken prosecutions against persons linked to OneCoin, including CEO Ruja Ignatova and her brother Konstantin Ignatov.In March 2016, the Direct Selling Association in Norway warned against OneCoin, comparing it to a pyramid scheme.In December 2016, the Italian Antitrust Authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato) ""adopted an interim injunction against the company One Network Services Ltd., active in the promotion and dissemination of cryptocurrency OneCoin"", and its representatives in Italy, describing their activities as an ""illegal pyramid sales system"" (""sistema di vendita piramidale vietato dalla legge""), and ordering them to cease promoting and selling OneCoin in Italy On 27 February 2017, after concluding their investigation, AGCM banned all activity on OneCoin until further notice.In December 2016, the Hungarian Central Bank issued a warning that OneCoin is a pyramid scheme, and in China that same year several members and investors of OneCoin were arrested and US$30.8 million worth of assets seized.
+
+
+=== 2017 ===
+In March 2017, the Croatian National Bank (HNB) advised the public to ""exercise a high degree of caution"" in decisions involving OneCoin, noted that OneCoin operations are not supervised by the HNB, and warned that possible losses will be fully borne by the investors.On 23 April 2017, Indian police arrested 18 people in Navi Mumbai for organizing a OneCoin recruitment event. The police attended the event undercover to judge the accusations before they decided to act. Further investigation was begun with the intent of revealing the higher levels of the pyramid. In May, the investigation recovered Rs 24.57 crores ($3.32 million USD) in nine bank accounts. A further Rs 75 crores ($10.12 million USD) were transferred out before authorities were able to seize it. Early in the month of May, two more people were arrested and a further Rs 24 crores ($3.24 million USD) were seized from bank accounts. A special investigation team of 15 individuals including 4 assistant police inspectors was formed under Senior Police Inspector Shivaji Awate with the stated goal of following the money trail and possibly lead to further arrests.On 27 April 2017, Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) issued cease and desist orders to Onecoin Ltd, Dubai, and OneLife Network Ltd, Belize. The Authority concluded that trading in OneCoins was fraudulent ""own funds"" trading.On 28 April 2017, Bank of Thailand issued a warning against OneCoin, stating it was an illegal digital currency and that it should not be used in trade.On 29 May 2017, International Financial Services Commission of Belize (IFSC) issued a warning about OneLife Network Ltd conducting trading business without license or permission from IFSC or any other authority. OneLife Network Ltd was directed to cease and desist from carrying on with the illegal trading business.On 16 June 2017, the CEO of OneCoin Ltd. claimed OneCoin was licensed by the Vietnamese government, that it was legally permissible to use them as a digital currency and that it was the first cryptocurrency in Asia officially licensed by any government. On 20 June 2017, Vietnam's Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) issued a statement that the document which OneCoin used as proof was forged. They stated that the document was against the MPI regulations and that the person who supposedly signed the document was not in the position claimed by the document at the time when the document was created. MPI warned individuals and enterprises to be vigilant if they encounter the document during business.On 10 July 2017, Ruja Ignatova, the CEO, was charged in India with duping investors as a part of the Indian investigation.
+
+
+=== 2018 ===
+On 17 and 18 January 2018, Bulgarian police raided OneCoin's office in Sofia at the request of the prosecutor's office in Bielefeld, Germany. German police and Europol took part in the bust and the investigation. Also 14 other companies, tied to OneCoin, were investigated and 50 witnesses were questioned. OneCoin's servers and other material evidence were seized.On 3 May 2018, the Central Bank of Samoa (CBS) banned all foreign exchange transactions related to OneCoin and OneLife. The bank had earlier in March issued a warning about OneCoin. CBS describes OneCoin as a very-high-risk pyramid scheme.
+Ruja Ignatova's collaborator and OneCoin's co-founder Sebastian Karl Greenwood (age 46–47) was arrested in Thailand in July 2018. He was imprisoned in Thailand pending extradition to the United States. Greenwood is a father of four and a citizen of Sweden and the UK. Greenwood used money from Onecoin to buy international real estate, expensive clothing and watches, and to make a SKr 6,500,000 down-payment on a Sunseeker yacht.
+
+
+=== 2019 ===
+Ruja Ignatova's brother Konstantin Ignatov was arrested in March 2019. In a plea deal made on 4 October (made public 12 November), he pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering in connection with the scheme.On 21 November 2019 the New York Federal Court found lawyer Mark Scott guilty of money laundering and bank fraud for his role in routing US$400m out of the US.On 24 November 2019 the BBC published a detailed investigation of OneCoin and Ignatova titled ""Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished"". The reporters believe that Ignatova resides in Frankfurt under a false identity.
+
+
+=== 2020 ===
+In 2020 the FinCEN Files showed that BNY Mellon flagged to FinCEN $137m of transactions related to OneCoin.
+
+
+=== 2021 ===
+The company OneCoin, Ruja Ignatova and Gilbert Armenta have been found in default at an ongoing trial in the US.
+
+
+=== 2022 ===
+In May 2022, Europol added Ignatova to their ""Europe's Most Wanted"" list, offering a €5,000 reward for information leading to her arrest. On June 30, the Federal Bureau of Investigation added Ignatova to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to her arrest.In December, Greenwood pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in the a US federal court.
+
+
+=== 2023 ===
+In March 2023, OneCoin's former legal and compliance officer Irina Dilkinska was caught and extradited from Bulgaria to the United States.Frank Schneider, former intelligence officer of Luxembourg and advisor to Ignatova, has absconded. Journalists speculate that Ignatova might have been murdered.In September 2023, Greenwood was sentenced to a 20-year federal prison term (minus 5-years already served) by a New York Federal court.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitconnect
+PlusToken
+USI Tech
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+The Missing Cryptoqueen. Podcast, BBC, since 2019.
+Bovermann, Philipp (25 September 2020). ""Die verschwundene Königin"". Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German).
+
+
+== External links ==
+ Media related to OneCoin at Wikimedia Commons"
+Bitconnect,"Bitconnect (also spelled BitConnect and KimConnect; stylized bitconnect, ticker code BCC) was an open-source cryptocurrency in 2016–2018 that was connected with a high-yield investment program, a type of Ponzi scheme. After the platform administrators closed the earning platform on January 16, 2018, and refunded the users' investments in BCC following a 92% coin value crash, confidence was lost and the value of the coin plummeted to below $1 from a previous high of nearly $525.
+
+
+== History ==
+Bitconnect was released in 2016 to allow users to lend the value of Bitconnect Coin in return for interest payments. The marquee program was the so-called lending platform where users traded Bitcoin for Bitconnect Coin and could lock in the instantaneous value of the coin for a set period of time while earning interest calculated daily. The interest payouts were determined by a so-called ""trading bot"". The trading bot was the most controversial piece of the Bitconnect.co system. The liquidity of the BCC cryptocurrency funded users' ability to exchange their earnings for Bitcoin.
+On November 7, 2017, the government of the United Kingdom issued Bitconnect a notice with two months to prove its legitimacy.On January 3, 2018, Texas State Securities Board issued a cease and desist to the company, calling it a Ponzi scheme, and citing failings in user earnings transparency, and misleading statements. Texas State Security Board and North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division warned that Bitconnect was not registered to sell securities in their respective states.On January 17, 2018, Bitconnect shut down, and BCC prices crashed by 92% immediately after. Bitconnect announced it would refund its loans.On January 31, 2018, a temporary restraining order froze Bitconnect's assets, expiring on February 13. However, Bitconnect as an entity never actually existed, so it is unclear what assets Bitconnect has (or ever had). An alleged India-region leader (one level below the founder) of Bitconnect, Divyesh Darji, was arrested in Delhi, India, on August 18, 2018. It is suspected that Darji is connected to well-known criminal entities involved in laundering so-called ""Black Money"" after the Indian government's demonetization of the rupee. In 2019, Darji was arrested and released on bail in connection with a similar scam called Regal Coin.
+
+
+== Criticism and collapse ==
+Bitconnect was suspected of being a Ponzi scheme because of its multilevel marketing structure and impossibly high payouts (1% daily compounded interest). Bitconnect interest fluctuated greatly with the volatility of Bitcoin, which its value was tied to.
+The Bitconnect Coin was among the world's top 20 most successful cryptocurrency tokens until its price collapsed after traders began losing confidence. BCC rose from a post-ICO price of $0.17 to an all-time high of US$463 in December 2017; it declined to US$0.40 as of March 11, 2019. Bitconnect released outstanding loans at US$363.62 to the Bitconnect Wallet in the form of BCC. However, soon after that news the internal exchange price and liquidity collapsed resulting in a nearly complete loss of value.
+
+
+== Legal issues ==
+On January 16, 2018, Bitconnect announced it would shut down its cryptocurrency exchange and lending operation after regulators from Texas and North Carolina issued a cease and desist order against it. On January 31, 2018, a U.S. District Court, Western District of Kentucky, granted a temporary restraining order freezing Bitconnect's assets and ""to disclose cryptocurrency wallet and trading account addresses, as well as the identities of anyone to whom Bitconnect has sent digital currencies within the last 90 days"".In September 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Bitconnect, alongside its founder Indian Satish Kumbhani, American Glenn Arcaro who served as Bitconnect's lead national promoter in the United States from August 2017 to January 2018, and Future Money LTD, a company Arcaro created to lure into Bitconnect's lending program. The SEC alleged that Bitconnect defrauded U.S. investors a total of $2 billion.Parallel to SEC civil charges, the United States Department of Justice had initiated criminal charges against Arcaro. On September 1, 2021, Arcaro pleaded guilty of criminal charges pressed by DOJ which includes conspiracy to commit wire fraud and criminal forfeiture. The DOJ also indicted Kumbhani on various federal charges in February 2022, including money laundering and fraud.On January 12, 2023, a federal district court in San Diego ordered that Arcaro pay $17 million in restitution to be distributed to approximately 800 victims.  He also agreed to forfeit more than $24 million, which could also be used in the future to repay victims. 
+
+
+== Internet meme ==
+On October 28, 2017, Bitconnect held its first (and only) annual ceremony in Pattaya, Thailand. During the event, an investor named Carlos Matos from New York City gave an exuberant presentation and testimonial about the website, which included him intensely screaming ""Bitconnect!"" several times in a variety of registers; the scene quickly became an Internet meme.  Both Matos' meme and the questionable practices of Bitconnect were profiled by John Oliver and Keegan-Michael Key on the program Last Week Tonight.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of cryptocurrencies
+OneCoin
+PlusToken
+USI Tech
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website (last archived version, 28 November 2018)"
+KodakCoin,"KodakCoin (stylized KODAKCoin) was a photographer-oriented blockchain cryptocurrency that was planned for payments for licensing photographs; however, the project has failed and been shut down. The cryptocurrency was being developed under a brand licensee agreement between Kodak and RYDE Holding Inc. (formerly WENN digital), with the relationship and project canceled.
+The initial coin offering (ICO) was initially scheduled for January 31, 2018, but was indefinitely delayed due to questions about its vetting process. A simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) was then scheduled for May 2018, which limited purchases to accredited investors.The website and project has been shut down, with all mention of the KodakCoin and KodakOne removed from Kodak's website.
+
+
+== Background ==
+KodakCoin SAFTs were made available on May 21, 2018, to accredited investors in the United States, United Kingdom, and some other countries.  Working in conjunction with the KodakOne digital rights management platform, KodakCoin was intended to serve as the currency for an encrypted ledger of intellectual property rights ownership. KodakCoin would have used the Ethereum blockchain platform.
+KodakCoin was created by WENN Digital, using the Kodak trademark under license.  KodakCoin may be a rebranding of an abandoned initial coin offering (ICO) known as RYDE, a cryptocurrency developed by WENN Digital. WENN Digital is a company formed by investments from Wenn Media Group and Ryde GmbH, a German company.
+
+
+=== WENN Digital ===
+In the initial press release about the KodakOne project published by Kodak on January 9, 2018 WENN Digital is described as having a ""live operational copyright infringement management system"" that ""is delivering revenues to photographers worldwide today"" and leveraging ""the market position of its 30-year old subsidiary WENN Media, which works with approximately 2,500 professional photographers"". German media reported on March 21, after a conversation with WENN Digital CEO Jan Denecke, that his Berlin-based startup RYDE GmbH, which according to the White Paper released by WENN Digital (dated April 24, 2018) builds a technological core of the KodakOne platform, was ""meanwhile majority-owned by WENN Digital"".
+
+
+== KodakOne ==
+KodakCoin was designed to work with Kodak's KodakOne platform, to facilitate image licensing for photographers. The KodakOne platform uses web crawlers to identify intellectual property licensed to the KodakOne platform, with payments for licensed photographs to be made using KodakCoin cryptocurrency.The website and project has been shutdown, with all mention of the KodakCoin and KodakOne removed from Kodak's website.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+Following the January 9 announcement of the new platform at the 2018 CES in Las Vegas, Kodak's stock price tripled in two days, as its market valuation increased to US$565 million, an increase of more than 300 percent. By the end of January, one third of Kodak's shares were trading short.BBC News ""Tech Tent"" declared KodakCoin/KodakOne and the (unrelated) Kodak KashMiner ""Worst Idea"" at CES 2018.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Petro (token),"The petro (₽), or petromoneda, launched in February 2018, is a crypto token issued by the government of Venezuela.Announced in December 2017, it is supposed to be backed by the country's oil and mineral reserves, and is intended to supplement Venezuela's plummeting hard bolívar currency, as a means of circumventing U.S. sanctions and accessing international financing. On 20 August 2018, the sovereign bolívar was introduced, with the government stating it would be linked to the petro coin value.As of January, 2020, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro decreed it mandatory to pay with petro for government document services and airplane fuel for planes flying international flights.
+
+
+== History ==
+Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro announced the petro in a televised address on 3 December 2017, stating that it would be backed by Venezuela's reserves of oil, gasoline, gold, and diamonds.Maduro stated that the petro would allow Venezuela to ""advance in issues of monetary sovereignty"", and that it would make ""new forms of international financing"" available to the country. Opposition leaders, however, expressed doubt due to Venezuela's economic turmoil, pointing to the falling value of the Venezuelan bolívar, its fiat currency, and $140 billion in foreign debt.On 5 January 2018, Maduro announced that Venezuela would issue 100 million tokens of the petro, which would put the value of the entire issuance at just over $6 billion. It also established a cryptocurrency government advisory group called VIBE to act as ""an institutional, political and legal base"" from which to launch the petro. Carlos Vargas is the ""Superintendent of Cryptocurrencies"".
+Also in January, as a response to the petro, Venezuela's National Assembly, headed by the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable, declared the petro to be an illegal debt issuance by a government desperate for cash, and has said it will not recognize it.In a document leaked to and reviewed by Reuters, VIBE recommended that the government sell $2.3 billion worth of petros in a private offering at a discount of up to 60%, indicating that ""Maduro's valuation of the nascent petro faces significant market skepticism"", followed by $2.7 billion worth of petros offered to the public a month later, with the remainder ""shared between the government and VIBE"". It also suggested that the government accept tax payments in petros as well as allow PDVSA, the country's state-owned oil company, to incorporate cryptocurrencies in its dealings with foreign companies.
+
+
+=== Launch ===
+The petro's pre-sale started on 20 February 2018 and ended on 19 March 2018 where 38.4 million tokens were made available. The government stated the pre-sale raised US$3.3 billion, though according to Steve Hanke no independent audits were made to verify this claim.The technological identity of petro was perplexing during its genesis. Initially, the white paper stated that the currency would be on the Ethereum platform, but the white paper was changed at launch and the platform was to be NEM. However, even after the launch, white papers in various languages still shared conflicting information as to which platform the petro was part of. In October 2018, the white paper was changed once again, and a core developer of Ethereum, Joey Zhou, stated that the new petro white paper blatantly plagiarized from the GitHub repository of Dash. The newest version of the white paper revealed that petro was a clone, effectively a fork, of the cryptocurrency Dash.
+Due to the unorganized launch by the Venezuelan government, scammers were able to establish their own ""petro"" currencies on various cryptocurrency platforms, though these schemes did not garner much success.The second phase of the petro launch involves a public sale of 44 million tokens.
+
+
+=== Petro gold ===
+On 21 February 2018, petro gold, a gold-backed cryptocurrency, was announced in a televised speech given by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. It was not clear whether the gold backing the tokens would be actual gold reserves or some kind of share of the country's untapped mineral wealth.
+
+
+=== Currency reform ===
+In August 2018, the Maduro government carried out a currency reform, centered around replacing the old hard bolívar currency with the sovereign bolívar. One sovereign bolívar is worth a hundred thousand hard bolívares. Under the country's fixed exchange rate to the US dollar the new currency is devalued by roughly 95% compared to the old hard bolívar. Additionally, the sovereign bolívar has a fixed exchange rate to the petro, with a rate of 3,600 bolívares soberanos to one petro. The petro's fixed exchange to barrels of oil is one to one (the market value was approximately US$60 at the time of the reforms). As part of the reforms Venezuelans will be paid at least 0.5 petros a month.Following the reform, Reuters investigated the petro six months after its ICO. When visiting the Venezuelan Ministry of Finance headquarters in Caracas, the Superintendent of Cryptocurrencies did not have an office there and their promoted website did not exist. The Atapirire parish, where President Maduro specifically decreed the petro's value would be linked to oil reserves in the area, has seen no petroleum-related activities and the oil rigs in the area appeared small, old and abandoned. Experts in economics stated that it was impossible to link the petro to the sovereign bolívar because no one knows its legitimate value. Though ""reservations"" were sold by the Venezuelan government to obtain petros, no petros had been released by the Venezuelan government.
+
+
+== Design ==
+The design of the petro by the Venezuelan government has been controversial, with white paper changing by the day even after the petro's pre-sale. Petros were 100% ""pre-mined"" by the Venezuelan government, meaning that new tokens cannot be created after the issuance. Members of the Venezuelan Ministry of University Education, Science and Technology allegedly under advisory of the Russian government designed the petro to circumvent United States sanctions, with Russian president Vladimir Putin denying official involvement. On 1 October 2018, the cryptocurrency switched to an X11 algorithm-based design, which was copied from Dash.
+
+
+=== Transactions ===
+During the ICO petros could only be purchased from the Venezuelan government with Russian rubles, Bitcoin, NEM and Ethereum. The minimum required investment to acquire the crypto-asset in 2018 was 50 euros (or its equivalent) per digital wallet or 1000 euros (or its equivalent) per bank deposits.As of 2018 Venezuela legally allowed the use of petro for virtually any payment including oil trade, taxes, fees, real estate, gasoline, flights and more.
+
+
+=== Price and volatility ===
+Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings states that the white paper shows no method as to how the Venezuelan government will base the petro on oil prices, concluding that the currency ""is a worthless token"". But according to the white paper, the base price of the petro is equivalent to the price of a single Venezuelan oil barrel: 1 petro = 1 oil barrel. The official Venezuelan oil price is defined by the Venezuelan Ministry of Oil and Mining and the current price of the petro (during the ICO) is referenced on its web page.According to the official white paper, national and international licensed exchanges will be able to sell and exchange the petro, allowing the market to define its price. While there is no mechanism to exchange petros for any other currency yet, the government is expected to back each petro with the value of one oil barrel obtained specifically from the Atapirire parish of Anzoátegui to be exchanged into bolivares or other currencies. However, President Maduro has made contradictory statements saying that the petro's worth may be determined solely by market value.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+
+
+=== United States ===
+The United States Department of the Treasury warned that participating in Venezuela's proposed initial coin offering for the petro cryptocurrency could violate U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, because it ""would appear to be an extension of credit to the Venezuelan government"". President Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting transactions in any Venezuelan government-issued cryptocurrency by a United States person or within the United States, effective 19 March 2018, after claiming it was designed to obfuscate US sanctions and access international financing.
+
+
+==== Others ====
+The Brookings Institution stated that ""it is relatively unsurprising that a dictatorship with little reserve currency ... has resorted to a deceitful means like introducing the petro ... the petro ... exists to create foreign currency reserves from thin air"", further explaining that the creation of the petro has tarnished the reputation of cryptocurrencies and that sanctioned countries ""might pursue the same fraudulent strategy as Venezuela: create a cryptocurrency tied to a government-controlled asset, raise money in violation of sanctions, and proceed to manipulate that cryptocurrency's value to maximize profit"".
+
+
+=== Financial ===
+The cryptocurrency community's response was generally negative. Economist Jean Paul Leidenz expressed concerns that the creation of the petro would encourage further hyperinflation. Supply-side economist Steve Hanke, who studies hyperinflation in Venezuela, stated that the petro was likely to wind up ""in the graveyard"", later saying of the petro, ""It doesn't exist. The whole thing is a sham, a fraud. It was rolled out in January, and it doesn't trade. It is not considered by those who rate cryptocurrencies as even a cryptocurrency."" Other analysts point to its government control or centralisation as its greatest weakness. Financial journalist Max Keiser expressed his support in light of the country's hyperinflation.
+According to Bloomberg, the organizations that rank cryptocurrencies have described the petro as a ""scam"", with sites like ICOindex, ICObench, Cryptorated and ICOreview giving negative reviews or not even rating the petro due to its status. Initially, from its white paper which was released in January 2018, the petro was missing some important information regarding its mechanism to its technology. After a couple of weeks, a new version of the white paper was released which announced a different blockchain platform on which the petro would be built.
+
+
+==== Investment ====
+The Washington Post economic reporter Matt O'Brien said that ""The petro might be the most obviously horrible investment ever... The petro is about creating something useless –  that's why only foreigners can buy them, but only Venezuelans can spend them"".
+
+
+== See also ==
+Petrocurrency
+Hyperinflation in Venezuela
+Venezuelan bolívar
+CBDC
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Nathaniel Popper; Ana Vanessa Herrero (20 March 2020). ""The Coder and the Dictator"". The New York Times. Gabriel Jiménez hated the Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. But he loved cryptocurrency. When he built the regime a digital coin, he nearly paid with his life.
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+PlusToken,"PlusToken was a ponzi scheme that operated worldwide but mainly had investors in China and South Korea.
+
+
+== History ==
+PlusToken started in April 2018. It offered monthly payments to users of its cryptocurrency wallet. There was also a token called Plus associated with it. The total amount of cryptocurrency taken by PlusToken was estimated to be worth (based on 2019 prices) between $2 and US$2.9 billion. The selling of cryptocurrencies from PlusToken was speculated to have been the cause of price drops in bitcoin.In June 2019, six Chinese nationals associated with the scheme were arrested in Vanuatu and deported so they could face trial in China.In July 2020, China's Ministry of Public Security announced that 27 ""major criminal suspects"" and 82 ""key"" members of PlusToken have been arrested.In November 2020, a court in Jiangsu sentenced ringleaders behind the scheme to between two and eleven years in prison.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitconnect
+OneCoin
+USI Tech
+
+
+== References =="
+Ripple,"Ripple may refer to:
+
+
+== Science and technology ==
+Capillary wave, commonly known as ripple, a wave traveling along the phase boundary of a fluid
+Ripple, more generally a disturbance, for example of spacetime in gravitational waves
+Ripple (electrical), residual periodic variation in DC voltage during ac to dc conversion
+Ripple current, pulsed current draw caused by some non-linear devices and circuits
+Frequency-domain ripple
+Ringing (signal), oscillation of a signal, particularly in the step response
+Polarization ripples, appearing after irradiation of a solid by energy flux (laser, ions, etc.)
+Ripple marks, as identified in sediments and sedimentary rocks
+Ripple (payment protocol), a real-time payment system by Ripple Labs
+Ripple control, a form of electrical load management
+Various brainwave patterns, including those which follow sharp waves in the hippocampus
+Ripple I and Ripple II, 1962 US nuclear bomb tests in Operation Dominic
+
+
+== Organizations ==
+Ripple (charitable organisation), a non-profit click-to-donate internet site and search engine
+Ripple Labs, the firm that created the Ripple payment protocol
+Ripple Foods, a brand of pea-protein dairy alternative products
+
+
+== Arts and entertainment ==
+Ripple (My Little Pony)
+""Ripple"" (Naruto episode), an episode in an anime series
+Ripple, a phenomenon in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
+The Ripple (newspaper), the student newspaper at the University of Leicester
+Ripples, a Japanese film directed by Naoko Ogigami
+Ripples (musical), a musical comedy theatrical production
+Ripples (TV series)
+
+
+=== Music ===
+Ripple (band), an American soul/funk band
+""Ripples"", a 2019 album by Ian Brown
+""Ripple"" (song), a 1970 song by the Grateful Dead from their album American Beauty
+""Ripple"", a song from the album Priest=Aura by The Church
+""Ripples..."", a song from the album A Trick of the Tail by Genesis
+
+
+== Places ==
+Ripple, Kent, a village in England
+Ripple, Worcestershire, a village in England
+Ripples, New Brunswick, Canada
+Ripple River, US
+
+
+== Other uses ==
+Ripple effect, the socio-educational phenomenon
+USS Ripple, several US Navy ships
+Ripple, a former brand of flavored fortified wine
+
+
+== People with the surname ==
+Jimmy Ripple (1909–1959), baseball player
+Kenneth Francis Ripple (born 1943), Senior United States Circuit Judge
+Mark Ripple (born 1967), businessperson and author
+Richard E. Ripple (1931–2010), American educational psychologist
+Charlie Ripple (1920–1979), pitcher in Major League Baseball
+Ezra H. Ripple (1842–1909), Pennsylvania businessman, politician and soldier
+John Ripple (1897–1965), college football player
+William J. Ripple (born 1952), professor of ecology
+
+
+=== Fictional character ===
+Wade Ripple, character from the 2023 Pixar animated film Elemental
+
+
+== See also ==
+Ripple tank, a glass tank of water demonstrating the basic properties of waves
+Raspberry Ripple, a flavour of ice-cream
+Ripple Island (disambiguation)
+All pages with titles beginning with Ripple"
+Binance,"Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is a global company that operates the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high-frequency trading software. Binance was initially based in China, then moved to Japan shortly before the Chinese government restricted cryptocurrency companies. Binance subsequently left Japan for Malta and currently has no official company headquarters. 
+In 2021, Binance was put under investigation by both the United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service on allegations of money laundering and tax offenses. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority ordered Binance to stop all regulated activity in the United Kingdom in June 2021. That same year, Binance shared client data, including names and addresses, with the Russian government.On November 21, 2023, Binance pleaded guilty to federal charges, admitting that it engaged in money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations; and has agreed to pay over $4 billion in fines.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== 2013–2017: company beginnings and move out of China ===
+CEO Changpeng Zhao founded Fusion Systems in 2005 in Shanghai; the company built high-frequency trading systems for stockbrokers. In 2013, he joined Blockchain.info as the third member of the cryptocurrency wallet's team. He also worked at OKCoin as CTO for less than a year, a platform for spot trading between fiat and digital assets. He was hired at this position in 2014 by Yi He, with whom he co-founded Binance several years later.The company was founded in 2017 in China but moved its servers and headquarters out of the country in advance of the Chinese government's ban on cryptocurrency trading in September 2017. Zhao asked He to join Binance, and she helped rewrite parts of the white paper for Binance's $15 million initial coin offering.
+
+
+=== 2018–2019: launch of stablecoin and security breach ===
+In January 2018 it was the largest cryptocurrency exchange with a market capitalization of $1.3 billion, a title it had retained as late as April 2021, despite competition from Coinbase, among others.In March 2018, Binance announced its intentions to open an office in Malta after stricter regulations in Japan and China. In April 2018, Binance signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Bermuda. Months later, a similar memorandum was signed with the Malta Stock Exchange to develop a platform for trading security tokens. In 2019, the company announced Binance Jersey, an independent entity from its parent Binance.com exchange, with the aim to expand its European influence. Jersey-based exchange offers fiat-to-cryptocurrency pairs, including the Euro and the British pound.In April 2018, Binance launched the Binance Charity Foundation. The charity's goal is to support the advancement of blockchain-enabled philanthropy with a focus on third-world countries.In June 2018, Binance and three other firms raised $65 million for sports blockchain company Chiliz.In July 2018, Binance acquired Trust Wallet, a decentralized cryptocurrency wallet for an undisclosed sum. However, Binance, confirmed that the compensation is a mixture of cash, Binance stock, and a portion of its BNB token.In August 2018, Binance along with three other big exchanges raised $32 million for a ""stablecoin"" project. The idea of stablecoins is to provide a cryptocurrency without the notorious volatility of Bitcoin and other popular digital assets.In January 2019, Binance announced that it had partnered with Israel-based payment processor Simplex to enable cryptocurrency purchases with debit and credit cards, including Visa and Mastercard. The purchases are subject to Simplex's local bank policies and are limited to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple's XRP.On 7 May 2019, Binance revealed that it had been the victim of a ""large scale security breach"" in which hackers had stolen 7,000 Bitcoin worth around $40 million at the time. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the hackers ""used a variety of techniques, including phishing, viruses and other attacks"" and structured their transaction ""in a way that passed our existing security checks."" Binance halted further withdrawals and deposits but allowed trading to continue. The site pledged to reimburse customers through its ""Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU)"". Withdrawals resumed by 19 May.In June 2019 the company announced it would prohibit US passport holders as well as anyone residing in the US, and would set up a new entity binance.us to support those customers. Later in 2023 Forbes leaked a document allegedly from Binance titled ""TaiChi"" that proposed this regulatory solution to reduce US regulatory risk. Binance subsequently denied the document, sued Forbes for defamation, and subsequently dropped the lawsuit.In September 2019, the exchange began offering perpetual futures contracts, allowing leverage as high as 125 times the value of the contracts. In November 2019, Binance announced it was acquiring Indian bitcoin exchange WazirX, which became disputed in August 2022 when Binance founder Zhao claimed the deal was never signed.
+
+
+=== 2020–2023: acquisitions and investments ===
+On 21 February 2020, the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) issued a public statement responding to media reports referring to Binance as a 'Malta-based' cryptocurrency company. The statement noted that Binance ""is not authorized by the MFSA to operate in the cryptocurrency sphere and is therefore not subject to regulatory oversight by the MFSA."" The MFSA added that it was ""assessing if Binance has any activities in Malta which may not fall within the realm of regulatory oversight.""In July 2020, Binance announced a ""strategic partnership"" with a Chinese state-owned enterprise under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and that Binance had joined a group ""aiming to facilitate"" the Belt and Road Initiative.On 28 October 2020, Forbes staff released leaked documents showing that Binance and Changpeng Zhao created an elaborate corporate structure designed to intentionally deceive United States regulators and secretly profit from cryptocurrency investors located in the country. Binance officially blocks access from IP addresses located in the United States, but ""potential customers would be taught how to evade geographic restrictions"", Forbes claimed.In May 2021 it was reported that Binance was under investigation by both the Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of Justice on allegations of money laundering and tax offenses.In February 2022, Binance took a $200 million stake in Forbes. It's unclear if this investment was ever completed. In May 2022, Forbes Global Media Holdings halted plans to go public via a merger with Magnum Opus Acquisition Ltd, a Hong Kong-based special-purpose acquisition company. Zhao said the plan had ""changed a little bit, but I believe that's still in discussions."" In February 2023, Zhao tweeted his disappointment that Forbes ""continues to write baseless articles"" about Binance.In March 2022, amidst the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao, refused to ban users from Russia, citing ""financial freedom"". Binance later softened the tone of their opposition but not their policy, and also pointed to their donation of $10 million for humanitarian needs in Ukraine.In April 2022, Reuters reported that, in 2021, Binance shared information with Rosfinmonitoring about funds raised by jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's network.However, in March 2023, the exchange banned Russian residents from buying euros and dollars through its p2p service. European users, in turn, lost the opportunity to buy rubles.In September 2023, Binance announced it was leaving Russia and selling its business to the CommEX platform. Accounts of Russian users will be transferred to the new platform within a year.On 27 May 2022, Binance announced the registration of its legal entity in Italy, and has plans of opening offices and expanding the local team in the area. CEO Changpeng Zhao also shared information regarding Binance's registration with France's market regulator. The company is also seeking registration in more European countries, such as Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal and Austria.On 13 June 2022 Binance announced that users would, for an unspecified period of time, be unable to withdraw their funds held in Bitcoin, as the value of cryptocurrencies suffered serious declines. Two hours after that announcement, Bitcoin withdrawals were allowed to resume.Binance has a strong brand presence in Africa. Binance sponsored the Africa Cup of Nations in 2021. It is also taking crypto education to many countries on the continent.Binance invested US$500 million towards the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk that completed in October 2022. Following the investment, the company announced the creation of a team to work on how blockchain and cryptocurrencies could be helpful to Twitter.On 8 November 2022, Binance offered to buy rival cryptocurrency exchange FTX's non-US operations (FTX.com) to help cover the latter's liquidity crunch. Binance backed out of the deal the next day citing concerns about FTX's business practices and investigations by US financial regulators.On 30 November 2022, Binance purchased Sakura Exchange. The acquisition allowed Binance to re-enter the Japanese cryptocurrency market.In July 2023, several senior executives resigned from the company. The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had cut its global workforce by as many as 1,000 staff. CNBC reported that the number of staff cuts could total 3,000 by the end of 2023. Zhao didn't deny layoffs were occurring but claimed both the reported numbers and the reasons for the senior executive departures weren't accurate. In June 2023 Binance had 790 million US dollars in outflows after the SEC announced its lawsuit and Forbes reported that the company had 120 million users globally. On November 21, 2023, US authorities convicted Binance on multiple charges -- including violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and vast money laundering schemes. As part of the plea deal, Changpeng Zhao stepped down as CEO with a $50 million fine. The position is succeeded by Richard Teng and will pay $4 billion in fines.
+
+
+== Binance coin (BNB) ==
+The company has launched two cryptocurrencies which it developed itself: Binance Coin (BNB), and BinanceUSD (BUSD). BNB launched July 2017, which started as an Ethereum token and later moved to Binance Smart Chain (BSC), launched September 2020. BSC later merged with the older Binance Chain and was rebranded into BNB chain. BNB Chain operates using ""Proof of Staked Authority"", a combination of proof of stake and proof of authority. It has 21 approved validators. As of 2021, Binance Coin was the cryptocurrency with the third highest market capitalization. Binance allows its users to pay fees on its exchange with BNB.BNB Chain supports smart contracts and is compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM).There have been multiple criticisms of Binance Smart Chain concerning its level of centralisation, which had led to several exploits on the network.
+
+
+== BUSD ==
+BUSD, or Binance USD, is a US Dollar pegged stablecoin issued by Binance. According to Binance it is backed 1:1 by a reserve of US Dollars and was founded by them in partnership with Paxos who is the issuer of the token. Paxos holds the reserves only partially in cash deposited in their US bank accounts with the other part held in U.S. Treasuries. BUSD is natively issued on the Ethereum blockchain by Paxos. Binance creates Binance-Peg BUSD by locking the natively ERC-20 BUSD in a smart contract on the Ethereum Blockchain and issuing Binance-Peg BUSD equivalent to the amount held in reserve in the smart contract. Binance-Peg BUSD is native to BNB chain.In January 2023, Bloomberg reported that Binance-Peg BUSD ""was often undercollateralized between 2020 and 2021. On three separate occasions, the gap between reserves and supply surpassed $1 billion."" A Binance spokesperson said the ""process of maintaining the backing … has not always been flawless"" but ""has been much improved with enhanced discrepancy checks.""BUSD is a widely used stablecoin being, as of 2022, the third largest stablecoin by market capitalisation following Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC).According to reports, the New York Department of Financial Services issued an order to Paxos to stop minting new BUSD tokens in February 2023.
+
+
+== Legal status ==
+
+
+=== United States ===
+In 2019, Binance was banned in the United States on regulatory grounds. In response, Binance and other investors opened Binance.US, a separate exchange designed to comply with all applicable US federal laws, which nonetheless is banned in six states: Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, New York, Texas, and Vermont. In May 2021, Bloomberg News reported that Binance was under investigation by the United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service for money laundering and tax evasion. In June 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission launched an enquiry into Binance to determine if the company's 2017 ICO of BNB tokens amounted to an illegal sale of a security. In December 2022, Binance's American entity Binance.US announced that it would acquire Voyager Digital's assets in a $1.02 billion deal. This deal was called off in April 2023 due to what Binance.US called a ""hostile and uncertain regulatory climate.""In February 2023, Reuters reported that over the first three months of 2021, Binance transferred over $404 million from a Binance.US account at Silvergate Bank to Merit Peak Ltd, a company managed by Zhao. Catherine Coley, then-CEO of Binance US, was quoted in messages to another Binance executive saying that ""no one mentioned"" the ""unexpected"" transfers. Coley left Binance.US shortly thereafter. Reuters said the transfers called into question the purported independence of Binance.US from Binance.com. A Binance.US spokesperson said the Reuters report used ""outdated information"" without further elaboration.On 1 March 2023, US Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Roger Marshall wrote a letter to Binance describing the exchange as ""a hotbed of illegal financial activity that has facilitated over $10 billion in payments to criminals and sanctions evaders."" The letter formally requested documents related to Binance's compliance with regulations. On 27 March 2023, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against Binance and Zhao in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, claiming willful evasion of US law and allegedly breaching derivatives rules. The agency accused Binance of breaking rules intended to thwart money laundering operations, pointing to internal communications describing transactions by Palestinian militant organization Hamas, and suspected criminals, with the company's money laundering reporting officer allegedly remarking ""we see the bad, but we close 2 eyes"". In April 2023, three unidentified trading firms cited as ""VIP"" clients of Binance were revealed to be Radix Trading, Jane Street Capital and Tower Research Capital.In June 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it was suing Binance and Zhao on 13 charges for alleged violations of US securities rules.On September 12, 2023, Binance.US announced the resignation of CEO Brian Shroder and a reduction of the exchange’s workforce by around 100 positions, roughly one-third of its total staff. Binance.US cited the SEC’s civil suit as “an unfortunate example” of the agency’s “aggressive attempts to cripple our industry.”In October 2023, coinciding with the outbreak of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Binance and Tether were described as a source of terrorist funding by US senator Cynthia Lummis and US Representative French Hill, with a letter calling for the Department of Justice to crack down on the exchange.In November 2023, Binance agreed to plea guilty and pay a $4.3 billion fine. Zhao agreed to pay a $50 million fine and step down as CEO of the company, but was allowed to maintain his ownership as part of the deal.
+
+
+=== United Kingdom ===
+In January 2021, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority began requiring firms dealing with cryptoassets to register in order to comply with anti-money laundering rules. In June 2021, Binance was ordered by the FCA to stop all regulated activity in the United Kingdom. In June 2023, the FCA canceled unused permissions granted to Binance Markets Limited, meaning the company “can no longer provide regulated activities and products” in the UK.
+
+
+=== Japan ===
+On 25 June 2021, Japan's Financial Services Agency warned Binance that it was not registered to do business in Japan. This was the second notice Binance received from the FSA. Previously, a similar warning was issued on 23 March 2018.
+
+
+=== Italy ===
+In July 2021, Italy's Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa ordered Binance to be blocked from operating. In May 2022, Binance gained regulatory approval in Italy, allowing the company to provide digital asset services in the country.
+
+
+=== France ===
+In May 2022, Binance gained regulatory approval in France, allowing the company to provide digital asset services in the country. France is the first European country to give Binance regulatory approval. In June 2023, the  Paris prosecutor's office announced that Binance was under preliminary investigation for illegal canvassing of clients and money-laundering.
+
+
+=== Germany ===
+In April 2021, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority in Germany warned that the company risked fines for not releasing an investor prospectus for the stock tokens it has issued.
+
+
+=== Thailand ===
+Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission filed a criminal complaint against Binance on 2 July 2021, ""for commission of offence under the Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Business B.E. 2561 (2018)"". Additionally, Thailand's SEC cited Binance for operating without a license, a violation of Section 26 of the Digital Asset Businesses Emergency Decree.In May 2023, Thailand's Ministry of Finance issued a cryptocurrency exchange license to Gulf Binance, the joint venture of Binance and Gulf Innova, a subsidiary of Thai billionaire Sarath Ratanavadi's Gulf Energy Development. The exchange will reportedly launch later this year.
+
+
+=== Canada ===
+On 17 March 2022, Binance has confirmed in an undertaking to the Ontario Securities Commission that it would stop opening new accounts and halting trading in existing accounts for users in Ontario.In May 2023, Binance announced it would withdraw from the Canadian market due to the introduction of stricter rules in the country.On May 30, 2023, it was reported that the Ontario Securities Commission had issued an investigation order into whether Binance may have taken steps to circumvent Ontario securities law and compliance controls prior to its withdrawal from the Canadian market.
+
+
+=== Netherlands ===
+In April 2022, the Dutch central bank announced a €3.3m fine for Binance due to offering services within the Netherlands without being registered in the country. The fine was issued to the company after an official warning was issued to the company during August 2021. In June 2023, Binance announced that it was leaving the Netherlands after failing to obtain regulatory approval.
+
+
+=== India ===
+In August 2022, India's Enforcement Directorate froze the assets of WazirX, an exchange owned by Binance, as part of a money laundering investigation. Following the event, CEO Zhao claimed that they never owned WazirX or owned any equity in Zanmai Labs—the operating entity of WazirX—citing ""a few issues"" that prevented the completion of the acquisition. The co-founder of WazirX, Nischal Shetty, disputed Zhao's claims asserting that Binance had indeed acquired them. On December 28, Financial Intelligence Unit (India) recommended blocking the URLs of nine crypto entities, including Binance on the grounds of non compliance to the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).
+
+
+=== Australia ===
+On 6 April 2023, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission cancelled the Australian financial services licence held by Oztures Trading Pty Ltd trading as Binance Australia Derivatives (Binance).On 18 May 2023, Binance Australia announced that it had lost access to Australia's PayID payment system ""due to a decision made by our third party payment service provider."" The same day, Westpac bank banned Australian customers transacting with Binance.
+
+
+=== Nigeria ===
+In June 2023, Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission recently deemed Binance's activities in the country as “illegal.” It issued a declaration stating that Binance Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of Binance, was operating unlawfully in the country. The regulator specifically instructed Binance to cease all its activities within Nigeria.
+
+
+=== Belgium ===
+On June 23, 2023, Belgium's Financial Services and Markets Authority ordered Binance to “cease, with immediate effect, offering or providing any and all” virtual currency services in the country. The regulator said Binance had been offering such services “from countries that are not members of the European Economic Area.”
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitfinex
+BTCC (company)
+Coinbase
+Kraken
+List of bitcoin companies
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+ Media related to Binance at Wikimedia Commons
+
+Official website"
+Kraken (company),"Kraken (legally named Payward, Inc.) is a United States–based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It was one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal and was valued at US$10.8 billion in mid-2022. The company has been the subject of several regulatory investigations since 2018, and has agreed to cumulative fines of over $30 million.
+
+
+== History ==
+Kraken was co-founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell, an alumnus of California State University, Sacramento with Thanh Luu and Michael Gronager. Powell was a consultant for Mt. Gox in resolving a security issue, and began working on Kraken as a replacement anticipating its death; Gox would indeed collapse in 2014, failing security audits. In September 2013, Kraken was launched, offering Bitcoin, Litecoin, and euro trades initially before going on to add additional currencies and margin trading.In March 2014, Kraken received a $5 million Series A investment from Hummingbird Ventures and Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. A month later, Kraken became one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal. The same year, Kraken was chosen to assist with the investigation of lost bitcoins of Mt. Gox; the bankruptcy trustees relied upon Kraken due to its proven operating history without being breached by hackers. In June 2015, Kraken opened the first dark pool for bitcoins.In January 2016, Kraken purchased Coinsetter (and by extension, Cavirtex), an exchange based out of New York City. A month later, Kraken announced the completion of its Series B round of investment led by the SBI Group and acquired Dutch exchange CleverCoin, and Glidera, a cryptocurrency wallet service. In March 2017, Kraken acquired Cryptowatch, a charting and trading platform. By December 2017, Kraken claimed to be registering up to 50,000 new users a day.In April 2018, Kraken announced closure of its services in Japan due to the rising costs of doing business. The company would later return to the Japanese market in 2020. In February 2019, Kraken acquired Crypto Facilities, a British derivatives trading firm. In June 2019, Kraken received $13.5 million from 2,263 individual investors via a special-purpose vehicle.In September 2020, Kraken was granted a special purpose depository institution (SPDI) charter in Wyoming, becoming the first cryptocurrency exchange to hold such a charter in the United States. In early 2021, Kraken sought additional funding from investors at a valuation of over $20 billion, with Tribe Capital becoming the company's second largest institutional investor behind Hummingbird Ventures and Arjun Sethi being appointed to the board of directors.In January 2021, Kraken released a mobile app for international users, which became available in the US in June 2021. In September 2022, Dave Ripley –  then chief operating officer –  replaced Powell who became chairman of Kraken's board of directors. In November 2022, the company launched a beta version of its non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.In February 2023, Kraken shut down its operations in Japan, for the second time, and in the United Arab Emirates, less than a year after securing a license in the region.In 2023 Bloomberg reported that Kraken planned to trade outside cryptocurrency for the first time, by offering trading in US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds.
+
+
+== Controversies ==
+
+
+=== Government regulator investigations ===
+In April 2018, Kraken refused compliance with an investigation by the New York Attorney General's Office regarding the measures taken by cryptocurrency exchanges to protect their customers from market manipulation and money laundering, finding the associated expenditure to be bad for business. The report went on to warn that the Kraken might be breaking the law, suggested that customers stay away from it, and referred the platform to New York State Department of Financial Services for potential violation of local virtual currency regulations.In March 2019, the exchange came to be investigated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for potential violation of sanction-regimes by allowing trade with customers based in Iran; a settlement was reached  in November 2022 with Kraken paying a fine of $362,000 in addition to agreeing to ""invest an additional $100,000 in certain sanctions compliance controls."" In late September 2021, Kraken was ordered to pay a fine of $1.25 million to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for offering unregistered margin trading.In February 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) categorized Kraken's staking service as an illegal sale of securities. The company agreed to a $30 million settlement with the SEC in response to allegations that its crypto-asset staking products broke the regulator’s rules; Kraken also agreed to cease selling its staking service in the U.S.In the case SEC v Payward Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 23-06003, in November 2023, the SEC sued Kraken alleging it operated as an unregistered securities business. The SEC also accused Kraken of mixing its own funds with its customers'. Kraken replied that they do not list securities and disagree with the complaint.
+
+
+=== Identifying Glassdoor reviewers ===
+In May 2019, Kraken filed a motion in California's Marin County Superior Court attempting to identify ten anonymous reviewers on Glassdoor. Kraken sued them for allegedly breaching their severance contract. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, saying it represented the anonymous reviewers, claimed in 2020 that identifying the reviewers would harm their First Amendment free-speech rights and have a chilling effect on the expression of others. In 2022, the court ordered Glassdoor to disclose the real identity of some reviewers.
+
+
+=== Work culture and layoffs ===
+In 2019, Powell suggested that parenting was a distraction to being productive and critiqued the economic viability of parental leaves; he went on to question whether choosing to not abide by relevant governmental regulations was a risk worth taking. In June 2022, Powell urged employees in a work meeting to reject the usage of preferred gender pronouns; he then opened a Slack channel to debate whether people should be allowed to choose their gender but not their race or ethnicity. The next day, Kraken released a ""culture document"" which outlined the libertarian values that it asserted were to be obeyed at work. Among other things, employees were prohibited from labelling others' comments as ""toxic, hateful, racist"", etc., and particular emphasis was assigned on how ""offensiveness"" was not forbidden.  Powell and his fellow executives encouraged employees who disagreed with the policy to quit, and offered four months' severance for those who opted to do so.In November 2022, Kraken laid off about 1,100 employees –  approximately 30 percent of its workforce.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Binance
+Bitfinex
+Coinbase
+Gemini
+Mt. Gox
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Coinbase,"Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States in terms of trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California, headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.Although cryptocurrencies can assure anonymous trade in principle, Coinbase trades are not anonymous: registered users are required to provide their taxpayer identification, and the transactions are reported to the IRS. Also, although Coinbase offers more than 250 different cryptocurrencies to U.S. customers in 2023, it does not trade Monero and other cryptocurrencies with enhanced anonymity protection due to KYC requirements in accordance with anti-money laundering regulations.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== 2012–2019: founding and early years ===
+Coinbase was founded in June 2012 by Brian Armstrong, a former Airbnb engineer. Armstrong enrolled in the Y Combinator startup incubator program and received a US$150,000 cash infusion. Fred Ehrsam, a former Goldman Sachs trader, later joined as a co-founder after noticing Armstrong's posts on Reddit. British programmer and Blockchain.info co-founder Ben Reeves was originally supposed to be part of the Coinbase founding team but parted ways with Armstrong just before the Y Combinator funding event, due to their different stands on how the Coinbase wallet should operate. The company is named after coinbase transactions, which are special transactions that introduce cryptocurrency into circulation in proof of work cryptocurrencies.: ch. 8  In October 2012, the company launched the services to buy and sell bitcoins through bank transfers.In May 2013, the company received a US$5 million Series A investment led by Fred Wilson from the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures. In December, the company received a US$25 million investment from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures (USV), and Ribbit Capital. Olaf Carlson-Wee, a graduate from Vassar College, was hired as the first employee in the same year.In 2014, the company grew to one million users, acquired the blockchain explorer service Blockr and the web bookmarking company Kippt, secured insurance covering the value of bitcoin stored on their servers and launched the vault system for secure bitcoin storage. Throughout 2014, the company also partnered with Overstock, Dell, Expedia, Dish Network, and Time Inc. allowing those firms to accept bitcoin payments. In the same year, the company also added bitcoin payment processing capabilities to the traditional payment companies Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal. In January 2014, Coinbase Global, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware as a holding company for Coinbase and its subsidiaries. The corporate reorganization that saw Coinbase become a subsidiary of Coinbase Global was completed in April of that year.In January 2015, the company received a US$75 million investment, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the New York Stock Exchange, USAA, and several banks. Later in January, the company launched a U.S.-based bitcoin exchange for professional traders called Coinbase Exchange. In September, Coinbase began to offer services in Canada and Singapore.In May 2016, the company rebranded the Coinbase Exchange, changing the name to Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX). In July, they added retail support for Ether. Also, in July, they announced they would halt services in August after the closure of Canadian online payments service provider Vogogo.In January and then March 2017, Coinbase obtained BitLicense and was licensed to trade in Ethereum and Litecoin from the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS). In November, Coinbase was ordered by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to report any users who had at least US$20,000 in transactions in a year. On December 19, Coinbase listed Bitcoin Cash, and the Coinbase platform experienced price abnormalities that led to an insider trading investigation.On February 23, 2018, Coinbase told approximately 13,000 affected customers that the company would be providing their taxpayer ID, name, birth date, address, and historical transaction records from 2013 to 2015 to the IRS within 21 days. In March, Coinbase appointed Emilie Choi, a former LinkedIn executive, as Vice President of Corporate and Business Development. She was promoted to the role of president and chief operating officer in May 2019. On March 26, 2018, Coinbase announced their intention to add support for ERC-20 tokens. On April 5, 2018, Coinbase announced that it had formed an early-stage venture fund, Coinbase Ventures, focusing on investment into blockchain- and cryptocurrency-related companies. On May 16, Coinbase Ventures announced its first investment in Compound Labs, a start-up building Ethereum smart contracts similar to money markets. On May 23, GDAX was rebranded as Coinbase Pro. Also in May, Coinbase launched Prime, a platform dedicated to institutional customers. In August, Amazon cloud executive Tim Wagner joined Coinbase as vice president of engineering. In September, Coinbase, along with Circle and Bitcoin miner company Bitmain, was part of a consortium called Centre that launched a digital coin called USD Coin, pegged to the U.S. dollar.In January 2019, Coinbase stopped all trading on Ethereum Classic due to a suspicion of an attack on the network. In February, Coinbase announced that it had acquired ""blockchain intelligence platform"" Neutrino, an Italy-based startup, for an undisclosed price. The acquisition raised concern among some Coinbase users based on Neutrino founders' connection to the Hacking Team, which has been accused of providing internet surveillance technology to governments with poor human rights records. On March 4, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said his company ""did not properly evaluate"" the deal from a due diligence perspective and thus any Neutrino staff who previously worked at Hacking Team ""will transition out of Coinbase."" In April, a U.K. corporate filing stated that Coinbase's non-U.S. revenue grew 20 percent to €153 million (US$173 million) in 2018 resulting in a net profit of €6.6 million. Coinbase U.K. CEO Zeeshan Feroz said the company's non-U.S. operations accounted for nearly one-third of the company's overall revenue and Reuters estimated that the company's global revenue totalled ""around $520 million"" in 2018. In August, Coinbase announced that it was targeted by a hacking attack attempt in mid-June. This reported attack used spear-phishing and social engineering tactics (including sending fake e-mails from compromised email accounts and creating a landing page at the University of Cambridge) and two Firefox browser zero-day vulnerabilities. One of the Firefox vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to escalate privileges from JavaScript on a browser page (CVE-2019–11707) and the other,  could allow the attacker to escape the browser sandbox and execute code on the host computer (CVE-2019–11708). Coinbase's security team detected and blocked the attack, the network was not compromised, and no cryptocurrency was stolen.
+
+
+=== 2020–2021: remote-first model and IPO ===
+In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company announced it was shifting completely to remote work and would no longer recognize a formal headquarters.  Also in May, the company announced the acquisition of New York-based digital asset trading firm Tagomi for a price between US$75 and $100 million. In June, Coinbase received internal backlash after CEO Brian Armstrong initially refused to make a statement about Black Lives Matter, citing the company's apolitical culture, but Armstrong later reversed his course on Twitter. In September, Armstrong published a blog post emphasizing that Coinbase would not engage in social activism, citing that such activism had hurt other technology firms such as Google and Facebook, and offered a severance package for those who disagreed with this direction. The company also faced complaints by employees saying they were treated unfairly due to their race or gender.In October, Coinbase announced the launch of a Visa debit card program. In December, The New York Times reported that based upon data up to 2018 (already two years old as of the date of publication) women at Coinbase were paid an average of eight percent less than men at comparable jobs and ranks within the company, and Black employees were paid seven percent less than those in similar roles.In March 2021, the company fell under review by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, with concerns that the company may have provided their blockchain service to blacklisted individuals or companies, noting that the nature of blockchain technology makes it ""technically infeasible"" to prevent specific users from making transactions.Later, In March 2021, the company agreed to pay US$6.5 million to settle regulatory claims that it had reported misleading information about its trading volumes. Also in March, Coinbase announced that it was establishing a business presence in India and hiring employees for IT services, including engineering, software development and customer support operations. The company also announced plans to open a physical office in Hyderabad.In April 2021, with its final earnings release before its April 14 direct listing, the company reported a nine-fold increase in first-quarter revenue, to US$1.8 billion, up from US$190.6 million the previous year. The jump was attributed to the increase in the price of Bitcoin over that period.On April 14, 2021, Coinbase became a public company on the Nasdaq exchange via a direct stock listing. Before the listing, Nasdaq set a reference price of US$250 a share, giving the company an estimated value of US$47 billion. At the end of its first day of trading, Coinbase closed at US$328.28 per share.In May, the company's chief people officer published a blog post announcing that Coinbase was eliminating salary and equity negotiations during recruiting, citing salary disparities with women and minorities. The announcement said that ""all employees in the same position, in the same location, receive the same salary and equity offer.""In June, Coinbase added Dogecoin to its tradable assets for Coinbase Pro users. In September, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly threatened to sue Coinbase if the company decided to launch a cryptocurrency lending product called Lend. The company initially responded in a blog post that it was confused for being singled out by the SEC, but later announced it had cancelled the planned launch. Technology publication TechCrunch covered the story and noted the existence of similar cryptocurrency lending products already on the market.In November, Coinbase made its first acquisition in India by purchasing AI-powered support platform Agara for an estimated US$40–50 million. The company stated that it would utilize Agara's technology to automate its customer experience tools.
+On December 15 a display glitch vastly inflated balances such that numerous users were, albeit briefly, trillionaires.
+
+
+=== 2022–present ===
+
+
+==== Super Bowl advertisement ====
+Coinbase's 60-second commercial during Super Bowl LVI achieved viral status and was considered to be the most effective of any commercial during the game. The ad, credited to Accenture Interactive, cost US$13 million and featured only a black, screensaver-like screen with a bouncing color changing QR code. The code directed users to a web page advertising US$15 in free Bitcoin for new accounts plus entry into a promotion for a sweepstakes to win three US$1 million prizes for Bitcoin. The low-tech image evoked the retro look of the old DVD screensaver logo bouncing around the screen.The advertisement had no narration and only music. The influx of users caused Coinbase's website to crash. Coinbase's landing page received 20 million hits in one minute. Its iOS app jumped from No. 186 to No. 2 in overall downloads after the advertisement. The ad was parodied later in the night by Meta (which posted its own, similar ad on social media to advertise a streaming Foo Fighters concert after the game). Meta quipped ""Hopefully this doesn't break."" The Super Bowl which has been nicknamed the ""Crypto Bowl"" also featured commercials by Crypto.com, eToro, and FTX on the American telecast.
+
+
+==== Russian invasion of Ukraine, failure of India expansion, layoffs, and partnerships ====
+In response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Coinbase blocked 25,000 cryptocurrency wallet addresses related to Russia.Coinbase began operations in India in April 2022. The company initially relied on Unified Payments Interface to allow users to convert rupees to cryptocurrencies, but ceased using UPI after a statement released by the National Payments Corporation of India indicating it was ""not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI"". This statement forced Coinbase to suspend most of its business in India. Users in India cannot convert rupees into cryptocurrency but can trade between different cryptocurrencies.In May 2022, Coinbase-backed Mara raised $23 Million to build an African crypto Exchange.On June 14, 2022, the company announced it would be laying off approximately 18 percent of its workforce, about 1,100 full-time jobs, amid the global downturn in cryptocurrencies and services.In August 2022, Coinbase announced a partnership with BlackRock, a venture which allows BlackRock clients to use their Aladdin investment management system to oversee their exposure to Bitcoin along with other portfolio assets, and to facilitate trading on Coinbase's exchange.Coinbase reported a net loss of US$1.1 billion in the second quarter of 2022, a record for the company. In October 2022, Coinbase entered into a partnership with Google Cloud Platform that would allow the latter's customers to pay for cloud services with cryptocurrencies supported by Coinbase Commerce. Coinbase also agreed to transfer its data-related applications from Amazon Web Services to Google Cloud.On January 10, 2023, Coinbase announced it would be laying off around 950 employees, incurring restructuring expenses of up to US$163 million. Citing the possibility of ""further contagion"" following the collapse of the FTX exchange, Brian Armstrong said Coinbase would be ""shutting down several projects where we have a lower probability of success.""
+
+
+==== SEC enforcement and lawsuit ====
+On 22 March 2023, Coinbase received a Wells notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission signalling that the SEC intended to begin an enforcement action over Coinbase's staking products. Coinbase responded by calling the investigation ""cursory"", and stated that it would continue to operate as usual. The next month, Coinbase sued the SEC asking a federal court to force the regulator to respond to a rulemaking petition the company submitted last year asking it to make clear regulations pertaining cryptocurrencies.In June 2023, the SEC said it was suing Coinbase, alleging that the company had been acting as an unregistered broker, exchange and clearing agency since 2019, requesting that the company be ""permanently restrained and enjoined"" from doing so. The SEC also alleged that Coinbase never registered its staking service as required by US securities laws.In April 2023, the company announced that its Coinbase Bermuda division had been licensed to operate cryptocurrencies in Bermuda. The next month, the company launched the Bermuda-based crypto derivatives exchange, named Coinbase International Exchange, allowing non-U.S. customers to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum futures. In July 2023, CEO Brian Armstrong stated that the SEC demand Coinbase stop trading all assets excluding Bitcoin and the firm refused, stating “It kind of made it an easy choice . . . let’s go to court and find out what the court says.”
+
+
+== Products ==
+Coinbase offers products for both retail and institutional cryptocurrency investors, as well as other related cryptocurrency products.
+The company's products for retail traders include:
+
+Coinbase, an app used to buy, store and trade different cryptocurrencies
+Coinbase Pro, a professional asset trading platform for trading digital assets
+Coinbase Wallet, an app that allows customers to access decentralized crypto apps (dapps) using a dapp browserProducts for institutional traders include Coinbase Prime (a trading platform for institutional customers) and Coinbase Custody (a custody solution).Other cryptocurrency-related products include:
+
+USD Coin, a digital stablecoin that lets customers put up U.S. dollars in exchange for a cryptocurrency that has the same value but can be traded more quickly
+Coinbase Card, a debit Visa card that allows customers to spend cryptocurrency
+Coinbase Earn, a cryptocurrency learning platform that rewards users with small amounts of altcoins for watching videos and taking quizzes to learn about themThe company develops an application programming interface (API) for developers and merchants to build applications and accept payments in digital currencies.
+
+
+== Operations ==
+Coinbase operates as a remote-first company and has no physical headquarters. As part of its SEC filing to go public, the company reported 43 million verified users, 7,000 institutions, and 115,000 ecosystem partners in over 100 countries. It also reported net revenue of US$1.14 billion in 2020, up from US$483 million the previous year. The company also reported a net income of US$322 million after posting a loss in 2019.  Out of the US$782 billion worth of assets on the crypto market, some $90 billion worth is held on the Coinbase platform.
+
+
+== Custody of client assets ==
+In a May 2022 Form 10-Q filing, Coinbase stated that ""because custodially held crypto assets may be considered to be the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a bankruptcy, the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors"".
+
+
+== Complaints ==
+On February 16, 2018, Coinbase admitted that some customers were overcharged in error for credit and debit purchases of cryptocurrencies. The problem was initiated when banks and card issuers changed the merchant category code (MCC) for cryptocurrency purchases earlier that month. This meant that cryptocurrency payments would now be processed as ""cash advances"", meaning that banks and credit card issuers could begin charging customers cash advance fees for cryptocurrency purchases. Customers who purchased cryptocurrency on their exchange between January 22 and February 11, 2018, could have been affected. At first, Visa blamed Coinbase, telling the Financial Times on February 16 that it had ""not made any systems changes that would result in the duplicate transactions cardholders are reporting."" However, the latest statement from Visa and Worldpay on the Coinbase blog clarifies: ""This issue was not caused by Coinbase.""In March 2018, the Quartz news website reported that the number of monthly customer complaints against Coinbase jumped more than 100 percent in January of that year, to 889, citing official Consumer Financial Protection Bureau data, with more than 400 of those categorized as ""money was not available when promised"". The article also noted that the company was subsequently increasing its customer service staff to reduce wait times.In December 2021, CNBC reported that Coinbase froze the cryptocurrency GYEN due to a sudden price spike, resulting in many traders losing money.
+
+
+== Insider trading ==
+
+On July 22, 2022, a former Coinbase product manager, Ishan Wahi, along with Nikhil Wahi (Ishan's brother) and Sameer Ramani (a friend), was charged in the first-ever insider trading case in cryptocurrency by prosecutors for the Southern District of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission.  According to the complaint filed in SEC v. Wahi, Ishan Wahi allegedly shared information that certain tokens were about to be listed by Coinbase with Nikhil Wahi and Ramani, who then allegedly acted upon that information to make trades for an alleged illicit profit over US$1.5 million.  According to federal prosecutors, Ishan Wahi purchased a one-way ticket to India upon being summoned by Coinbase to the company's Seattle office for a meeting. Wahi was subsequently intercepted by law enforcement from boarding a May 16 flight to India. Coinbase's chief security officer, Philip Martin, noted that the company provided prosecutors with information from an internal investigation.On January 10, 2023, Nikhil Wahi was sentenced to ten months in prison after he admitted to making trades based on confidential information from Coinbase. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska said Wahi's crime was ""not an isolated error in judgment."" Ishan Wahi originally pleaded not guilty but entered a guilty plea on February 7, 2023. On May 9, 2023, Ishan Wahi was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to forfeit various crypto assets that he received in connection with the scheme. Ramani remains at large.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of bitcoin companies
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+Business data for Coinbase Global, Inc.:"
+Bitfinex,"Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc, and is registered in the British Virgin Islands. Bitfinex was founded in 2012. It was originally a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange, and later added support for other cryptocurrencies.
+Bitfinex was one of the first professional platforms built for cryptocurrency trading. It offers high-volume trading and both spot and derivatives products, including exchange trading, margin trading, margin funding (P2P lending), over-the-counter markets, and derivatives trading.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== 2012: Early history ===
+Bitfinex was founded in December 2012 as a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange offering digital asset trading services to users worldwide. Bitfinex initially started as a P2P margin lending platform for Bitcoin and later added support for more cryptocurrencies. It was one of the first professional platforms built for cryptocurrency trading.Raphael Nicolle, an IT technician from Paris, launched Bitfinex following a previous project called Bitcoinica. He continued to work as a developer for the platform until the beginning of 2017.Bitfinex was designed to offer high-volume trading and both spot and derivatives products, including exchange trading, margin trading, margin funding (P2P lending), over-the-counter markets, and derivatives trading.
+
+
+=== 2015–2016: New partnership and security breach ===
+In 2015, Bitfinex partnered with Palo Alto company BitGo to offer highly-secured ""wallets"" that allow people to store their digital currencies online. BitGo has insurance against Bitcoin theft.In May 2015, the exchange was hacked, which resulted in the loss of 1,500 Bitcoins or about $400,000 USD of their customers' assets.In June 2016, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Bitfinex to pay a $75,000 fine for offering illegal off-exchanged financed commodity transactions. The order also found that Bitfinex violated the Commodity Exchange Act by not registering as a Futures Commission Merchant.
+
+
+=== 2016 hack ===
+
+In August 2016, Bitfinex announced it had suffered a major security breach. Immediately thereafter, Bitcoin's trading price plunged by 20%. After learning of the breach, Bitfinex halted all Bitcoin withdrawals and trading. In that hack, the second-biggest breach of a Bitcoin exchange platform, 119,756 units of Bitcoin, worth about $72 million at the time, were stolen. The Bitcoin was taken from users' segregated wallets and Bitfinex said it was tracking down the perpetrators of the hack. Exchange customers, even those whose accounts were not broken into, had their account balance reduced by 36% and received BFX tokens in proportion to their losses. All users who kept their BFX tokens were reimbursed in full within eight months of the hack, in April 2017. The exchange's access to U.S. dollar payments and withdrawals was then curtailed. The hack happened even though Bitfinex was securing the funds with BitGo, which uses multiple-signature security.The United States Department of Justice recovered the stolen Bitcoin, and a New York couple, Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather R. Morgan, was federally charged in February 2022 with conspiring to launder the Bitcoin, which was then worth $3.6 billion. According to Justice officials, Lichtenstein and Morgan are charged with conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to defraud the United States. On 10 February 2022, it was reported that Heather Morgan was detained in Manhattan on 8 February 2022 with her husband, Ilya Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein and Morgan appeared for a plea hearing on 3 August 2023 in Washington, according to court records. They were charged in the case with a document known as an information, which is a type of charging document that federal prosecutors typically use when defendants have agreed to plead guilty.Since Lichtenstein and Morgan's arrests, the government seized another $475 million tied to the attack.In August 2023, Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to launder stolen cryptocurrency in Washington, D.C. His wife, Heather Morgan, also pleaded guilty to two charges, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to defraud the United States government. The value of the stolen Bitcoin ended up being worth $4.5 billion.Lichtenstein also admitted to being the original hacker of bitcoin in the 2016 cyberattack on Bitfinex.Referring to the 2016 hack, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said, ""This was also the largest single financial seizure recorded by the federal government.""Separately, Bitfinex worked with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to recover about $315,000 in cash and cryptocurrencies stolen in the 2016 breach. The funds will be redistributed to holders of Bitfinex's Recovery Right Tokens, digital coins issued to people who suffered financial losses due to the hack.There was concern their customers' money had been lost in several incidents, but the missing funds were not lost but seized and safeguarded. During this same period, Bitfinex found that obtaining banking services was more and more difficult. Research suggests that price manipulation of bitcoin on Bitfinex accounted for about half of  bitcoin's price increase in late 2017.iFinex issued the cryptocurrency Unus Sed Leo in 2019. Once the U.S. announced that most of the stolen funds were recovered, Leo's value surged more than 50%. Bitfinex promised to repurchase and burn outstanding LEO tokens within 18 months of the funds’ recovery.
+
+
+=== 2017–2018: Banking changes ===
+In April 2017, Bitfinex announced it was experiencing delays in processing USD withdrawals after Wells Fargo cut off its wire transfers. Shortly after the Wells Fargo cutoff, Bitfinex stated all international wires had been cut off by its Taiwanese bank. Since then, Bitfinex has moved between a series of banks in other countries without disclosing to customers where the money is kept.Noble Bank International of San Juan, Puerto Rico reportedly handled some dollar banking for the exchange in 2017 or 2018. The banking relationship was reportedly terminated in September 2018 as Noble Bank encountered financial difficulties.In March 2018, British Virgin Islands-based Bitfinex confirmed the exchange’s plans to relocate its primary server infrastructure to Zug, Switzerland.
+In May 2018, Bitfinex emailed some of its users asking for some tax details, which the company indicated it would share with the government of the British Virgin Islands, which might, in turn, pass it on to the governments of the users' countries of residence.Phil Potter, Chief Strategy Officer of Bitfinex, left the exchange on June 22, 2018.On October 15, 2018, Bitfinex said that a few days earlier it temporarily paused fiat deposits for certain customers amid processing complications. On October 7, the company also said that ""Bitfinex is not insolvent.""
+
+
+=== 2019: Launch of Tether investigation ===
+Tether is a cryptocurrency stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. It is owned by iFinex, which also owns Bitfinex. It was launched as RealCoin in July 2014 and was rebranded as Tether in November 2014. As of January 2023, Tether was the third-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ethereum with a market cap of $68 billion. Tether and Bitfinex funded the development of HolePunch, an encrypted, peer-to-peer communication platform and made its code open-source in December 2022. Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer of Bitfinex and Tether, said that this technology is the ""Bitcoin of communications.""In April 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James launched an investigation accusing Bitfinex of using the reserves of Tether, an affiliated company, to cover up a loss of $850 million to a Panamanian payment processor known as Crypto Capital Corp. Reggie Fowler, who is alleged to have connections with Crypto Capital, was indicted on April 30, 2019, for running an unlicensed money-transmitting business for cryptocurrency traders.  He is believed to have failed to return about $850 million to an unnamed client. Investigators also seized $14,000 in counterfeit currency from his office. Bitfinex had been unable to obtain a normal banking relationship, according to the lawsuit, so it deposited over $1 billion with a Panamanian payment processor known as Crypto Capital Corp. No contract was ever signed with Crypto Capital. James alleged that in 2018 Bitfinex knew or suspected that Crypto Capital had absconded with the money, but that their investors were never informed of the loss.Bitfinex's reported figures for 2017 were $333.5 million in gross profits, $6.8 million in expenses, $326 million in net profit, and $246 million in dividends.
+
+
+=== 2020–2023: Acquisitions and investments ===
+On October 15, 2021, it was announced that Bitfinex would pay a $1.5 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for illegal, off-exchange retail commodity transactions in digital assets with Americans.Bitfinex launched a new payment technology that would allow online merchants to receive contactless and borderless cryptocurrency payments in 2021, called Bitfinex Pay.Bitfinex, Kraken, and KuCoin began exploring ways to enter the Indian cryptocurrency market in 2021.In September 2022, Bitfinex, alongside several other leading exchanges, temporarily paused all deposits and withdrawals of Ethereum-based tokens during the Ethereum software upgrade known as the Merge.In December 2022, Bitfinex released its ""Freedom Manifesto,"" a document that highlights the advancement of distributed, open-source software that aligns with the libertarian ideas of Austrian School economists and cypherpunks' approach to writing code.As of January 2023, Bitfinex plans to open an office in El Salvador. El Salvador plans to issue its ""volcano"" token this year, which will be issued using blockchain technology, and which will trade on Bitfinex's exchange. In April 2023, Bitfinex was granted a license by El Salvador’s National Digital Asset Commission to operate in the country. This was the first license for digital service providers in El Salvador. The license permits Bitfinex Securities El Salvador to facilitate tokenized assets.On May 24, 2023, Bitfinex announced it would invest in the Chilean cryptocurrency exchange Orionx. Bitfinex stated that it aims to expand its presence in Chile and Latin America.Bitfinex launched its peer-to-peer trading platform in Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia in June 2023. The platform, Bitfinex P2P, gives people in these countries the ability to directly buy and sell popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Tether's EURT stablecoin, Tether Gold, and Ethereum.
+
+
+== Tether ==
+
+Tether is a cryptocurrency (a so-called stablecoin) which Tether Limited had claimed to be pegged to the US dollar. Tether is closely associated with Bitfinex, with whom, as of 2018, they shared common shareholders and management.In 2017, critics raised questions about the relationship between Bitfinex and Tether.In February 2021, Bitfinex agreed to pay $18.5 million in a settlement with the New York Attorney General's office regarding allegations over Bitfinex parent iFinex making false statements about the backing of Tether and the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars between the two companies to cover up  massive losses by Bitfinex in 2017 and 2018.  As part of the agreement, Bitfinex will maintain its prohibition on trading activity with New Yorkers.In 2021, Bitfinex repaid their remaining loan balance to Tether in full.On August 4, 2023, the class action lawsuit against Tether and Bitfinex was dismissed by Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The court found that the plaintiff lacked ""plausible allegations of injury"" because there was no evidence showing ""USDT had a diminished actual value.""
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitcoin
+Cryptocurrency exchange
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Bitstamp,"Bitstamp is a European cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2011. It is the world’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange. It allows trading between fiat currency, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as USD, EUR, GBP, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Algorand, Stellar, and USD Coin. Business operations are conducted from its registered headquarters in Luxembourg City, with a satellite office in Ljubljana.
+
+
+== History ==
+The company was founded as a European-focused alternative to then-dominant bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. While the company trades in US dollars, it accepts fiat money deposits for free only via the European Union's Single Euro Payments Area, a mechanism for transferring money between European bank accounts.Nejc Kodrič, a widely known member of the bitcoin community, co-founded the company in August 2011 with Damijan Merlak in his native Slovenia, but later moved its registration to the UK in April 2013, then to Luxembourg in 2016. Bitstamp outsourced certain operations to the UK due to the lack of adequate financial and legal services in Slovenia.When incorporating in the United Kingdom, the company approached the UK's Financial Conduct Authority for guidance, but was told that bitcoin was not classed as a currency, so the exchange was not subject to regulation. Bitstamp says that it instead regulates itself, following a set of best practices to authenticate customers and deter money laundering. In September 2013, the company began requiring account holders to verify their identity with copies of their passports and official records of their home address.In April 2016, the Luxembourgish government granted a license to Bitstamp to be fully regulated in the EU as a payment institution, allowing it to do business in all 28 EU member states.In April 2018, Nexon was rumored to be in talks to purchase Bitstamp.
+
+
+== Service disruptions ==
+In February 2014, the company suspended withdrawals for several days in the face of a distributed denial-of-service. Bitcoin Magazine reported that people behind the attack sent a ransom demand of 75 bitcoins to Kodrič, who refused due to a company policy against negotiating with “terrorists”.In January 2015, Bitstamp suspended its service after a hack during which less than 19,000 bitcoins were stolen, reopening nearly a week later.
+
+
+== Compliance ==
+In September 2018 the New York Attorney General office produced a 42-page ""Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative Report"", after requesting fourteen virtual currency exchanges to participate in a survey. The report aimed to create greater transparency regarding security, anti-hacking measures and business practices. Bitstamp was among ten platforms that responded; it is noted that of these ten, Bitstamp was among the seven that confirmed that they had sought approval, directly or through a subsidiary, from the New York State Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) to operate a virtual currency business in New York State. The report goes on to say that such approval implies an agreement to actively protect deposited funds, prevent money laundering and illegal activity, and respond to other risks. Bitstamp was one of two exchanges that claimed to block access to their exchange by VPNs. In addition to providing fee policies, Bitstamp also claimed to conduct audits of their virtual currency holdings.
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References =="
+Coinmarketcap,"Coinmarketcap is a website that provides information and data such as prices, trade volumes, market capitalization on cryptocurrencies. It was founded in 2013 in New York City by Brandon Chez.
+
+
+== Overview ==
+Coinmarketcap was founded in 2013 by IT programmer Brandon Chez in New York City. By 2018, the website had become one of the most popular in the world, according to The Wall Street Journal.In January 2018, Coinmarketcap took out South Korean exchanges from its calculation for prices because the prices there were consistently higher than in other regions. That caused a significant decline in XRP's market capitalization and created chaos on the markets.According to Bloomberg, in November 2019, Coinmarketcap introduced a Liquidity metric designed to combat fake trading volume.In April 2020, Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, acquired Coinmarketcap for an undisclosed amount. Forbes suggested that the deal could be worth $400 million.In November 2021, Coinmarketcap was cited by Vice, The New York Times and some other media for warning users of the ""Squid"" coin fraud scheme, which falsely claimed to be affiliated with the Squid Game TV show. The website is also a source for crypto exchanges rankings.In a letter to The Wall Street Journal, Chez explained that the Coinmarketcap delisted Korean exchanges because many users complained about the inaccurate prices; however, he didn’t expect the effect of the Korean exchange exclusion to be so big.
+
+
+== References =="
+CryptoKitties,"CryptoKitties is a blockchain game developed by Canadian studio Dapper Labs. The game allows players to buy, sell, and create NFTs using on Ethereum. These NFTs represent virtual cats. The game's popularity in December 2017, congested the Ethereum network, causing it to reach an all-time high in the number of transactions and slowing it down significantly.Dapper Labs was spun-off from Axiom Zen. Both companies are based in Vancouver, Canada. CryptoKitties is the first major game to use blockchains, and one of the earliest examples of a blockchain project designed for recreation.
+
+
+== Gameplay ==
+Players purchase, breed and trade virtual cats that have different visual features of varying levels of rarity. Players must purchase Ether cryptocurrency to join the game, and spend it to perform each breeding and trade action within the game.The virtual cats are breedable and carry a unique number and 256-bit distinct genome with DNA and different attributes (known as ""cattributes"") that can be passed to offspring. Several traits can be passed down from the parents to the offspring. There are a total of 12 cattributes for any cat, including pattern, mouth shape, fur, eye shape, base color, accent color, highlight color, eye color, and optional wild, environment, 'purrstige' and 'secret'. Other features like cool downtimes are not passed down, but are instead a function of the 'generation' of the offspring, which is one more than the 'generation' of the highest 'generation' attribute.A CryptoKitty does not have a permanently assigned gender. While they can only engage in one breeding session at one time, each cat is able to act as either matron or sire. There is a 'cooldown' time that indicates how soon the cat can breed again, which goes up with the number of breeds, capped at one week.The virtual cats are static images that can only be purchased, bred and sold. The game has no goal.
+
+
+== Technology ==
+CryptoKitties operates on Ethereum's underlying blockchain network. Each CryptoKitty is a non-fungible token (NFT). Each is unique and owned by the user, validated through the blockchain, and its value can appreciate or depreciate based on the market. CryptoKitties cannot be replicated and cannot be transferred without the user's permission, even by the game developers. Users can interact with their CryptoKitties, having the ability to buy, sell, and sire (breed) them. However, the CryptoKitty art is not on the blockchain and is instead owned by Axiom Zen. The company released some of the art under a new 'Nifty' license that lets players use the image of their CryptoKitty in a limited way.
+
+
+== History ==
+A test version of CryptoKitties was unveiled at ETH Waterloo on October 19, 2017, an Ethereum hackathon. The game launched on 28 November 2017 following a five-day closed beta.Genesis, the first high selling cat, was sold for ETH246.9255 (~US$117,712) in December 2017.On March 20, 2018, it was announced that CryptoKitties would be spun off into its own company, Dapper Labs, and raised $12 million from several top venture capital firms and angel investors. The investment round was led by New York based Union Square Ventures and San Francisco based Andreessen Horowitz.On May 12, 2018, a CryptoKitty was sold for $140,000. In May 2018, CryptoKitties launched their first celebrity-branded CryptoKitty with Stephen Curry, an American professional basketball player. As part of the partnership, Curry was given three CryptoKitties with special imagery, the first of which he put up for auction. The company later suspended the auction, claiming that Stephen Curry was not as involved as they initially thought. The company was later sued for trade secret theft over the Stephen Curry collectibles. The court ruled in the company's favour, stating that ""[t]he evidence demonstrates that Defendant, not Plaintiff, developed the idea to license digital collectibles using the likeness of celebrities first…"".In October 2018, CryptoKitties reached the milestone of 1 million cats being bred with a volume of 3.2 million transactions on its smart contracts. In November 2018, Dapper Labs, which was spun out of Axiom Zen as the developer of CryptoKitties, raised an additional $15 million in a venture round led by Venrock. The company doubled its valuation in this round.In 2018, CryptoKitties was used by the German museum ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe to showcase blockchain technology.By 2022 the game had fallen to generally fewer than 100 sales a day, for a total value of less than $10,000 USD.
+
+
+== Technology ==
+A CryptoKitty's ownership is tracked via a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. Each CryptoKitty is represented as a non-fungible token using the ERC-721 token standard on Ethereum. Generation 0 CryptoKitties were sold to players in an auction at the rate of one every 15 minutes (672 per week) for one year. New CryptoKitties are created by breeding existing CryptoKitties.Based on the limited number of cats going into circulation and their limited genomes, there is a limit of around 4 billion total cats that can be bred. Each cat has a distinct visual appearance (""phenotype"") determined by its immutable genes (""genotype"") stored in the smart contract. Because cats are tokens on a blockchain, they can be bought, sold, or transferred digitally, with strong guarantees of ownership.Axiom Zen developed the game. Until November 2018, Axiom Zen intended to continually release a new CryptoKitty every 15 minutes, with the rest of supply determined by breeding of CryptoKitties. CryptoKitty owners may put them up for sale via an auction for a price set in Ether (ETH). They could also put them up for sire, where another player can pay to breed with a specific CryptoKitty.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+Shortly after launch, there were concerns that CryptoKitties was crowding out other businesses that use the Ethereum platform. The game caused an increase in pending transactions on Ethereum, and at one point accounted for about 25% of network traffic on Ethereum. Ethereum miners increased the gas limit in response to CryptoKitties, which allowed for more data per block and increasing transactions per second. A variety of similar websites, such as Etheremon, Ethertulips, and CryptoBots, were also created. Marketplace sites such as OpenSea and RareBits were created as a response. In March 2021 CryptoKitties announced plans to switch to the Flow blockchain in the ""near future"".
+
+
+== See also ==
+Decentralized application
+Crypto art
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Tezos,"Tezos is an open-source blockchain that can execute peer-to-peer transactions and serve as a platform for deploying smart contracts. The native cryptocurrency for the Tezos blockchain is the tez (ISO 4217: XTZ; sign: ꜩ). The Tezos network achieves consensus using proof-of-stake. Tezos uses an on-chain governance model that enables the protocol to be amended when upgrade proposals receive a favorable vote from the community. Its testnet was launched in June 2018, and its mainnet went live in September 2018.
+
+
+== History ==
+Tezos, first proposed in 2014, was created by husband-and-wife team Arthur and Kathleen Breitman. While working at Morgan Stanley in 2014, Arthur Breitman released two papers proposing a new type of blockchain under the pseudonym ""L. M Goodman"", referencing a journalist at Newsweek who had misidentified the creator of Bitcoin. He chose the name ""Tezos"" after writing a program to list unclaimed websites that could be pronounced in English. In 2015, with the goal of developing Tezos, Arthur Breitman registered a company called Dynamic Ledger Solutions Inc (DLS) in Delaware, with himself as chief executive. He contracted French firm OCamlPro to help develop the software. Arthur worked at Morgan Stanley at the time, but he did not provide them with notice of his work on Tezos as required by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and he was eventually fined $20,000. He sought to raise $5 to $10 million from banks but was unable to find backers. By 2016, he left Morgan Stanley; Tezos received $612,000 from 10 backers while the Breitmans planned for an initial coin offering (ICO).They received a $1.5 million investment from Tim Draper and hired public relations firm Strange Brew to promote their project. The firm was alleged to have falsely claimed that large American financial firms were using Tezos.
+
+
+=== Tezos Foundation and initial coin offering ===
+In 2011, Arthur Breitman first met South African cryptocurrency entrepreneur Johann Gevers through his friend Patri Friedman, the founder of The Seasteading Institute, who had hired Gevers for a project which Breitman had followed closely. In 2016, the Tezos Foundation was established in Zug Switzerland by Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, Swiss law firm MME and Gevers, to support an initial coin offering (ICO) for the Tezos platform. They planned for the foundation to become a non-profit that would raise money through the ICO and acquire DLS, which owned the group's technology.In addition to Switzerland's relatively lax financial oversight and effectively zero corporate tax rate, the benefits for Tezos of being in a foundation under the Swiss Civil Code included the ability to treat fundraising transactions as donations, and acting as an additional layer of institutional security to protect donations. Gevers became the foundation's first president.On July 1, 2017, the Tezos Foundation raised $232 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum in one of the biggest initial coin offerings (ICOs) at the time. The contributions were termed “non-refundable donations”, which Kathleen Breitman likened to a pledge drive where people would receive tote bags, though some participants considered them to be an investment. If considered an investment rather than a donation, it would fall under the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). After the ICO, it was planned that the Tezos Foundation would pay to acquire DLS, and if the Tezos blockchain functioned for at least three months, the Breitmans would receive 8.5% of the ICO and 10% of the tokens.By October, the Breitmans and Gevers were in a dispute over control of the project, with the Breitmans alleging Gevers pressured the foundation council into signing a contract giving him a bonus of $1.5 million.  Gevers controlled the assets held by the foundation which stood at $820 million by December, including the Breitmans' share. The disagreements led to delays in the deployment of Tezos, which caused investors to bring lawsuits alleging fraud during the fundraiser and unauthorized sales of securities.In 2018, Gevers resigned and received $400,000, and the foundation board was replaced; Tezos went live that September.In 2020, the Tezos founders settled the lawsuits, with the Tezos Foundation paying $25 million, before federal courts ruled on whether the ICO was a sale of unregistered securities. Arthur Breitman joined the foundation's council in 2021.In 2022, The Tezos Foundation launched a £1 million fund to collect NFTs by African and Asian artists, to create a digital art gallery to house the collection, curated by British photographer Misan Harriman.
+
+
+== Design ==
+The primary protocol of Tezos utilizes liquid proof of stake (LPoS) and supports Turing-complete smart contracts in a domain-specific language called Michelson. Michelson is a purely functional stack-based language with a reduced instruction set and no side effects, designed with formal verification in mind.The Tezos protocol allows itself to be amended by a staged process performed by committing operations to the stored blockchain to submit proposals (intended code changes) and to vote on those changes. If a proposal receives enough votes the protocol updates itself to incorporate the code changes.The Tezos blockchain has been used for NFTs as an alternative to more energy-intensive projects such as Ethereum.
+
+
+== Founders ==
+Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman studied applied mathematics, computer science, and physics in France and financial mathematics at New York University under Nassim Nicholas Taleb before working in quantitative finance. Kathleen Breitman (née McCaffrey) studied at Cornell University and worked at a hedge fund and as a consultant. Arthur was the leader of an anarcho-capitalist group in New York, and Kathleen was a libertarian Republican; the two of them met at a crypto-anarchist lunch in 2010 and married in 2013.
+
+
+== Sponsorship ==
+In mid-2021, Tezos had signed a sponsorship deal with Red Bull Racing, which ended as of December 2022.In October 2021, Tezos became a sponsor of the New York Mets.In February 2022, Tezos sponsored Manchester United in a multi-year deal reportedly worth over £20 million per year. In November 2022, Manchester United issued NFT digital collectibles on the Tezos blockchain.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website 
+Tezos Foundation website
+Tezos Commons website"
+IOTA (technology),"IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger and cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of things (IoT). It uses a directed acyclic graph to store transactions on its ledger, motivated by a potentially higher scalability over blockchain based distributed ledgers. IOTA does not use miners to validate transactions, instead, nodes that issue a new transaction on the network must approve two previous transactions. Transactions can therefore be issued without fees, facilitating microtransactions. The network currently achieves consensus through a coordinator node, operated by the IOTA Foundation. As the coordinator is a single point of failure, the network is currently centralized.IOTA has been criticized due to its unusual design, of which it is unclear whether it will work in practice. As a result, IOTA was rewritten from the ground up for a network update called Chrysalis, or IOTA 1.5, which launched on 28 April 2021. In this update, controversial decisions such as ternary encoding and quantum proof cryptography were left behind and replaced with established standards. A testnet for a follow-up update called Coordicide, or IOTA 2.0, was deployed in late 2020, with the aim of releasing a distributed network that no longer relies on the coordinator for consensus in 2021.
+
+
+== History ==
+The value transfer protocol IOTA, named after the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, was created in 2015 by David Sønstebø, Dominik Schiener, Sergey Ivancheglo, and Serguei Popov. Initial development was funded by an online public crowdsale, with the participants buying the IOTA value token with other digital currencies. Approximately 1300 BTC were raised, corresponding to approximately US$500,000 at that time, and the total token supply was distributed pro-rata over the initial investors. The IOTA network went live in 2016.
+
+
+=== IOTA foundation ===
+In 2017, early IOTA token investors donated 5% of the total token supply for continued development and to endow what became later became the IOTA Foundation. In 2018, the IOTA Foundation was chartered as a Stiftung in Berlin, with the goal to assist in the research and development, education and standardisation of IOTA technology. The IOTA Foundation is a board member of International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA), and founding member of the Trusted IoT Alliance and Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI), to promote blockchain and distributed ledgers in regulatory approaches, the IoT ecosystem and mobility.
+Following a dispute between IOTA founders David Sønstebø and Sergey Ivancheglo, Ivancheglo resigned from the board of directors on 23 June 2019. On 10 December 2020 the IOTA Foundation Board of Directors and supervisory board announced that the Foundation officially parted ways with David Sønstebø.
+
+
+=== DCI vulnerability disclosure ===
+On 8 September 2017, researchers Ethan Heilman from Boston University and Neha Nerula et al. from MIT's Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) reported on potential security flaws with IOTA's former Curl-P-27 hash function. The IOTA Foundation received considerable backlash in their handling of the incident. FT Alphaville reported legal posturing by an IOTA Founder against a security researcher for his involvement in the DCI report, as well as instances of aggressive language levelled against a Forbes contributor and other unnamed journalists covering the DCI report. The Center for Blockchain Technologies at the University College London severed ties with the IOTA Foundation due to legal threats against security researchers involved in the report.
+
+
+=== Attacks ===
+As a speculative blockchain and cryptocurrency-related technology, IOTA has been the target of phishing, scamming, and hacking attempts, which have resulted in the thefts of user tokens and extended periods of downtime. In January 2018, more than US$10 million worth of IOTA tokens were stolen from users that used a malicious online seed-creator, a password that protects their ownership of IOTA tokens. The seed-generator scam was the largest fraud in IOTA history to date, with over 85 victims. In January 2019, the UK and German law enforcement agencies arrested a 36-year-old man from Oxford, England believed to be behind the theft.On 26 November 2019 a hacker discovered a vulnerability in a third-party payment service, provided by MoonPay, integrated in the mobile and desktop wallet managed by the IOTA Foundation. The attacker compromised over 50 IOTA seeds, resulting in the theft of approximately US$2 Million worth in IOTA tokens. After receiving reports that hackers were stealing funds from user wallets, the IOTA Foundation shut down the coordinator on 12 February 2020. This had the side-effect of effectively shutting down the entire IOTA cryptocurrency. Users at-risk were given seven days to migrate their potentially compromised seed to a new seed, until 7 March 2020. The coordinator was restarted on 10 March 2020.
+
+
+=== IOTA 1.5 (Chrysalis) and IOTA 2.0 (Coordicide) ===
+The IOTA network is currently centralized, a transaction on the network is considered valid if and only if it is referenced by a milestone issued by a node operated by the IOTA foundation called the coordinator. In 2019 the IOTA Foundation announced that it would like to operate the network without a coordinator in the future, using a two-stage network update, termed Chrysalis for IOTA 1.5 and Coordicide for IOTA 2.0. The Chrysalis update went live on 28 April 2021, and removed its controversial design choices such as ternary encoding and Winternitz one-time signatures, to create an enterprise-ready blockchain solution. In parallel Coordicide is currently developed, to create a distributed network that no longer relies on the coordinator for consensus. A testnet of Coordicide was deployed late 2020, with the aim of releasing a final version in 2021.
+
+
+== Characteristics ==
+
+
+=== The Tangle ===
+The Tangle is the moniker used to describe IOTAs directed acyclic graph (DAG) transaction settlement and data integrity layer. It is structured as a string of individual transactions that are interlinked to each other and stored through a network of node participants. The Tangle does not have miners validating transactions, rather, network participants are jointly responsible for transaction validation, and must confirm two transactions already submitted to the network for every one transaction they issue. Transactions can therefore be issued to the network at no cost, facilitating micropayments. To avoid spam, every transaction requires computational resources based on Proof of Work (PoW) algorithms, to find the answer to a simple cryptographic puzzle.IOTA supports both value and data transfers. A second layer protocol provides encryption and authentication of messages, or data streams, transmitted and stored on the Tangle as zero-value transactions. Each message holds a reference to the address of a follow-up message, connecting the messages in a data stream, and providing forward secrecy. Authorised parties with the correct decryption key can therefore only follow a datastream from their point of entry. When the owner of the data stream wants to revoke access, it can change the decryption key when publishing a new message. This provides the owner granular controls over the way in which data is exchanged to authorised parties.
+
+
+=== IOTA token ===
+The IOTA token is a unit of value in the IOTA network. There is a fixed supply of 2,779,530,283,277,761 IOTA tokens in circulation on the IOTA network. IOTA tokens are stored in IOTA wallets protected by an 81-character seed, similar to a password. To access and spend the tokens, IOTA provides a cryptocurrency wallet. A hardware wallet can be used to keep credentials offline while facilitating transactions.
+
+
+=== Coordinator node ===
+IOTA currently requires a majority of honest actors to prevent network attacks. However, as the concept of mining does not exist on the IOTA network, it is unlikely that this requirement will always be met. Therefore, consensus is currently obtained through referencing of transactions issued by a special node operated by the IOTA foundation, called the coordinator. The coordinator issues zero value transactions at given time intervals, called milestones. Any transaction, directly or indirectly, referenced by such a milestone is considered valid by the nodes in the network. The coordinator is an authority operated by the IOTA foundation and as such single point of failure for the IOTA network, which makes the network centralized.
+
+
+=== Markets ===
+IOTA is traded in megaIOTA units (1,000,000 IOTA) on digital currency exchanges such as Bitfinex, and listed under the MIOTA ticker symbol. Like other digital currencies, IOTA's token value has soared and fallen.
+
+
+=== Fast Probabilistic Consensus (FPC) ===
+The crux of cryptocurrencies is to stop double spends, the ability to spend the same money twice in two simultaneous transactions. Bitcoin's solution has been to use Proof of Work (PoW) making it a significant financial burden to have a minted block be rejected for a double spend. IOTA has designed a voting algorithm called Fast Probabilistic Consensus to form a consensus on double spends. Instead of starting from scratch, the IOTA Foundation started with Simple Majority Consensus where the first opinion update is defined by,
+
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          s
+          
+            i
+          
+        
+        (
+        1
+        )
+        =
+        
+          
+            {
+            
+              
+                
+                  1
+                
+                
+                  
+                    μ
+                    
+                      i
+                    
+                  
+                  (
+                  1
+                  )
+                  ≥
+                  τ
+                
+              
+              
+                
+                  0
+                
+                
+                  
+                    otherwise
+                  
+                
+              
+            
+            
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s_{i}(1)={\begin{cases}1&\mu _{i}(1)\geq \tau \\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}}
+  
+Where 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          s
+          
+            i
+          
+        
+        (
+        ⋅
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s_{i}(\cdot )}
+   is the opinion of node 
+  
+    
+      
+        i
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle i}
+   at time 
+  
+    
+      
+        1
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 1}
+  . The function 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          μ
+          
+            i
+          
+        
+        (
+        1
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \mu _{i}(1)}
+   is the percent of all the nodes that have the opinion 
+  
+    
+      
+        1
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 1}
+   and 
+  
+    
+      
+        τ
+        ∈
+        (
+        0.5
+        ,
+        1
+        ]
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \tau \in (0.5,1]}
+   is the threshold for majority, set by the implementation. After the first round, the successive opinions change at time 
+  
+    
+      
+        t
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle t}
+   to the function,
+
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          s
+          
+            i
+          
+        
+        (
+        t
+        +
+        1
+        )
+        =
+        
+          
+            {
+            
+              
+                
+                  1
+                
+                
+                  
+                    μ
+                    
+                      i
+                    
+                  
+                  (
+                  t
+                  +
+                  1
+                  )
+                  >
+                  0.5
+                
+              
+              
+                
+                  0
+                
+                
+                  
+                    μ
+                    
+                      i
+                    
+                  
+                  (
+                  t
+                  +
+                  1
+                  )
+                  <
+                  0.5
+                
+              
+              
+                
+                  
+                    s
+                    
+                      i
+                    
+                  
+                  (
+                  t
+                  )
+                
+                
+                  
+                    otherwise
+                  
+                
+              
+            
+            
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s_{i}(t+1)={\begin{cases}1&\mu _{i}(t+1)>0.5\\0&\mu _{i}(t+1)<0.5\\s_{i}(t)&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}}
+  
+Although, this model is fragile against malicious attackers which is why the IOTA Foundation decided not to use it. Instead the IOTA Foundation decided to augment the leaderless consensus mechanism called, Random neighbors majority consensus (RMC) which is similar to SMC although, the nodes in which their opinions are queries is randomized. They took RMC then augmented it to create FPC by having the threshold of majority be a random number generated from a Decentralized Random Number Generator (dRNG). For FPC, the first sound is the same,
+
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          s
+          
+            i
+          
+        
+        (
+        1
+        )
+        =
+        
+          
+            {
+            
+              
+                
+                  1
+                
+                
+                  
+                    μ
+                    
+                      i
+                    
+                  
+                  (
+                  1
+                  )
+                  ≥
+                  τ
+                
+              
+              
+                
+                  0
+                
+                
+                  
+                    otherwise
+                  
+                
+              
+            
+            
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s_{i}(1)={\begin{cases}1&\mu _{i}(1)\geq \tau \\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}}
+  
+For success rounds though,
+
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          s
+          
+            i
+          
+        
+        (
+        t
+        +
+        1
+        )
+        =
+        
+          
+            {
+            
+              
+                
+                  1
+                
+                
+                  
+                    μ
+                    
+                      i
+                    
+                  
+                  (
+                  t
+                  +
+                  1
+                  )
+                  >
+                  
+                    U
+                    
+                      t
+                    
+                  
+                
+              
+              
+                
+                  0
+                
+                
+                  
+                    μ
+                    
+                      i
+                    
+                  
+                  (
+                  t
+                  +
+                  1
+                  )
+                  <
+                  
+                    U
+                    
+                      t
+                    
+                  
+                
+              
+              
+                
+                  
+                    s
+                    
+                      i
+                    
+                  
+                  (
+                  t
+                  )
+                
+                
+                  
+                    otherwise
+                  
+                
+              
+            
+            
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s_{i}(t+1)={\begin{cases}1&\mu _{i}(t+1)>U_{t}\\0&\mu _{i}(t+1)<U_{t}\\s_{i}(t)&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}}
+  
+Where 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          U
+          
+            t
+          
+        
+        ∼
+        
+          
+            U
+          
+        
+        (
+        β
+        ,
+        1
+        −
+        β
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle U_{t}\sim {\textbf {U}}(\beta ,1-\beta )}
+   where 
+  
+    
+      
+        β
+        ∈
+        [
+        0
+        ,
+        1
+        
+          /
+        
+        2
+        ]
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \beta \in [0,1/2]}
+  , is a randomized threshold for majority. Randomizing the threshold for majority makes it extremely difficult for adversaries to manipulate the consensus by either making it converge to a specific value or prolonging consensus. Note that FPC is only utilized to form consensus on a transaction during a double spend.Ultimately, IOTA uses Fast Probabilistic Consensus for consensus and uses Proof of Work as a rate controller. Because IOTA does not use PoW for consensus, its overall network and energy per transaction is extremely small.
+
+
+== Applications and testbeds ==
+Proof-of-concepts building on IOTA technology are being developed in the automotive and IoT industry by corporates as Jaguar Land Rover, STMicroelectronics and Bosch. IOTA is a participant in smart city testbeds, to establish digital identity, waste management and local trade of energy. In project Alvarium, formed under the Linux Foundation, IOTA is used as an immutable storage and validation mechanism. The privacy centered search engine Xayn uses IOTA as a trust anchor for its aggregated AI model.On 11 February 2020, the Eclipse Foundation and IOTA Foundation jointly launched the Tangle EE (Enterprise Edition) Working Group. Tangle EE is aimed at enterprise users that can take IOTA technology and enable larger organizations to build applications on top of the project, where the Eclipse Foundation will provide a vendor-neutral governance framework .Announcements of partners were critically received. In 2017, IOTA released the data marketplace, a pilot for a market where connected sensors or devices can store, sell or purchase data. The data marketplace was received critically by the cryptocurrency community over the extent of the involvement of the participants of the data marketplace, suggesting that ""the IOTA Foundation was actively asking publications to use Microsoft’s name following the data marketplace announcement."". Izabelle Kaminska criticized a Jaguar press release: ""our interpretation is that it's very unlikely Jaguar will be bringing a smart-wallet-enabled marketplace any time soon.""
+
+
+== Criticism ==
+IOTA promises to achieve the same benefits that blockchain-based DLTs bring — decentralization, distribution, immutability and trust — but remove the downsides of wasted resources associated with mining as well as transaction costs. However, several of the design features of IOTA are unusual, and it is unclear whether they work in practice.The security of IOTA's consensus mechanism against double-spending attacks is unclear, as long as the network is immature. Essentially, in the IoT, with heterogeneous devices having varying levels of low computational power, sufficiently strong computational resources will render the tangle insecure. This is a problem in traditional proof-of-work blockchains as well, however, they provide a much greater degree of security through higher fault tolerance and transaction fees. At the beginning, when there is a lower number of participants and incoming transactions, a central coordinator is needed to prevent an attack on the IOTA tangle.Critics have opposed role of the coordinator for being the single source of consensus in the IOTA network. Polychain Capital founder Olaf Carlson-Wee, says ""IOTA is not decentralized, even though IOTA makes that claim, because it has a central ""coordinator node"" that the network needs to operate. If a regulator or a hacker shut down the coordinator node, the network would go down."" This was demonstrated during the Trinity attack incident, when the IOTA foundation shutdown the coordinator to prevent further thefts. Following a discovered vulnerability in October 2017, the IOTA foundation transferred potentially compromised funds to addresses under its control, providing a process for users to later apply to the IOTA Foundation in order to reclaim their funds.Additionally, IOTA has seen several network outages as a result of bugs in the coordinator as well as DDoS attacks. Early in the seed generator scam, a DDoS network attack distracted IOTA admins, leaving initial thefts undetected. 
+In 2020, the IOTA Foundation announced that it would like to operate the network without a coordinator in the future, but implementation of this is still in an early development phase.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Nano (cryptocurrency)
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Chainlink (blockchain),"Chainlink is a decentralized blockchain oracle network built on Ethereum. The network is intended to be used to facilitate the transfer of tamper-proof data from off-chain sources to on-chain smart contracts.  Its creators claim it can be used to verify whether the parameters of a smart contract are met in a manner independent from any of the contract's stakeholders by connecting the contract directly to real-world data, events, payments, and other inputs.
+
+
+== History ==
+Chainlink was created in 2017 by Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis, who co-authored a white paper introducing the Chainlink protocol and network with Cornell University professor Ari Juels the same year. Chainlink acts as a ""bridge"" between a blockchain and off-chain environments. The network, which services smart contracts, was formally launched in 2019.In 2018, Chainlink integrated Town Crier,  a trusted execution environment-based blockchain oracle that Juels also worked on. Town Crier connects the Ethereum blockchain with web sources that use HTTPS.Chainlink's trademark was registered in the Cayman Islands on 2019-03-12, the corporation created being Smartcontract Chainlink Sezc, Ltd.In 2020, Chainlink integrated DECO, a Cornell project co-created by Juels. DECO is described by its authors as a protocol that uses zero-knowledge proofs to allow users to prove information is true to a blockchain oracle without revealing sensitive information, such as birth dates.
+Chainlink published a second white paper in April 2021. That paper, Chainlink 2.0: Next Steps in the Evolution of Decentralized Oracle Networks,  detailed a vision for expanding the role and capabilities of decentralized oracle networks to include hybrid smart contracts, which utilize on-chain code and off-chain services provided by oracle networks.
+
+
+== Technology ==
+Chainlink's decentralized oracle network is an open-source technology infrastructure that allows any blockchain to securely connect to off-chain data and computation resources. The network nodes fetch, validate, and deliver data from multiple sources onto blockchains to execute smart contracts.In addition to the transfer of external information to a blockchain, Chainlink can also be used for several different off-chain computation functions, including a verifiable random function (VRF) and data feeds. The data feeds have been used to bring election data on-chain.Chainlink's VRF can be used for random number generation which can be used in decentralized gaming. ZDNet reported the verifiability of the random number generation ensures the in-game results are tamper-proof.
+
+
+== Link token ==
+Node operators are compensated with the network's native cryptocurrency, LINK. Chainlink's LINK token is an ERC677 token, an extension of ERC-20. All LINK tokens have been premined and largely withheld by the central issuer. A fraction of the pre-mined token supply was offered for sale to retail buyers in a controversial and legally murky initial coin offering (ICO).
+Tokens act as data payloads, feeding the required data from off-chain sources to smart contracts, which then act accordingly in response to the data provided by the token. According to Chainlink, the trade value derived from these tokens is used to pay node operators for retrieving data from smart contracts, and also for deposits placed by node operators as required by contract creators. Tokens can be stored in any ERC-20 wallet, as the ERC677 token retains all the functionality of an ERC-20 token.
+
+
+== References =="
+Filecoin,"Filecoin (⨎) is an open-source, public cryptocurrency and digital payment system intended to be a blockchain-based cooperative digital storage and data retrieval method. It is made by Protocol Labs and shares some ideas from InterPlanetary File System allowing users to rent unused hard drive space. A blockchain mechanism is used to register the deals. Filecoin is an open protocol and backed by a blockchain that records commitments made by the network’s participants, with transactions made using FIL, the blockchain's native currency. The blockchain is based on both proof-of-replication and proof-of-spacetime.
+
+
+== History ==
+The project was launched in August 2017, and raised over $200 million within 30 minutes.
+
+
+== Philanthropy ==
+In April 2021, the Filecoin Foundation donated 50,000 filecoins worth $10,000,000 to the Internet Archive. In addition, Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle and director of partnerships Wendy Hanamura joined the boards of advisors of Filecoin and  the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web.
+
+
+== Network total storage power ==
+As of November 2023, the total storage capacity was 25 EiB, and total data stored was 2.0 EiB.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Distributed data store
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Bakkt,"Bakkt Holdings, Inc., headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, provides a software as a service (SaaS) and API platform for owning and trading cryptocurrency and redeeming loyalty points. Bakkt was founded by and is 65.7% owned by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which also owns the New York Stock Exchange. Bakkt earns revenue from commissions for payments and purchases and sales of cryptocurrency.The company also owns the naming rights to the Bakkt Theater at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== 2018–2020: Under ICE ownership ===
+In August 2018, Intercontinental Exchange announced it was forming a new company Bakkt, which was intended to leverage Microsoft online servers to manage digital assets. Bakkt was said to be working with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Microsoft, Starbucks, and others to create a software platform. The Bakkt ecosystem is expected to include federally regulated markets and warehousing along with merchant and consumer applications. Its first use cases was for trading and conversion of Bitcoin (BTC) versus fiat currencies. Kelly Loeffler served as Bakkt's CEO until her appointment to the United States Senate.As an initial component of the Bakkt offering, Intercontinental Exchange's U.S.-based futures exchange and clearing house plan to launch a one-day physically delivered BTC contract along with physical warehousing in 2019, subject to CFTC review and approval, which was delayed. These regulated venues will establish new protocols for managing the specific security and settlement requirements of digital currencies. In addition, the clearing house plans to create a separate guarantee fund that will be funded by Bakkt.
+In January 2019, Bakkt announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire certain assets of Rosenthal Collins Group (RCG), to close in February. In April 2019, Bakkt announced that it had acquired Digital Asset Custody Company (DACC). Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. In September 2019 the exchange began trading of bitcoin futures. In February 2020, Intercontinental Exchange announced that it agreed to acquire Bridge2 Solutions, a loyalty rewards provider, which was then contributed to Bakkt.In September 2020, Bakkt announced a new all-time high for trade volume in physically delivered Bitcoin futures contracts. During the September 15th session, this figure amounted to 15,955 BTC (more than $200 million at the time of announcement).
+
+
+=== 2021–present: Publicly listed company ===
+In October 2021, Bakkt completed a merger with VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings, a special-purpose acquisition company sponsored by Victory Park Capital and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.In November 2022, it was announced Bakkt would be acquiring the Chicago-based integrated crypto trading platform, Apex Crypto, LLC from Apex Fintech Solutions, Inc.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website 
+Business data for Bakkt Holdings, Inc.:"
+Circle (company),"Circle began as a peer-to-peer payments technology company that now manages stablecoin USDC, a cryptocurrency the value of which is pegged to the U.S. dollar. It was founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in October 2013. Circle is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. USDC, the second largest stablecoin worldwide, is designed to hold at or near a stable price of $1. The majority of its stablecoin collateral is held in short-term U.S. government securities.
+
+
+== Funding ==
+The company has received over US$135 million in venture capital from 4 rounds of investments from 2013 to 2016, including US$50 million led by Goldman Sachs. In April 2015 The New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper wrote that the Goldman Sachs investment ""should help solidify Bitcoin’s reputation as a technology that serious financial firms can work with."" In June 2016, Circle raised US$60 million in Series D funding backed by new and existing partners. On May 15, 2018, Circle raised US$110 million in venture capital to create USD Coin, an Ethereum coin they claim is backed by USD. Today, each USDC token is backed by USD.In April 2022, Circle Internet Financial announced an agreement for a US$400M funding round with investments from BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Marshall Wace LLP, Fin Capital and Jet Prive Gestora de Fundos Ltda expected to close in the second quarter.
+
+
+== History ==
+In September 2015, Circle received the first BitLicense issued from the New York State Department of Financial Services. In April 2016, the British government approved the first virtual currency licensure to Circle.Circle's mobile payment platform, Circle Pay, allowed users to hold, send, and receive traditional fiat currencies, until being slated for discontinuation in 2019. Up until December 2016, Circle Pay also operated as a Bitcoin wallet service to buy and sell Bitcoins. It has since ceased to provide such service, claiming the company ""is now more than ever not a consumer bitcoin exchange, and will continue to focus resources on global social payments and future next-generation blockchain technology"".In September 2018, Circle, along with Coinbase Global, released a consortium called Centre, which launched digital USDC pegged to the dollar. Centre was intended to serve as a platform for users to make deposits from traditional bank accounts and convert fiat currency into tokens. Centre would also provide the ability to shift back to banknotes. In August 2023, Coinbase and Circle closed the Centre Consortium, giving Circle sole governance of USDC.In June 2019 it was announced that the Circle Pay mobile and web apps would be discontinued on September 30.In February 2020, Circle sold its digital asset trading platform to Voyager Digital.In July 2021, Circle announced a plan to merge with a special-purpose acquisition company called Concord Acquisition Corp in a $4.5 billion deal that would make Circle a public company. However, in December 2022 this deal was terminated.In 2023, at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Allaire said the United States needs new statutory definitions of digital assets to provide regulatory clarity. He also said he hoped Circle will be regulated by the U.S. Federal Reserve and become an established financial player in order to distinguish the company from recent implosions in the crypto industry.On March 10, 2023, USDC Stablecoin announced that $3.3 billion of its US$40 billion Coin reserves were held at Silicon Valley Bank when it collapsed. All of the cash held as reserve has since been parked with The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. In late 2023, the company announced it had a $1 billion cash cushion.In the same month, the company announced that it has chosen Paris to develop its commercial activities in Europe.In 2023, CEO Jeremy Allaire began lobbying the U.S. Congress to provide clear rules for stablecoins. Analysts have suggested that well-regulated stablecoins would invite competition from mainstream banks and have the potential to disrupt the current remittance, payments, and peer-to-peer transfer system. In late, 2023, Coinbase took an equity stake in the company which also announced that USDC will be available on six additional blockchains. Visa also announced it was expanding a pilot program that uses USDC on the Solana blockchain to help pay some merchants in cryptocurrency.
+
+
+== Services and features ==
+As of 2015, a Circle account could be funded in USD via ""US-issued Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards"" and US bank accounts. As of 2016, European customers can also use Circle in EUR and GBP. Circle plans to peg the conversion rate to the US Dollar. Britain's Financial Conduct Authority granted Circle an electronic money license in April 2016, expanding the use of Circle's services to the United Kingdom and broadening Circle's relationship with UK bank Barclays. In June 2016, Circle announced it will begin expanding its services to China, where CEO Jeremy Allaire believes ""there’s an opportunity for Chinese consumers that want to share value globally with friends in other parts of the world.""In December 2016 the Circle app stopped supporting the exchange of bitcoin but still allows money transfers. In October 2017, Circle launched a new service for group payments and cash transfers to US accounts.In 2023, the company released a protocol that enables users to move USDC between blockchains. It also unveiled a programmable Web3 wallet platform that will enable applications to store, send, and receive cryptocurrencies.
+
+
+== Acquisitions ==
+On February 26, 2018, Circle announced that they purchased the Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange for $400 million. Amid the developments around the acquisition, one of Circle's leaked documents detailing its plans on operating Poloniex revealed the company's moves to become ""The US's First Regulated Crypto Exchange"" supported by its mutual understanding with the SEC.
+While Circle announced the exchange would ""spin out"" in October 2019, it was revealed one month later that Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, led the acquisition of Poloniex.
+In October 2018 SeedInvest announced they entered an agreement to sell to Circle, subject to FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) approval.
+
+
+== Investments ==
+In November 2021 Circle led a US$13.5 million funding round in crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.
+
+
+== Licenses ==
+The company has licenses in 49 U.S. states as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia and does most of its banking with regulated U.S. institutions. in 2023, the company received a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
+
+
+== Criticism ==
+On July 9, 2022, author Matt Taibbi released an extremely critical overview of Circle's business practices in his article titled ""The Financial Bubble Era Comes Full Circle"".
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Gemini (company),"Gemini Trust Company, LLC (Gemini) is an American cryptocurrency exchange and custodian bank. It was founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.In 2023, the company, along with two others, was sued by New York attorney general Letitia James under allegations that it had ""defrauded"" investors.
+
+
+== History ==
+Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss announced Gemini in June 2013 and the company went live on October 25, 2015. Gemini began in order to facilitate the purchase and storage of Bitcoin through a complex system of private keys and password protected environments. Gemini holds a Limited Purpose Trust Charter from the New York Department of Financial Services that was granted in October 2015. Gemini began adding to the financial services it offers thereafter, some of which include FIX and API support. 
+On May 5, 2016, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York State announced the approval of Gemini as the first licensed Ethereum exchange based in the United States. Additionally, in 2016, Gemini announced it would allow users to withdraw Ethereum Classic (ETC) from the exchange, following a hard fork in Ethereum's code.In October 2017, Gemini announced that it was allowing registered users to withdraw Bitcoin Cash from the exchange provided they had a balance available on the exchange prior to the Bitcoin hard fork in August 2017.In December 2017, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) began to use Gemini to settle its Bitcoin futures contracts. CBOE partnered with Gemini so as to use Gemini's dollar denominated auction price for these contracts. In March 2019, CBOE announced they would stop listing Bitcoin futures.In April 2018, Gemini began offering ""Block Trading"". Block Trading enables Gemini users to buy and sell large quantities of digital assets outside of Gemini's continuous order books, creating an additional liquidity mechanism when trading in greater size. Also in April, Gemini began to utilize NASDAQ's SMARTS technology to monitor trades and combat fraudulent activity and price manipulation on its exchange. On May 14, 2018, the New York Department of Financial Services announced it had approved Gemini to offer Zcash (ZEC) on their platform, becoming the first licensed exchange to offer trading and custody services for it. On September 10, 2018, Gemini had received regulatory approval for a new product, the Gemini dollar (GUSD) from the NYDFS and would launch trading of the coin that same day. Gemini described the product as a stablecoin which maintains a 1-to-1 peg with the American dollar. On October 3, 2018, it was announced that Gemini had obtained digital asset insurance covering tokens and coins held on its exchange. The insurance had been brokered by Aon, a London based public risk consulting company, and underwritten by a consortium of global underwriters.In November 2019, the Gemini Trust Co. bought Nifty Gateway for an undisclosed sum. Nifty Gateway is a marketplace for NFTs. The goal of the NFT marketplace is to be a custodian for various assets, including property deeds, passports, commodities, collectibles, videogame characters, movies, music and event tickets.In May 2020, a partnership was announced with Samsung whereby Samsung smartphone users could link their Samsung Blockchain Wallets to their Gemini accounts to view balances and transfer crypto.In February 2021, Gemini announced Gemini Earn, in partnership with cryptocurrency brokerage Genesis, to offer 7.4% return on customer deposits.In November 2021 Gemini raised $400 million investment that values the New York parent company, Gemini Space Station, LLC, at $7.1 billion.On June 2, 2022, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a suit against Gemini based on alleged misrepresentation of the company's exchange and futures contracts during 2017 meetings with the CFTC. The suit is seeking to block Gemini, as well as its affiliates, from trading commodities and getting further investments, in addition to monetary fines. Also on June 2 Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss announced they would be laying off 10% of the company staff, citing a ""contraction phase"" known as ""crypto winter"" in the cryptocurrency industry.On January 12, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Gemini Trust Company with the unregistered offer and sale of securities to retail investors through the Gemini Earn crypto asset lending program. As part of the same action, the SEC also charged Genesis Global Capital, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which held approximately $900 million in investor assets from 340,000 Gemini Earn customers. Gemini Earn was shut down in January 2023, following Genesis suspending withdrawals in November 2022. The SEC is seeking permanent injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest, and civil penalties against both Gemini and Genesis.On February 6, 2023, Genesis Global Holdco announced an agreement in principle with Digital Currency Group and creditors of Genesis Global Capital, including Gemini. Gemini will contribute “up to $100 million in cash” as part of the restructuring and recovery agreement.On March, 2023, rumors about American multinational financial services company, JPMorgan (JPM) ending its banking relationship with Gemini were raised. However, shortly after, Gemini denied such rumors and shared via Twitter that the ""banking relationship remains intact with JPMorgan.”
+
+
+== 2023 New York lawsuit ==
+On October 19, 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Gemini and digital asset companies Digital Currency Group and Genesis Global Capital. The lawsuit stated that Gemini had deceived investors about the risks of a lending service it ran in joint with Genesis. James stated that 230,000 investors lost their money due to the program.
+
+
+== Service disruptions ==
+The site's primary challenge has been remaining online at times of excessively high volumes, a relatively common occurrence for any website receiving an unusual amount of traffic.  On November 28, 2017, for example, both Gemini and Coinbase crashed for several hours. Gemini was showing a ""504 gateway time-out"" message, and the status page showed ""Systems are currently experiencing degraded performance."" Subsequently, the Gemini Blog offered this comment. ""This is not the first scaling challenge we've encountered, and it won’t be the last. We’re continuing to improve our performance and infrastructure monitoring so we can anticipate potential problems more quickly in the future.""
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Gemini website"
+LocalBitcoins,"LocalBitcoins was a peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange platform based in Helsinki, Finland.Its service facilitated over-the-counter trading of local currency for bitcoins. Users posted advertisements on the website, where they stated exchange rates and payment methods for buying or selling bitcoins. Other users replied to these advertisements and make the payment in their specified payment method. As of December 2020, LocalBitcoins had over 1,000,000 active traders with a trade volume
+of 612 million US dollars between October and December 2020. LocalBitcoins shut down in February 2023. 
+
+
+== History ==
+LocalBitcoins was founded in June 2012 by Jeremias Kangas. He implemented an escrow system for the marketplace by the end of 2012. The website started generating revenue by the beginning of 2013, now as of 2020 there
+are an average of 29,566 successful trades per day.In 2018, LocalBitcoins headed the list of best financially performing companies in Finland arranged by the local specialized publication Kauppalehti.In 2014, 2016, and 2018 people who used the site were arrested for money laundering and related crimes.In January 2019, hackers stole bitcoin worth $28,200 from users' LocalBitcoins accounts. LocalBitcoins was able to identify and solve the case immediately, announcing so to its users. On the same day, LocalBitcoins shared that LocalBitcoins accounts were safe to use and emphasized the importance of two-factor authentication.
+In November 2019, LocalBitcoins.com got registered as a Virtual Currency Provider by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority.On 9 February 2023, LocalBitcoins announced it will cease operations later in February.
+
+
+== Services ==
+The website offered a service to facilitate the locating of Bitcoin users, who can meet for person to person trading of bitcoin.: 23  The site is suggested for casual traders seeking more privacy.: 207  The site uses an escrow system, and the transfer of bitcoin is made after funds are received in the sellers account.: 221  LocalBitcoins has a reputation system for users and an escrow and conflict resolution service.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Blockchain.com,"Blockchain.com (formerly Blockchain.info) is a cryptocurrency financial services company. The company began as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer in 2011 and later created a cryptocurrency wallet that accounted for 28% of bitcoin transactions between 2012 and 2020. It also operates a cryptocurrency exchange and provides institutional markets lending business and data, charts, and analytics.
+
+
+== Corporate affairs ==
+Blockchain.com is a private company. The company is led by CEO Peter Smith, one of its three founders. The company's board members include: Smith; co-founder Nicolas Cary; Antony Jenkins; Jim Messina, the former deputy chief of staff for Barack Obama; and Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.Between 2012 and February 2021, the company raised a total of $190 million in venture capital funding. In March 2021, it raised an additional $300 million investment. Investors in the company include partners of DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, VY Capital, GV, Baillie Gifford, Lakestar, Eldridge, Kyle Bass, Access Industries, Moore Strategic Ventures and Rovida Advisors.
+
+
+== History ==
+Blockchain.info was established by Ben Reeves in 2011. He launched a website which could be used to track bitcoin transactions. The website was a block explorer, a website that allowed bitcoin users to see the details of public cryptocurrency transactions if they have the identifying hash code for the transaction.In early 2012, Reeves and Brian Armstrong, the co-founder of crypto-currency exchange Coinbase, applied to Y Combinator's summer class. They proposed a payment platform for bitcoin where users could keep a digital wallet, exchange other currencies for bitcoins for a percentage fee, and make payments in bitcoin. Due to different opinions they parted ways prior to attending Y Combinator. Reeves wanted to create a platform where users controlled access to their bitcoin information, while Armstrong felt that the platform should retain custody of the users wallets. After parting ways with Armstrong, Reeves continued to work on Blockchain.info.From 2013 to 2014, Blockchain's user base grew from 100,000 wallet users in early 2013 to 1.5 million in April 2014. By 2014, Blockchain.com was the most popular bitcoin wallet and was led by Nicolas Cary as CEO. It had acquired two companies, ZeroBlock in 2013, and RTBTC in early 2014, through which it added data analytics services, and brought these services together under one umbrella. In December 2013, Blockchain.com acquired ZeroBlock, an app for bitcoin pricing. The following year, it acquired the data analytics platform RTBTC. It integrated RTBTC's technology with its existing services, establishing one platform offering cryptocurrency wallet, pricing and analytics, and the cryptocurrency explorer.In February 2014, Apple Inc. removed the Blockchain.com app from the iOS App Store, prompting a public outcry in the bitcoin community, most notably within the Reddit community. At the time, it was the only bitcoin wallet app available for Apple users, as Apple had removed or denied other apps. In July 2014, Apple reinstated the Blockchain.com app.In 2014, Peter Smith joined the founding team as its CEO. The three founders, Reeves, Cary and Smith, worked from Reeves' flat in York and formally established the company when bitcoin investor Roger Ver provided initial funding. By October 2014, it had 2.3 million consumer wallets and raised $30.5 million in its first external fundraising round, with investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Mosaic Ventures. This was the biggest round of financing in the digital currency sector at that time. The World Economic Forum named the company as one of 2016's ""Technology Pioneers"". In 2017, the company carried out a second round of fundraising. It closed $40 million in funding that June and the company was valued at $280 million.In 2018, Blockchain started selling services for institutional cryptocurrency. In July 2019, Blockchain.com launched its cryptocurrency exchange and promoted it as faster than others. In September 2020, the company joined the Coalition for App Fairness which aims to negotiate for better conditions for the inclusion of apps in app stores. In mid-2018, the company acquired Tsukemen, an app-development startup company based in San Francisco.In 2020 the company had 31 million users and as of 2021, there were 65 million Blockchain.com wallets and 28% of bitcoin transactions since 2012 were initiated or received by a Blockchain.com wallet. In February 2021, Blockchain.com raised a $120 million funding round from investors including Moore Strategic Ventures, Kyle Bass, Access Industries, Rovida Advisors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, GV, Lakestar, and Eldridge. Including previous venture capital funding rounds, the company had raised $190 million altogether. One month later, the company announced a further $300 million fundraising round. One-third of the amount raised was funded by investment firm Baillie Gifford which invested $100 million. Based on the fundraising round, the company was valued at $5.2 billion.
+In 2022, Blockchain.com's CEO wrote to shareholders informing them that Three Arrows Capital rapidly becoming insolvent meant a default impact of approximately $270 million worth of cryptocurrency and US dollar loans to Blockchain.com. The firm laid off 25% of its staff, about 150 people, on July 21.
+
+
+== Products and services ==
+As a cryptocurrency company, Blockchain.com provides a platform for holding, using, managing crypto assets, and exploring cryptocurrency transactions. It also develops financial services standards and infrastructure for cryptocurrencies. The company's platform provides market data and analytics. It follows cryptocurrency's aims of being decentralized and anonymous; some of its cryptocurrency products are managed by the end user and not accessible by Blockchain.com itself.Its main products are its cryptocurrency wallet, exchange, block explorer, and institutional markets offering.
+
+
+=== Wallet ===
+The company offers a hosted cryptocurrency wallet which is a method to store cryptocurrency in a digital file that can be accessed online. The wallet can be used with different cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. Its wallets can be used to send and receive digital currency transactions, as well as swap between different cryptocurrencies. Blockchain.com has a non-custodial wallet, meaning that it is controlled completely by the user and the company has no access to the wallet's data. Users access their wallet with a private key, a recovery phrase known only to the user.
+
+
+=== Exchange ===
+A cryptocurrency exchange helps to convert your digital assets in money and money into the digital assets. They work like a stockbroker. The company has an exchange to allow its users to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies. Additionally, the exchange's user interface can be customized by traders to show them relevant information depending on their level of experience.
+
+
+=== Institutional markets business ===
+In addition to its services for individuals, Blockchain.com also provides institutional investors with cryptocurrency-based financial services. The company's institutional markets business provides cryptocurrency lending, borrowing, trading and custody of financial assets. It also carries out over-the-counter transactions for large traders, acting as a broker to keep trades private and prevent price swings occurring based on market knowledge of the trades.
+
+
+=== Explorer ===
+The company operates a blockchain explorer that allows the user to see public cryptocurrency transactions and related information. This allows anyone who has a transaction's hash code to see the addresses of the wallets the transaction was sent from and received to, the amount of the transaction, and any fees. The tool can be used for analysis of transaction activity, cryptocurrency data, and analytics. The company sells advertising on the otherwise free service.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of bitcoin companies
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links =="
+Changpeng Zhao,"Changpeng Zhao (Chinese: 赵长鹏; pinyin: Zhào Chángpéng), commonly known as CZ, is a Chinese-born Canadian businessman. Zhao is the co-founder and former CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume as of November 2023. He resigned as the CEO in November 2023 after pleading guilty to a money laundering charge in the United States.According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zhao was ranked the 69th-richest person in the world, with a net worth estimated at $23 billion as of November 2023.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Zhao was born in Lianyungang in China's Jiangsu province. In the late 1980s, when he was 12 years old, he immigrated with his family to Canada, settling down in Vancouver, British Columbia. His parents were both schoolteachers in China. His father worked as a university instructor before he was branded a ""pro-bourgeois intellect"" and exiled to rural areas shortly after Zhao's birth. During his teenage years in Canada, Zhao helped to support his family by holding down a number of service jobs, including working as a fast-food clerk at a McDonald's restaurant and a gas station.Zhao attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he majored in computer science.
+
+
+== Early career ==
+After graduating from McGill, Zhao was selected for an internship in Tokyo working for a subcontractor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, developing software for matching trade orders. He later went to work full-time for four years at Bloomberg Tradebook where he was a developer of futures trading software.
+
+
+== Business career ==
+In 2005, Zhao moved to Shanghai to launch his business career, where he established his first technology startup company called Fusion Systems, which was known for ""some of the fastest automated high-frequency trading platforms and systems for stockbrokers."" Zhao first heard of Bitcoin in 2013 when playing poker with Bobby Lee (brother of Charlie Lee) who would later go on to found BTCC (company). Lee advised Zhao to put 10% of his money into bitcoin. Zhao instead ""went all in"" and sold his apartment in Shanghai and invested all of his wealth in Bitcoin, much to his family's dismay.In 2013, Zhao was a member of the team that developed Blockchain.info and he also served as Chief Technology Officer of OKCoin.
+
+
+=== Binance ===
+After its launch in July 2017, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange was able to raise $15 million in an initial coin offering, and trading began on the exchange eleven days later. In less than eight months, Zhao grew Binance into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume (as of April 2018). Zhao also launched Binance Coin in 2017; this is a utility token that gives its owners various benefits, such as discounts on trading fees. In April 2019, Binance launched Binance Smart Chain, which has smart contract functionality and is an Ethereum competitor.
+In February 2018, Forbes placed him third on their list of ""The Richest People In Cryptocurrency,"" with an estimated net worth of $1.1-2 billion.In 2019, Zhao launched Binance's U.S. affiliate, Binance.US. Binance withdrew its application to run a Singapore-based crypto exchange in 2021.
+
+
+==== Legal troubles ====
+
+
+===== Civil lawsuits =====
+On 27 March 2023, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against Binance and Zhao in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, claiming willful evasion of US law and allegedly breaching derivatives rules. The agency accused Binance of breaking rules intended to thwart money laundering operations, pointing to internal communications describing transactions by Palestinian militant organization Hamas, and suspected criminals.In June 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it was suing Zhao and Binance on 13 charges for alleged violations of US securities rules.
+
+
+===== Criminal prosecution =====
+In November 2023, Zhao agreed to resign from Binance and pay a $50 million fine as part of a guilty plea to U.S. federal charges. Binance also agreed to plead guilty, and to pay $4.3 billion in fines. Zhao was replaced as CEO by Richard Teng.Zhao personally pled guilty to violating the American Bank Secrecy Act by prioritizing Binance's growth over compliance with FinCEN anti-money laundering requirements. Although Zhao only personally pled guilty to a single criminal charge, as part of plea bargain negotiations, Zhao agreed for Binance to also admit to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
+
+
+=== Views on cryptocurrency ===
+In an interview with The New York Times, Zhao said people are getting into crypto as they see it grow, ""trade it and make money off it as opposed to using it,"" but that the market will always self-correct. On April 6, 2021, Zhao told Bloomberg Markets that nearly 100% of his liquid net worth was in the form of cryptocurrency.In 2022, Zhao invested $500 million through Binance to finance the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+Of Chinese descent, Zhao is a Canadian and UAE citizen. Born in China in 1977, Zhao acquired a Canadian visa in 1989 and left China that same year after the events of Tiananmen Square. In 2022, Zhao said that he had acquired Canadian citizenship some 30 years before, around 1992. In 2005, he moved back to China, eventually owning an apartment in Shanghai. In 2015, he sold his Shanghai apartment and used the funds to purchase Bitcoin. Zhao stayed in China until the Chinese government banned crypto exchanges in late 2017. He is currently based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.Zhao has said he plans to donate up to 99% of his wealth, following the philanthropic examples of other global business magnates and investors such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. ""I intend to donate most of my wealth, as many other entrepreneurs or founders have done, from Peabody to today. I intend to donate 90%, 95%, or 99% of my wealth.""According to a Reuters investigative story about Binance, Zhao had a romantic relationship with former Chinese travel television show host and Binance co-founder Yi He for ""several years."" They have two children, including a son born in the United States. Reuters reported that Zhao has a total of 3 children.
+
+
+=== Political views ===
+With regards to his political beliefs, Zhao stated in 2021 in Singapore: ""I am not a complete libertarian, I'm not an anarchist... I don't believe human civilization is advanced enough to live in a world with no rules.""
+
+
+== References =="
+Digital Currency Group,"Digital Currency Group (DCG) is a venture capital company focusing on the digital currency market. It is located in Stamford, Connecticut. The company has the subsidiaries Foundry, Genesis, Grayscale Investments, and Luno. It also formerly owned CoinDesk.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Founding and growth: 2015-2021 ===
+Digital Currency Group was launched in 2015 by Barry Silbert, the former CEO of SecondMarket, Inc. He began investing in blockchain technology companies in 2013. Shortly after SecondMarket’s sale, Silbert formed Digital Currency Group, with Genesis and Grayscale becoming the first of the company’s subsidiaries.In November 2021, the firm relocated its Manhattan headquarters to Stamford, Connecticut. The governor of Connecticut at the time, Ned Lamont, had provided financial incentives for the company to move to Stamford, including a $5 million grant if Digital Currency Group created at least 300 full-time jobs in the state.As of November 2021, Digital Currency Group made over 200 investments in other cryptocurrency companies.
+
+
+=== Repercussions of FTX bankruptcy: 2022 ===
+
+On November 1, 2022, it was reported that Mark Murphy had been promoted from DCG's COO to president, with 10% of staff leaving the company.On November 10, 2022, DCG subsidiary Genesis tweeted that they had about $175 million locked in the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which had just stopped processing withdrawals. The company stated that this situation ""does not impact our market-making activities."" The following day, FTX filed for bankruptcy. On November 16, Genesis suddenly halted all Bitcoin withdrawals and loan applications for their customers. The Wall Street Journal reported that it had obtained confidential documents stating that Genesis was undergoing an ""ongoing run on deposits"" and was seeking a $1 billion emergency loan by the following Monday, November 21.
+
+
+=== Genesis and sales: 2023 ===
+By early 2023, DCG had over 160 companies in its portfolio, of which it had acquired 28. Subsidiaries included the crypto exchange Luno, and the firm Foundry for crypto mining. It was also an investor in Coinbase and Kraken, the firm Circle behind the stablecoin USDC, and the analytics companies Chainalysis, Dune Analytics, Elliptic, and Etherscan. In early January 2023, DCG laid off 30% of its staff. In response to growing dispute with shareholders, Barry Silbert in early 2023 argued against debtor Cameron Winklevoss' push to replace him as CEO.In January 2023, the Financial Times reported that DCG was considering selling parts of its venture capital holdings to raise funds.On January 19, 2023, Genesis Global Capital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing over 100,000 creditors and liabilities of between $1 billion and $10 billion. In February 2023, DCG struck a deal with creditors to either sell its Genesis unit or turn its equity over to creditors. Specifically, on February 6, 2023, Genesis Global Holdco announced a possible agreement with its creditors and DCG, wherein DCG would give its equity interest in Genesis Global Trading (GGT) to Genesis Global Holdco. DCG would also refinance its loans from Genesis and exchange its existing $1.1 billion promissory note for convertible preferred stock issued by DCG. However in April, some creditors walked away from the restructuring agreement.In May 2022, it was reported that DCG had missed a $630 million payment to Genesis, while owing the unit $1.65 billion.The firm stated that ""due to the state of the broader economy and prolonged crypto winter, along with the challenging regulatory environment for digital assets in the U.S,"" it shut down TradeBlock on May 31, 2023. At that time, Luno remained owned by DCG. In July 2023, it was reported that DCG would sell CoinDesk for $125 million. At the time, DCG had closed HQ, its wealth management unit. With Barry Silbert remaining CEO, in July 2023, DCG appointed Mark Shifke as its CFO.In July 2023, DCG's crypto lending arm Genesis Global was still undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. In July 2023, Gemini sued DCG in New York citing fraud, with the intent of reclaiming funds. In August 2023 DCG reportedly faced an unannounced probe by the New York Attorney General, who was seeking information related to the financial dealings of DCG's subsidiary Genesis.A new Chapter 11 deal was agreed on with DCG and lender Genesis Global as well as a major creditor group in late August 2023. The agreement involved paying out up to 90% of the amount owed to Genesis customers using new loans.In October 2023, the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit against DCG, Gemini Trust, and Genesis Capital for allegedly defrauding more than 230,000 investors of more than $1.1bn. The companies allegedly lied to the investors over the expected returns of their investments and in regards to their safety, while also concealing losses from them and the public. DCG replied that they would fight the claims, and that they were “shocked by the baseless allegations.”
+
+
+== Subsidiaries ==
+
+
+=== Genesis Global Capital ===
+
+Launched in 2013 by DCG, Genesis is a cryptocurrency trading, lending, and asset custody platform, targeting institutional clients and high net worth individuals. They claim to have been the first Bitcoin cryptocurrency desk.Genesis acquired the London-based cryptocurrency custodial company Volt in early 2020. Genesis' sister company Grayscale Investments had been holding its cryptocurrency assets with the company Xapo, which had been acquired by Genesis' rival Bitcoin trading company Coinbase in 2019. News media speculated that Genesis' cryptocurrency custody would be transferred away from Coinbase and made internal to Greyscale after completion of the Volt acquisition.In late June and early July 2022, Genesis publicly disclosed that it was exposed to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from loans to both the Hong Kong based cryptocurrency lender Babel Finance and the bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), and that its parent company DCG had taken on some of Genesis' debts in order to keep the company afloat. On August 17, 2022, Genesis CEO Michael Moro resigned to serve in an advisory position, while COO Derar Islim became interim CEO. On January 19, 2023, Genesis Global Capital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with the unit still undergoing proceedings that summer.
+
+
+=== Grayscale Investments ===
+
+Established in 2013, Grayscale Investments is a digital currency asset manager. It offers funds privately for institutional and accredited investors and publicly-traded products.Grayscale was the world’s largest asset manager for digital currency, as of December 2021, with more than $50 billion in assets under management. Grayscale also manages the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC), which was the first publicly quoted security solely invested in the price of bitcoin upon its launch in 2013.As of April 2021, six of Grayscale’s funds were traded publicly on the OTCQX market: Bitcoin Cash, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, Grayscale Ethereum Trust, Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust, Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund, and the Grayscale Litecoin Trust.Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was approved for public trading by the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in 2015. On January 21, 2020, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust became the first digital currency financial product to become a Securities and Exchange Commission reporting company.In 2018, Grayscale launched the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund which allows a customer to invest in a group of prominent digital currencies. The fund was approved to trade on public markets by the FINRA in October 2019. In May 2022, it was reported that Grayscale would list an exchange-traded fund (ETF) for the first time in Europe. The ETF was said to be made up of companies representing the ""Future of Finance"", and would begin trading on May 17.
+
+
+=== CoinDesk ===
+
+CoinDesk is a global media, research, and events platform that was acquired by Digital Currency Group in 2016. It reports on bitcoin blockchain daily news, provides a bitcoin price index and publishes a quarterly State of Bitcoin report. CoinDesk also hosts a conference on digital currencies and blockchain technologies named Consensus.
+
+
+=== Foundry ===
+Foundry, established in 2019, sets up and manages bitcoin mining operations in the United States and Canada. In addition to setting up and operating its own cryptocurrency mining equipment, Foundry also provides financing, specialized digital mining equipment, and expertise to other digital currency startups.In the summer of 2021, Foundry helped to relocate over $300 million worth of equipment from China to North America following the Chinese government shutdown of many cryptocurrency mining operations.Bloomberg reported in April 2023 that Foundry would stop offering free Bitcoin mining services, and between April 19 and April 22, would instead levy a pool fee on members. The services had been free since 2019.
+
+
+=== Luno ===
+In September 2020, Digital Currency Group acquired Luno, a cryptocurrency exchange based in London, with other operations in Cape Town and Singapore. At the time of the acquisition, Luno had more than 5 million customers.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of bitcoin companies
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Brad Garlinghouse,"Bradley Kent Garlinghouse (born February 4, 1971) is the CEO of financial technology company Ripple Labs. He previously was the CEO and chairman of Hightail (formerly YouSendIt). Before Hightail, he worked at AOL and Yahoo!
+He was born February 6, 1971, in Topeka, Kansas. Garlinghouse has a BA in economics from the University of Kansas and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Garlinghouse had early stints at @Home Network and as a GP at @Ventures before joining Dialpad as CEO from 2000 to 2001. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Senior Vice President at Yahoo! where he ran its Homepage, Flickr, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Messenger divisions. While at Yahoo! he penned an internal memo known as the ""Peanut Butter Manifesto,"" calling for the company to focus on its core business, rather than spreading itself too thin, like peanut butter.After Yahoo!, he served as a Senior Advisor at Silver Lake Partners, and then went on to be President of Consumer Applications at AOL from 2009 to 2011. In April 2012, Garlinghouse joined the board of video startup Animoto. He joined Hightail and served as its CEO until September 2014, leaving after a disagreement with the board regarding company direction.Garlinghouse joined Ripple as COO in April 2015, reporting to then CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen. He was promoted to CEO in December 2016. In December 2019, Garlinghouse announced that Ripple had raised a $200M series C funding round from Tetragon, SBI Ventures and Route 66 Ventures. In 2020 Garlinghouse admitted that Ripple Labs would be losing money if it did not have the revenue generated from the sales of the XRP cryptocurrency.In 2018 and 2019, Garlinghouse claimed on multiple occasions that the published error rate for SWIFT messaging was at least 6%. This was shown to be untrue by research published by the London School of Economics Business Review that showed Garlinghouse's claims were based on misreading of a paper published by SWIFT that did not refer to error rates in messaging.The whitewashing of unflattering details from Garlinghouse's Wikipedia page was a subject of discussion by Financial Times in August 2020.On December 23, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a complaint alleging that Garlinghouse, Ripple Labs and Ripple Chairman Chris Larsen had committed multiple breaches of securities laws. While the case was pending, Garlinghouse criticized the SEC's lack of clarity on the status of Ripple's products, referring to SEC chairman Gary Gensler as an autocrat and tweeting, that ""without clear jurisdiction, ambiguity masquerades as power"". In July 2023, presiding judge Analisa Torres of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, held that the company's crypto token offering was ""not a security"", enabling the token to be relisted on exchanges. In November 2023, the SEC dropped all claims against Garlinghouse and Larsen.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Brad Garlinghouse - AOL Corp
+Garlinghouse new CEO of YouSendIt
+Why Brad Garlinghouse left Hightail"
+Roger Ver,"Roger Keith Ver (born 27 January 1979) is an early investor in Bitcoin, Bitcoin-related startups and an early promoter of Bitcoin. Ver has sometimes been referred to as ""Bitcoin Jesus"". He now primarily promotes Bitcoin Cash as Ver sees it as fulfilling the intended and original purpose of the ""Bitcoin White Paper"", first published in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, in which Nakamoto referred to Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he sold fireworks on eBay and later pleaded guilty to a related felony charge. He served 10 months in prison then moved to Japan in 2005. He renounced his United States citizenship in 2014 after obtaining a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport. He previously served as CEO of Bitcoin.com.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+Ver was born in San Jose, California. He attended Valley Christian High School. He then attended De Anza College for one year, before dropping out to pursue his business interests. He identifies as a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, voluntaryist, a peace advocate, and an advocate for individualism. Ver attempted a run for California state assembly in the Libertarian party. During a debate in the run-up to this election, he claimed that the Drug Enforcement Agency was criminal in its practice. He moved to Japan in 2005, where he still maintains his residence as of 2021.
+Ver renounced his United States citizenship in 2014 after he became a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis. In 2015, he was denied a visa to reenter the United States by the U.S. Embassy in Barbados, which claimed that he had not sufficiently proven ties outside of the United States that would motivate him to leave at the end of his visit, causing fears he might become an illegal immigrant. Ver's name was published in the 2018 Q1 Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen to Expatriate. In 2019, Ver was denied a visa to travel to Australia.According to an interview he gave in 2016, Ver describes Brazilian jiu-jitsu as one of his major passions in life. Ver can be seen in videos competing in BJJ world championships and has achieved the rank of brown belt.In 2018, he was ranked number 36 in Fortune's ""The Ledger 40 under 40"" for transforming business at the leading edge of finance and technology.
+
+
+== Career ==
+
+
+=== MemoryDealers.com ===
+Ver was the CEO of MemoryDealers.com from 1999 until 2012. In 2000, he attempted to enter politics by running for California State Assembly as a candidate for the Libertarian Party.
+
+
+=== Explosives charges ===
+In 2002, Ver pleaded guilty to selling explosive materials without a license, as well as illegally storing and mailing them. Ver sold at least 14 pounds of a brand called ""Pest Control Report 2000"" fireworks as large firecrackers on eBay, stored them in a residential apartment building, and mailed them to customers via the U.S. Postal Service. He was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison. The manufacturer was later forced to stop making and selling the product, which contained gunpowder far above the legal limit for consumer firecrackers.In 2018, Ver made a video that he posted to YouTube speaking on his experiences in federal prison. Ver labeled the video as, ""My Story of Being Tortured in Prison"". Ver claims in the video that he was arrested for ""... selling firecrackers on eBay back when eBay had a 'guns and ammo' section, and it wasn't a big deal to do that at all.""
+
+
+=== Cryptocurrency ===
+Ver began investing in bitcoin in early 2011 when ""...the price was still under one U.S. Dollar each"".  The first investment he made was for Charlie Shrem’s Bitinstant.  Ver's investment allowed the company to hire a designer and another programmer. He invested over a million dollars into new Bitcoin-related startups, including Ripple, Blockchain.com, BitPay, and Kraken. In 2011, Ver's company Memorydealers was the first to accept Bitcoin as payment. He has been a prominent supporter of Bitcoin adoption and saw Bitcoin as a means to promote economic freedom.
+In 2012, Ver was organizing Bitcoin meetups in Sunnyvale, California. He is one of five founders of the Bitcoin Foundation. Ver wants Bitcoin to rival major fiat currencies.
+He is one of the main proponents of a larger block size for the Bitcoin blockchain. He supported the development of Bitcoin XT as a hard fork method towards an increase. Ver and his high school friend Jesse Powell attempted to re-establish the Mt Gox exchange during the June 2011 Bitcoin price crash.Ver served as CEO of Bitcoin.com until 1 August 2019, at which point he transitioned to Executive Chairman. Fortune Magazine in early 2020 mistakenly referred to Roger Ver as the co-creator of Bitcoin Cash.
+
+
+==== CoinFlex ====
+As of June 2022, he is a shareholder in CoinFLEX, a centralized yield crypto exchange and is rumoured to be in a large amount of debt which is causing problems for the site. On 23 June 2022, CoinFlex paused withdrawals after a counterparty, which it later named as Ver, experienced liquidity issues and failed to repay a $47 million stablecoin margin call.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of former United States citizens who relinquished their nationality
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+""Episode 687: Buy This Passport"". Planet Money. 10 March 2016."
+Nick Szabo,"Nicholas Szabo is a computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer known for his research in digital contracts and digital currency. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1989 with a degree in computer science and received a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University Law School.  He holds an honorary professorship at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín.The phrase and concept of ""smart contracts"" was developed by Szabo with the goal of bringing what he calls the ""highly evolved"" practices of contract law and practice to the design of electronic commerce protocols between strangers on the Internet. In 1994, he wrote an introduction to the concept and, in 1996, an exploration of what smart contracts could do. Nick Szabo proposed a digital marketplace built on these automatic, cryptographically secure processes. 
+Szabo argued that a minimum granularity of micropayments is set by mental transaction costs. At one time Szabo was a proponent of ""extropian"" life extension techniques.
+
+
+== Bit gold ==
+In 1998, Szabo designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called ""bit gold"". Bit gold was never implemented, but has been called ""a direct precursor to the Bitcoin architecture.""In Szabo's bit gold structure, a participant would dedicate computer power to solving cryptographic puzzles. In a bit gold network, solved puzzles would be sent to the Byzantine fault-tolerant public registry and assigned to the public key of the solver. Each solution would become part of the next challenge, creating a growing chain of new property. This aspect of the system provided a way for the network to verify and time-stamp new coins, because unless a majority of the parties agreed to accept new solutions, they couldn't start on the next puzzle.When attempting to design transactions with a digital coin, you run into the ""double-spending problem."" Once data has been created, reproducing it is a simple matter of copying and pasting. Most digital currencies solve the problem by relinquishing some control to a central authority, which keeps track of each account's balance. This was an unacceptable solution for Szabo. ""I was trying to mimic as closely as possible in cyberspace the security and trust characteristics of gold, and chief among those is that it doesn't depend on a trusted central authority,"" he said.
+
+
+== Satoshi Nakamoto speculation ==
+
+Szabo was active in pre-Bitcoin ""bit gold"" technologies and is viewed as a potential Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. Although Szabo has repeatedly denied it, people have speculated that he is Nakamoto. Research by financial author Dominic Frisby provided circumstantial evidence but, as he admits, no proof exists that Satoshi is Szabo. In a July 2014 email to Frisby, Szabo said ""I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it.""Nathaniel Popper wrote in The New York Times that ""the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo."" In 2008, prior to the release of bitcoin, Szabo wrote a comment on his blog about the intent of creating a live version of his hypothetical currency.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Nick Szabo's Essays, Papers, and Concise Tutorials at archive.today (archived 16 July 2015)
+Who is Nick Szabo, The Mysterious Blockchain Titan - unblock.net
+DEVCON1: History of the Blockchain - Nick Szabo on YouTube"
+Hal Finney (computer scientist),"Harold Thomas Finney II (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014) was an American software developer. In his early career, he was credited as lead developer on several console games. Finney later worked for PGP Corporation. He also was an early bitcoin contributor and received the first bitcoin transaction from bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Finney was born in Coalinga, California, on May 4, 1956, to Virginia and Harold Thomas Finney. His father was a petroleum engineer. Harold Finney II attended the California Institute of Technology, graduating with a BS in engineering in 1979.
+
+
+== Career ==
+After graduation from Caltech, he went to work in the computer gaming field for a company that developed video games such as Adventures of Tron, Armor Ambush, Astrosmash and Space Attack. He later went to work for the PGP Corporation with whom he remained until his retirement in 2011.Finney was a noted cryptographic activist. During the early 1990s, in addition to being a regular poster on the cypherpunks listserv, Finney ran two anonymous remailers. Further cryptographic activism included running a (successful) contest to break the export-grade encryption Netscape used.Finney was involved in the development of the first anonymous remailer, a tool for sending emails with the sender's identity concealed. He was one of the early contributors to this privacy-enhancing technology, which played a significant role in the cypherpunk movement and the broader field of online privacy. This work further demonstrated Finney's commitment to privacy and his significant contributions to the development of privacy-enhancing technologies.
+In 2004, Finney created the first reusable proof-of-work system before Bitcoin. In January 2009, Finney was the Bitcoin network's first transaction recipient.
+
+
+== Bitcoin ==
+Finney was a cypherpunk and said:
+It seemed so obvious to me: ""Here we are faced with the problems of loss of privacy, creeping computerization, massive databases, more centralization - and [David] Chaum offers a completely different direction to go in, one which puts power into the hands of individuals rather than governments and corporations. The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them.""
+He was one of the first Bitcoin users and on January 12, 2009, he received the first bitcoin transaction from Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Finney lived in the same town for 10 years that Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto lived in (Temple City, California), adding to speculation that he may have been Bitcoin's creator. Finney denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.In March 2013, Finney posted on a Bitcoin forum, BitcoinTalk, a publication called ""Bitcoin and Me (Hal Finney)"" where he states he was essentially paralyzed. He recalls finding out that Bitcoin had gained monetary value in late 2010 and mentions that despite amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease was causing his ability to code to be slower, he still loved programming and that it gave him goals. He continued to program until his death; he was working on experimental software called bcflick, which uses Trusted Computing to strengthen Bitcoin wallets.
+During the last year of his life, the Finneys received anonymous calls demanding an extortion fee of 1,000 bitcoin. They became victims of swatting – a hoax ""where the perpetrator calls up emergency dispatch using a spoofed telephone number and pretends to have committed a heinous crime in the hopes of provoking an armed police response to the victim's home"". Extortionists demanded fees of more bitcoins than Finney had left after using most of them to cover medical expenses in 2013.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+In October 2009, Finney announced in an essay on the blog Less Wrong that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in August 2009, and wrote: ""I hope to be able to read, browse the net, and even participate in conversations by email and messaging (...) I may even still be able to write code, and my dream is to contribute to open source software projects even from within an immobile body. That will be a life very much worth living."" Prior to his illness, Finney had been an active runner. Finney and his wife raised money for ALS research with the Santa Barbara International Marathon.
+
+
+== Death ==
+Finney died in Phoenix, Arizona, on August 28, 2014, as a result of complications of ALS and was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+ Media related to Hal Finney (computer scientist) at Wikimedia Commons
+""Hal Finney home page"". Archived from the original on 2014-04-03.
+Review: Vernor Vinge’s ‘Fast Times’ (review by Finney in Extropy)
+Hal Finney's profile in Forbes Magazine"
+Brian Armstrong (businessman),"Brian Armstrong (born January 25, 1983) is an American business executive, billionaire, and investor who is CEO of cryptocurrency platform Coinbase. He received media attention for his policy of keeping the workplace free of political activism.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Armstrong was born on January 25, 1983, near San Jose, California; both of his parents were engineers. During his years in high school, he attended Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Catholic, all-male, private secondary school. Armstrong attended Rice University in Texas, and earned a dual bachelor's degree in economics and computer science in 2005, followed by a master's in computer science in 2006. While at Rice, he started a business matching tutors to students, and after graduating, spent a year in Buenos Aires while working for an education company.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Armstrong's early career included working as a developer for IBM and a consultant at Deloitte. In 2010, he came across the Bitcoin white paper published under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2011, he joined Airbnb as a software engineer and was exposed to payment systems in the 190 countries Airbnb operated in at the time. While at Airbnb, he saw the difficulties of sending money to South America. He began working weekends and nights to write code in Ruby and JavaScript to buy and store cryptocoins. In 2012, he entered the Y Combinator startup accelerator and received a $150,000 investment, which he used to fund Coinbase.His post on Hacker News looking for a co-founder to get into the Y Combinator program later became a viral post in Hacker News. He eventually met his co-founder Fred Ehrsam on a Reddit subgroup and is quoted to have done over fifty meetings to find a perfect co-founder.
+
+
+=== Coinbase ===
+
+In 2012, Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase, as a way for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade bitcoins and other digital currencies. Armstrong was its first CEO. A 2018 funding round valued the company at $8.1 billion, and in December 2020, the company filed with the SEC to go public through a direct listing. Following a direct listing in April 2021, Coinbase's market capitalization rose to $85B, and according to Forbes, as of May 2022, Armstrong has a net worth of $2.4 billion.
+
+
+=== Book/Documentary ===
+Armstrong appeared in the 2014 American documentary The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin.He was featured in the 2020 nonfiction book Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street.Armstrong and Coinbase were the subject of the documentary COIN: A Founder's Story, directed by Emmy-winner Greg Kohs.
+
+
+=== ResearchHub ===
+Armstrong self-funded and founded the scientific research site ResearchHub, modeled on the GitHub code repository, as a way of making research papers available to the public.
+
+
+=== NewLimit ===
+Armstrong co-founded NewLimit to increase human health span by targeting the biology of aging. NewLimit's primary research focus is epigenetic reprogramming. In May 2023, the company raised $40 million in a Series A investment round.
+
+
+== Political views ==
+Armstrong wrote a blog post  in September 2020 calling Coinbase a ""Mission Focused Company"", discouraging employee activism and discussion of political and social issues at work. He offered severance packages for Coinbase employees uncomfortable with this policy; as a result, sixty employees (amounting to 5% of the company) left Coinbase. Prior to this, Armstrong supported the Black Lives Matter movement and tweeted when George Floyd was murdered: ""I've decided to speak up. It's a shame that this even needs to be said in this day and age, but racism, police brutality, and unequal justice are unequivocally wrong, and we need to all work to eliminate them from society.""In July 2023 he met with House Democrats, specifically the New Democrat Coalition, in a closed-door session that reportedly focused on digital-asset legislation. Armstrong according to Bloomberg had ""led a campaign in Washington to create clearer rules around digital assets.""
+
+
+== Recognition ==
+In 2017, at age 34, Armstrong was ranked #10 on Fortune's 40 under 40 list.In 2019, Armstrong was named to Time magazine's 100 Next list.In 2021, Forbes named Armstrong #1 on its Crypto Rich List, with an estimated net worth of $6.5 billion as of February 2021. He was also listed 60th on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America.
+
+
+== Philanthropy ==
+In 2018, Armstrong was the first cryptocurrency executive to sign the Giving Pledge, when he pledged to give away the bulk of his wealth to philanthropic causes. He also set up a philanthropic effort called GiveCrypto.org, to allow people to make public or anonymous donations to help others living in poverty.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Cryptographic hash function,"A cryptographic hash function (CHF) is a hash algorithm (a map of an arbitrary binary string to a binary string with a fixed size of 
+  
+    
+      
+        n
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle n}
+   bits) that has special properties desirable for a cryptographic application:
+the probability of a particular 
+  
+    
+      
+        n
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle n}
+  -bit output result (hash value) for a random input string (""message"") is 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          2
+          
+            −
+            n
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 2^{-n}}
+   (as for any good hash), so the hash value can be used as a representative of the message;
+finding an input string that matches a given hash value (a pre-image) is unfeasible, assuming all input strings are equally likely.  The resistance to such search is quantified as security strength, a cryptographic hash with 
+  
+    
+      
+        n
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle n}
+   bits of hash value is expected to have a preimage resistance strength of 
+  
+    
+      
+        n
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle n}
+   bits, unless the space of possible input values is significantly smaller than 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          2
+          
+            n
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 2^{n}}
+   (see, for example, #Attacks on hashed passwords);
+A second preimage resistance strength, with the same expectations, refers to a similar problem of finding a second message that matches the given hash value when one message is already known;
+finding any pair of different messages that yield the same hash value (a collision) is also unfeasible, a cryptographic hash is expected to have a collision resistance strength of 
+  
+    
+      
+        n
+        
+          /
+        
+        2
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle n/2}
+   bits (lower due to the birthday paradox).Cryptographic hash functions have many information-security applications, notably in digital signatures, message authentication codes (MACs), and other forms of authentication. They can also be used as ordinary hash functions, to index data in hash tables, for fingerprinting, to detect duplicate data or uniquely identify files, and as checksums to detect accidental data corruption. Indeed, in information-security contexts, cryptographic hash values are sometimes called (digital) fingerprints, checksums, or just hash values, even though all these terms stand for more general functions with rather different properties and purposes.Non-cryptographic hash functions are used in hash tables and to detect accidental errors, their construction frequently provides no resistance to a deliberate attack. For example, a denial-of-service attack on hash tables is possible if the collisions are easy to find, like in the case of linear cyclic redundancy check (CRC) functions.
+
+
+== Properties ==
+Most cryptographic hash functions are designed to take a string of any length as input and produce a fixed-length hash value.
+A cryptographic hash function must be able to withstand all known types of cryptanalytic attack. In theoretical cryptography, the security level of a cryptographic hash function has been defined using the following properties:
+
+Pre-image resistance
+Given a hash value h, it should be difficult to find any message m such that h = hash(m). This concept is related to that of a one-way function. Functions that lack this property are vulnerable to preimage attacks.
+Second pre-image resistance
+Given an input m1, it should be difficult to find a different input m2 such that hash(m1) = hash(m2). This property is sometimes referred to as weak collision resistance. Functions that lack this property are vulnerable to second-preimage attacks.
+Collision resistance
+It should be difficult to find two different messages m1 and m2 such that hash(m1) = hash(m2). Such a pair is called a cryptographic hash collision. This property is sometimes referred to as strong collision resistance. It requires a hash value at least twice as long as that required for pre-image resistance; otherwise collisions may be found by a birthday attack.Collision resistance implies second pre-image resistance but does not imply pre-image resistance. The weaker assumption is always preferred in theoretical cryptography, but in practice, a hash-function which is only second pre-image resistant is considered insecure and is therefore not recommended for real applications.
+Informally, these properties mean that a malicious adversary cannot replace or modify the input data without changing its digest. Thus, if two strings have the same digest, one can be very confident that they are identical. Second pre-image resistance prevents an attacker from crafting a document with the same hash as a document the attacker cannot control. Collision resistance prevents an attacker from creating two distinct documents with the same hash.
+A function meeting these criteria may still have undesirable properties. Currently, popular cryptographic hash functions are vulnerable to length-extension attacks: given hash(m) and len(m) but not m, by choosing a suitable m′ an attacker can calculate hash(m ∥ m′), where ∥ denotes concatenation. This property can be used to break naive authentication schemes based on hash functions. The HMAC construction works around these problems.
+In practice, collision resistance is insufficient for many practical uses. In addition to collision resistance, it should be impossible for an adversary to find two messages with substantially similar digests; or to infer any useful information about the data, given only its digest. In particular, a hash function should behave as much as possible like a random function (often called a random oracle in proofs of security) while still being deterministic and efficiently computable. This rules out functions like the SWIFFT function, which can be rigorously proven to be collision-resistant assuming that certain problems on ideal lattices are computationally difficult, but, as a linear function, does not satisfy these additional properties.Checksum algorithms, such as CRC32 and other cyclic redundancy checks, are designed to meet much weaker requirements and are generally unsuitable as cryptographic hash functions. For example, a CRC was used for message integrity in the WEP encryption standard, but an attack was readily discovered, which exploited the linearity of the checksum.
+
+
+=== Degree of difficulty ===
+In cryptographic practice, ""difficult"" generally means ""almost certainly beyond the reach of any adversary who must be prevented from breaking the system for as long as the security of the system is deemed important"". The meaning of the term is therefore somewhat dependent on the application since the effort that a malicious agent may put into the task is usually proportional to their expected gain. However, since the needed effort usually multiplies with the digest length, even a thousand-fold advantage in processing power can be neutralized by adding a dozen bits to the latter.
+For messages selected from a limited set of messages, for example passwords or other short messages, it can be feasible to invert a hash by trying all possible messages in the set. Because cryptographic hash functions are typically designed to be computed quickly, special key derivation functions that require greater computing resources have been developed that make such brute-force attacks more difficult.
+In some theoretical analyses ""difficult"" has a specific mathematical meaning, such as ""not solvable in asymptotic polynomial time"". Such interpretations of difficulty are important in the study of provably secure cryptographic hash functions but do not usually have a strong connection to practical security. For example, an exponential-time algorithm can sometimes still be fast enough to make a feasible attack. Conversely, a polynomial-time algorithm (e.g., one that requires n20 steps for n-digit keys) may be too slow for any practical use.
+
+
+== Illustration ==
+An illustration of the potential use of a cryptographic hash is as follows: Alice poses a tough math problem to Bob and claims that she has solved it. Bob would like to try it himself, but would yet like to be sure that Alice is not bluffing. Therefore, Alice writes down her solution, computes its hash, and tells Bob the hash value (whilst keeping the solution secret). Then, when Bob comes up with the solution himself a few days later, Alice can prove that she had the solution earlier by revealing it and having Bob hash it and check that it matches the hash value given to him before. (This is an example of a simple commitment scheme; in actual practice, Alice and Bob will often be computer programs, and the secret would be something less easily spoofed than a claimed puzzle solution.)
+
+
+== Applications ==
+
+
+=== Verifying the integrity of messages and files ===
+
+An important application of secure hashes is the verification of message integrity. Comparing message digests (hash digests over the message) calculated before, and after, transmission can determine whether any changes have been made to the message or file.
+MD5, SHA-1, or SHA-2 hash digests are sometimes published on websites or forums to allow verification of integrity for downloaded files, including files retrieved using file sharing such as mirroring. This practice establishes a chain of trust as long as the hashes are posted on a trusted site – usually the originating site – authenticated by HTTPS. Using a cryptographic hash and a chain of trust detects malicious changes to the file. Non-cryptographic error-detecting codes such as cyclic redundancy checks only prevent against non-malicious alterations of the file, since an intentional spoof can readily be crafted to have the colliding code value.
+
+
+=== Signature generation and verification ===
+
+Almost all digital signature schemes require a cryptographic hash to be calculated over the message. This allows the signature calculation to be performed on the relatively small, statically sized hash digest. The message is considered authentic if the signature verification succeeds given the signature and recalculated hash digest over the message. So the message integrity property of the cryptographic hash is used to create secure and efficient digital signature schemes.
+
+
+=== Password verification ===
+
+Password verification commonly relies on cryptographic hashes. Storing all user passwords as cleartext can result in a massive security breach if the password file is compromised. One way to reduce this danger is to only store the hash digest of each password. To authenticate a user, the password presented by the user is hashed and compared with the stored hash. A password reset method is required when password hashing is performed; original passwords cannot be recalculated from the stored hash value.
+However, use of standard cryptographic hash functions, such as the SHA series, is no longer considered safe for password storage.: 5.1.1.2  These algorithms are designed to be computed quickly, so if the hashed values are compromised, it is possible to try guessed passwords at high rates. Common graphics processing units can try billions of possible passwords each second. Password hash functions that perform key stretching – such as PBKDF2, scrypt or Argon2 – commonly use repeated invocations of a cryptographic hash to increase the time (and in some cases computer memory) required to perform brute-force attacks on stored password hash digests. See #Attacks on hashed passwords
+A password hash also requires the use of a large random, non-secret salt value which can be stored with the password hash. The salt is hashed with the password, altering the password hash mapping for each password, thereby making it infeasible for an adversary to store tables of precomputed hash values to which the password hash digest can be compared or to test a large number of purloined hash values in parallel.
+
+
+=== Proof-of-work ===
+
+A proof-of-work system (or protocol, or function) is an economic measure to deter denial-of-service attacks and other service abuses such as spam on a network by requiring some work from the service requester, usually meaning processing time by a computer. A key feature of these schemes is their asymmetry: the work must be moderately hard (but feasible) on the requester side but easy to check for the service provider. One popular system – used in Bitcoin mining and Hashcash – uses partial hash inversions to prove that work was done, to unlock a mining reward in Bitcoin, and as a good-will token to send an e-mail in Hashcash.  The sender is required to find a message whose hash value begins with a number of zero bits. The average work that the sender needs to perform in order to find a valid message is exponential in the number of zero bits required in the hash value, while the recipient can verify the validity of the message by executing a single hash function. For instance, in Hashcash, a sender is asked to generate a header whose 160-bit SHA-1 hash value has the first 20 bits as zeros. The sender will, on average, have to try 219 times to find a valid header.
+
+
+=== File or data identifier ===
+A message digest can also serve as a means of reliably identifying a file; several source code management systems, including Git, Mercurial and Monotone, use the sha1sum of various types of content (file content, directory trees, ancestry information, etc.) to uniquely identify them. Hashes are used to identify files on peer-to-peer filesharing networks. For example, in an ed2k link, an MD4-variant hash is combined with the file size, providing sufficient information for locating file sources, downloading the file, and verifying its contents. Magnet links are another example. Such file hashes are often the top hash of a hash list or a hash tree which allows for additional benefits.
+One of the main applications of a hash function is to allow the fast look-up of data in a hash table. Being hash functions of a particular kind, cryptographic hash functions lend themselves well to this application too.
+However, compared with standard hash functions, cryptographic hash functions tend to be much more expensive computationally. For this reason, they tend to be used in contexts where it is necessary for users to protect themselves against the possibility of forgery (the creation of data with the same digest as the expected data) by potentially malicious participants.
+
+
+==== Content-addressable storage ====
+
+
+== Hash functions based on block ciphers ==
+There are several methods to use a block cipher to build a cryptographic hash function, specifically a one-way compression function.
+The methods resemble the block cipher modes of operation usually used for encryption. Many well-known hash functions, including MD4, MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-2, are built from block-cipher-like components designed for the purpose, with feedback to ensure that the resulting function is not invertible. SHA-3 finalists included functions with block-cipher-like components (e.g., Skein, BLAKE) though the function finally selected, Keccak, was built on a cryptographic sponge instead.
+A standard block cipher such as AES can be used in place of these custom block ciphers; that might be useful when an embedded system needs to implement both encryption and hashing with minimal code size or hardware area. However, that approach can have costs in efficiency and security. The ciphers in hash functions are built for hashing: they use large keys and blocks, can efficiently change keys every block, and have been designed and vetted for resistance to related-key attacks. General-purpose ciphers tend to have different design goals. In particular, AES has key and block sizes that make it nontrivial to use to generate long hash values; AES encryption becomes less efficient when the key changes each block; and related-key attacks make it potentially less secure for use in a hash function than for encryption.
+
+
+== Hash function design ==
+
+
+=== Merkle–Damgård construction ===
+
+A hash function must be able to process an arbitrary-length message into a fixed-length output. This can be achieved by breaking the input up into a series of equally sized blocks, and operating on them in sequence using a one-way compression function. The compression function can either be specially designed for hashing or be built from a block cipher. A hash function built with the Merkle–Damgård construction is as resistant to collisions as is its compression function; any collision for the full hash function can be traced back to a collision in the compression function.
+The last block processed should also be unambiguously length padded; this is crucial to the security of this construction. This construction is called the Merkle–Damgård construction. Most common classical hash functions, including SHA-1 and MD5, take this form.
+
+
+=== Wide pipe versus narrow pipe ===
+A straightforward application of the Merkle–Damgård construction, where the size of hash output is equal to the internal state size (between each compression step), results in a narrow-pipe hash design. This design causes many inherent flaws, including length-extension, multicollisions, long message attacks, generate-and-paste attacks, and also cannot be parallelized. As a result, modern hash functions are built on wide-pipe constructions that have a larger internal state size – which range from tweaks of the Merkle–Damgård construction to new constructions such as the sponge construction and HAIFA construction. None of the entrants in the NIST hash function competition use a classical Merkle–Damgård construction.Meanwhile, truncating the output of a longer hash, such as used in SHA-512/256, also defeats many of these attacks.
+
+
+== Use in building other cryptographic primitives ==
+Hash functions can be used to build other cryptographic primitives. For these other primitives to be cryptographically secure, care must be taken to build them correctly.
+Message authentication codes (MACs) (also called keyed hash functions) are often built from hash functions. HMAC is such a MAC.
+Just as block ciphers can be used to build hash functions, hash functions can be used to build block ciphers.  Luby-Rackoff constructions using hash functions can be provably secure if the underlying hash function is secure.  Also, many hash functions (including SHA-1 and SHA-2) are built by using a special-purpose block cipher in a Davies–Meyer or other construction.  That cipher can also be used in a conventional mode of operation, without the same security guarantees; for example, SHACAL, BEAR and LION.
+Pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs) can be built using hash functions.  This is done by combining a (secret) random seed with a counter and hashing it.
+Some hash functions, such as Skein, Keccak, and RadioGatún, output an arbitrarily long stream and can be used as a stream cipher, and stream ciphers can also be built from fixed-length digest hash functions. Often this is done by first building a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator and then using its stream of random bytes as keystream. SEAL is a stream cipher that uses SHA-1 to generate internal tables, which are then used in a keystream generator more or less unrelated to the hash algorithm.  SEAL is not guaranteed to be as strong (or weak) as SHA-1. Similarly, the key expansion of the HC-128 and HC-256 stream ciphers makes heavy use of the SHA-256 hash function.
+
+
+== Concatenation ==
+Concatenating outputs from multiple hash functions provide collision resistance as good as the strongest of the algorithms included in the concatenated result.  For example, older versions of Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) used concatenated MD5 and SHA-1 sums. This ensures that a method to find collisions in one of the hash functions does not defeat data protected by both hash functions.For Merkle–Damgård construction hash functions, the concatenated function is as collision-resistant as its strongest component, but not more collision-resistant. Antoine Joux observed that 2-collisions lead to n-collisions: if it is feasible for an attacker to find two messages with the same MD5 hash, then they can find as many additional messages with that same MD5 hash as they desire, with no greater difficulty. Among those n messages with the same MD5 hash, there is likely to be a collision in SHA-1. The additional work needed to find the SHA-1 collision (beyond the exponential birthday search) requires only polynomial time.
+
+
+== Cryptographic hash algorithms ==
+There are many cryptographic hash algorithms; this section lists a few algorithms that are referenced relatively often. A more extensive list can be found on the page containing a comparison of cryptographic hash functions.
+
+
+=== MD5 ===
+
+MD5 was designed by Ronald Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function, MD4, and was specified in 1992 as RFC 1321. Collisions against MD5 can be calculated within seconds which makes the algorithm unsuitable for most use cases where a cryptographic hash is required. MD5 produces a digest of 128 bits (16 bytes).
+
+
+=== SHA-1 ===
+
+SHA-1 was developed as part of the U.S. Government's Capstone project. The original specification – now commonly called SHA-0 – of the algorithm was published in 1993 under the title Secure Hash Standard, FIPS PUB 180, by U.S. government standards agency NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). It was withdrawn by the NSA shortly after publication and was superseded by the revised version, published in 1995 in FIPS  PUB 180-1 and commonly designated SHA-1. Collisions against the full SHA-1 algorithm can be produced using the shattered attack and the hash function should be considered broken. SHA-1 produces a hash digest of 160 bits (20 bytes).
+Documents may refer to SHA-1 as just ""SHA"", even though this may conflict with the other Secure Hash Algorithms such as SHA-0, SHA-2, and SHA-3.
+
+
+=== RIPEMD-160 ===
+
+RIPEMD (RACE Integrity Primitives Evaluation Message Digest) is a family of cryptographic hash functions developed in Leuven, Belgium, by Hans Dobbertin, Antoon Bosselaers, and Bart Preneel at the COSIC research group at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and first published in 1996. RIPEMD was based upon the design principles used in MD4 and is similar in performance to the more popular SHA-1. RIPEMD-160 has, however, not been broken.  As the name implies, RIPEMD-160 produces a hash digest of 160 bits (20 bytes).
+
+
+=== Whirlpool ===
+
+Whirlpool is a cryptographic hash function designed by Vincent Rijmen and Paulo S. L. M. Barreto, who first described it in 2000. Whirlpool is based on a substantially modified version of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Whirlpool produces a hash digest of 512 bits (64 bytes).
+
+
+=== SHA-2 ===
+
+SHA-2 (Secure Hash Algorithm 2) is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA), first published in 2001. They are built using the Merkle–Damgård structure, from a one-way compression function itself built using the Davies–Meyer structure from a (classified) specialized block cipher.
+SHA-2 basically consists of two hash algorithms: SHA-256 and SHA-512. SHA-224 is a variant of SHA-256 with different starting values and truncated output. SHA-384 and the lesser-known SHA-512/224 and SHA-512/256 are all variants of SHA-512. SHA-512 is more secure than SHA-256 and is commonly faster than SHA-256 on 64-bit machines such as AMD64.
+The output size in bits is given by the extension to the ""SHA"" name, so SHA-224 has an output size of 224 bits (28 bytes); SHA-256, 32 bytes; SHA-384, 48 bytes; and SHA-512, 64 bytes.
+
+
+=== SHA-3 ===
+
+SHA-3 (Secure Hash Algorithm 3) was released by NIST on August 5, 2015. SHA-3 is a subset of the broader cryptographic primitive family Keccak. The Keccak algorithm is the work of Guido Bertoni, Joan Daemen, Michael Peeters, and Gilles Van Assche. Keccak is based on a sponge construction which can also be used to build other cryptographic primitives such as a stream cipher. SHA-3 provides the same output sizes as SHA-2: 224, 256, 384, and 512 bits.
+Configurable output sizes can also be obtained using the SHAKE-128 and SHAKE-256 functions. Here the -128 and -256 extensions to the name imply the security strength of the function rather than the output size in bits.
+
+
+=== BLAKE2 ===
+
+BLAKE2, an improved version of BLAKE, was announced on December 21, 2012. It was created by Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Samuel Neves, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, and Christian Winnerlein with the goal of replacing the widely used but broken MD5 and SHA-1 algorithms. When run on 64-bit x64 and ARM architectures, BLAKE2b is faster than SHA-3, SHA-2, SHA-1, and MD5. Although BLAKE and BLAKE2 have not been standardized as SHA-3 has, BLAKE2 has been used in many protocols including the Argon2 password hash, for the high efficiency that it offers on modern CPUs. As BLAKE was a candidate for SHA-3, BLAKE and BLAKE2 both offer the same output sizes as SHA-3 – including a configurable output size.
+
+
+=== BLAKE3 ===
+
+BLAKE3, an improved version of BLAKE2, was announced on January 9, 2020. It was created by Jack O'Connor, Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Samuel Neves, and Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn. BLAKE3 is a single algorithm, in contrast to BLAKE and BLAKE2, which are algorithm families with multiple variants. The BLAKE3 compression function is closely based on that of BLAKE2s, with the biggest difference being that the number of rounds is reduced from 10 to 7. Internally, BLAKE3 is a Merkle tree, and it supports higher degrees of parallelism than BLAKE2.
+
+
+== Attacks on cryptographic hash algorithms ==
+There is a long list of cryptographic hash functions but many have been found to be vulnerable and should not be used. For instance, NIST selected 51 hash functions as candidates for round 1 of the SHA-3 hash competition, of which 10 were considered broken and 16 showed significant weaknesses and therefore did not make it to the next round; more information can be found on the main article about the NIST hash function competitions.
+Even if a hash function has never been broken, a successful attack against a weakened variant may undermine the experts' confidence. For instance, in August 2004 collisions were found in several then-popular hash functions, including MD5. These weaknesses called into question the security of stronger algorithms derived from the weak hash functions – in particular, SHA-1 (a strengthened version of SHA-0), RIPEMD-128, and RIPEMD-160 (both strengthened versions of RIPEMD).On August 12, 2004, Joux, Carribault, Lemuel, and Jalby announced a collision for the full SHA-0 algorithm. Joux et al. accomplished this using a generalization of the Chabaud and Joux attack. They found that the collision had complexity 251 and took about 80,000 CPU hours on a supercomputer with 256 Itanium 2 processors – equivalent to 13 days of full-time use of the supercomputer.In February 2005, an attack on SHA-1 was reported that would find collision in about 269 hashing operations, rather than the 280 expected for a 160-bit hash function. In August 2005, another attack on SHA-1 was reported that would find collisions in 263 operations. Other theoretical weaknesses of SHA-1 have been known: and in February 2017 Google announced a collision in SHA-1. Security researchers recommend that new applications can avoid these problems by using later members of the SHA family, such as SHA-2, or using techniques such as randomized hashing that do not require collision resistance.
+A successful, practical attack broke MD5 used within certificates for Transport Layer Security in 2008.Many cryptographic hashes are based on the Merkle–Damgård construction. All cryptographic hashes that directly use the full output of a Merkle–Damgård construction are vulnerable to length extension attacks. This makes the MD5, SHA-1, RIPEMD-160, Whirlpool, and the SHA-256 / SHA-512 hash algorithms all vulnerable to this specific attack. SHA-3, BLAKE2, BLAKE3, and the truncated SHA-2 variants are not vulnerable to this type of attack.
+
+
+== Attacks on hashed passwords ==
+
+Rather than store plain user passwords, controlled access system frequently store the hash of each user's password in a file or database. When someone requests access, the password they submit is hashed and compared with the stored value. If the database is stolen (an all too frequent occurrence), the thief will only have the hash values, not the passwords.
+Passwords may still be retrieved by an attacker from the hashes, because most people choose passwords in predictable ways. Lists of common passwords are widely circulated and many passwords are short enough that even all possible combinations may be tested if calculation of the hash does not take too much time.The use of cryptographic salt prevents some attacks, such as building files of precomputing hash values, e.g. rainbow tables. But searches on the order of 100 billion tests per second are possible with high-end graphics processors, making direct attacks possible even with salt.
+The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends storing passwords using special hashes called key derivation functions (KDFs) that have been created to slow brute force searches.: 5.1.1.2   Slow hashes include pbkdf2, bcrypt, scrypt, argon2, Balloon and some recent modes of Unix crypt. For KDFs that perform multiple hashes to slow execution, NIST recommends an iteration count of 10,000 or more.: 5.1.1.2 
+
+
+== See also ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+=== Citations ===
+
+
+=== Sources ===
+
+Menezes, Alfred J.; van Oorschot, Paul C.; Vanstone, Scott A. (7 December 2018). ""Hash functions"". Handbook of Applied Cryptography. CRC Press. pp. 33–. ISBN 978-0-429-88132-9.
+Aumasson, Jean-Philippe (6 November 2017). Serious Cryptography: A Practical Introduction to Modern Encryption. No Starch Press. ISBN 978-1-59327-826-7. OCLC 1012843116.
+
+
+== External links ==
+Paar, Christof; Pelzl, Jan (2009). ""11: Hash Functions"". Understanding Cryptography, A Textbook for Students and Practitioners. Springer. Archived from the original on 2012-12-08. (companion web site contains online cryptography course that covers hash functions)
+""The ECRYPT Hash Function Website"".
+Buldas, A. (2011). ""Series of mini-lectures about cryptographic hash functions"". Archived from the original on 2012-12-06.
+Open source python based application with GUI used to verify downloads."
+Decentralized finance,"Decentralized finance (often stylized as DeFi) offers financial instruments without relying on intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks by using smart contracts on a blockchain, mainly Ethereum. DeFi platforms allow people to lend or borrow funds from others, speculate on price movements on assets using derivatives, trade cryptocurrencies, insure against risks, and earn interest in savings-like accounts. DeFi uses a layered architecture and highly composable building blocks. Some applications promote high-interest rates but are subject to high risk. Coding errors and hacks have been common in DeFi.
+
+
+== History ==
+Decentralized exchanges (abbreviated DEXs) are alternative payment ecosystems with new protocols for financial transactions that emerged within the framework of decentralized finance, which is part of blockchain technology and fintech.CEXs (centralized exchanges), DEXs and DEX aggregators are all built on the multi-layered DeFi architecture or components, where each layer serves a well-defined purpose. (See Figure: Multi-layered Architecture of the DeFi Stack). 
+While they share common components of the first four layers, such as the Settlement layer, Asset layer, Protocol layer and Application layer, DEX aggregators have an additional component or Aggregator layer, which allows them to connect and interact with other DEXs via smart contracts.
+The Ethereum blockchain popularized smart contracts, which are the basis of DeFi, in 2017. Other blockchains have since implemented smart contracts.
+MakerDAO is a prominent lending DeFi platform based on a stablecoin that was established in 2017. It allows users to borrow DAI, a token pegged to the US dollar. Through a set of smart contracts that govern the loan, repayment, and liquidation processes, MakerDAO aims to maintain the stable value of DAI in a decentralized and autonomous manner.In June 2020, Compound Finance, a decentralized finance protocol enabling users to lend or borrow cryptocurrency assets and which provides typical interest payments to lenders, started rewarding lenders and borrowers with a cryptocurrency called Comp. This token, which is used for running Compound, can also be traded on cryptocurrency exchanges. Other platforms followed suit, leading to stacked investment opportunities known as ""yield farming"" or ""liquidity mining"", where speculators shift cryptocurrency assets between pools in a platform and between platforms to maximize their total yield, which includes not only interest and fees but also the value of additional tokens received as rewards.In July 2020, The Washington Post described decentralized finance techniques and the risks involved. In September 2020, Bloomberg said that DeFi made up two-thirds of the cryptocurrency market in terms of price changes and that DeFi collateral levels had reached $9 billion. Ethereum saw a rise in developers during 2020 due to the increased interest in DeFi.DeFi has attracted venture capitalists such as Andreessen Horowitz and Michael Novogratz.The Economist regarded the future of digital finance in 2022 as a ""three-way fight"" between: Big Tech, such as Facebook with its digital wallet; ""big rich countries"" that have been testing their own digital currencies; and software developers ""building all sorts of applications"" to decentralize finance. Handling the risks presented by crypto-assets already valued at $2.5 trillion was a particular challenge for US regulators.
+
+
+== Key characteristics ==
+DeFi revolves around decentralized applications, also known as DApps, that perform financial functions on distributed ledgers called blockchains, a technology that was made popular by Bitcoin and has since been adapted more broadly.  Rather than transactions being made through a centralized intermediary such as a cryptocurrency exchange or a traditional securities exchange, transactions are directly made between participants, mediated by smart contract programs. These smart contracts, or DeFi protocols, typically run using open-source software that is built and maintained by a community of developers.DApps are typically accessed through a browser extension or application. For example, MetaMask allows users to directly interact with Ethereum through a digital wallet. Many of these DApps can be linked to create complex financial services. For example, stablecoin holders can lend assets like USD Coin or DAI to a liquidity pool in a borrow/lending protocol like Aave, and allow others to borrow those digital assets by depositing their own collateral. The protocol automatically adjusts interest rates based on the demand for the asset. Some DApps source external (off-chain) data, such as the price of an asset, through blockchain oracles.Additionally, Aave introduced ""flash loans"", which are uncollateralized loans of an arbitrary amount that are taken out and paid back within a single blockchain transaction. Many exploits of DeFi platforms have used flash loans to manipulate cryptocurrency spot prices.Another DeFi protocol is Uniswap, which is a decentralized exchange (DEX) set up to trade tokens issued on Ethereum. Rather than using a centralized exchange to fill orders, Uniswap pays users to form liquidity pools in exchange for a percentage of the fees collected from traders swapping tokens in and out of the liquidity pools. Because no centralized party runs Uniswap (the platform is governed by its users), and any development team can use the open-source software, there is no entity to check the identities of the people using the platform and meet KYC/AML regulations. As of 2020, it is not clear what position regulators will take on the legality of such platforms.
+
+
+== Decentralized exchanges ==
+Decentralized exchanges (DEX) are a type of cryptocurrency exchange which allows for direct peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions to take place without the need for an intermediary, so they are fundamentally differerent from centralized exchanges (CEX).In transactions made through decentralized exchanges, the typical third party entities which would normally oversee the security and transfer of assets (e.g. banks, stockbrokers, online payment gateways, government institutions, etc.) are substituted by a blockchain or distributed ledger. Some common methods of operation include the use of smart contracts or order book relaying – although many other variations are possible, with differing degrees of decentralization.Because traders on a decentralized exchange often do not need to transfer their assets to the exchange before executing a trade, decentralized exchanges reduce the risk of theft from hacking of exchanges, but liquidity providers do need to transfer tokens to the decentralized exchange. Decentralized exchanges are also more anonymous than exchanges that implement know your customer (KYC) requirements.There are some signs that decentralized exchanges have been suffering from low trading volumes and reduced market liquidity. The 0x project, a protocol for building decentralized exchanges with interchangeable liquidity, attempts to solve this issue.
+
+
+=== Disadvantages ===
+Due to a lack of KYC processes, and no way to revert a transaction, users are at a loss if they are ever hacked for their passwords or private keys. Additionally, liquidity providers staking in DeFi protocols can suffer what is called an impermanent loss if, when withdrawn, the token pairs they have invested have altered in value ratio significantly.Although liquidity pool DEX are the most widely used, they may have some drawbacks. The most common problems of liquidity pool DEXes are  market price impact,  slippage, and front running.
+Price impact occurs because of the AMM (Automated Market Makers) nature itself — the larger the deal, the stronger impact it has on the price. For example, if the constant product AMM is in use, every deal must keep the product xy = k constant, where x and y are quantities of two cryptocurrencies (or tokens) in the pool. Price impact is non-linear, so the larger is the input amount Δx, the lower is the final ratio y / x that gives an exchange price. The problem is mostly significant for relatively large deals versus the liquidity pool size.Front running is a special type of attack in public blockchains when some participant (usually a miner) seeing an upcoming trading transaction puts his own transaction ahead (playing with a transaction fee for example), making the initial transaction less profitable or even reverted. To provide some protection against front running attacks, many DeFi exchanges offer a slippage tolerance option for end-users. This option serves as a safeguard, allowing users to set a limit on the worst acceptable price they are willing to accept from the time of transaction signing.
+
+
+=== Degrees of decentralization ===
+A decentralized exchange can still have centralized components, whereby some control of the exchange is still in the hands of a central authority. The governance of a DeFi platform, typically as part of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is done through tokens that grant voting rights and are distributed amongst participants. However, the majority of these tokens are often held by few individuals and are rarely used to vote.In July 2018, the decentralized exchange Bancor was reportedly hacked and suffered a loss of $13.5M in assets before freezing funds. In a Tweet, Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin spoke out and claimed an exchange cannot be decentralized if it can lose or freeze customer funds.Operators of decentralized exchanges can face legal consequences from government regulators. One example is the founder of EtherDelta, who in November 2018 settled charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over operating an unregistered securities exchange.
+
+
+== Errors and hacking ==
+Coding errors and hacks are common in DeFi. Blockchain transactions are irreversible, which means that an incorrect or fraudulent DeFi transaction cannot be corrected easily.
+The person or entity behind a DeFi protocol may be unknown and may disappear with investors' money. Investor Michael Novogratz has described some DeFi protocols as ""Ponzi-like"".DeFi has been compared to the initial coin offering craze of 2017, part of a cryptocurrency bubble. Inexperienced investors are at particular risk of losing money because of the sophistication required to interact with DeFi platforms and the lack of any intermediary with customer support. On the other hand, as the code for DeFi smart contracts is generally open-source software that can be copied to set up competing platforms, experienced users and user-created bots might create instabilities as funds shift between platforms which share the same code. In addition, DeFi platforms might inadvertently provide incentives for cryptocurrency miners to destabilize the system. In 2021, half of cryptocurrency crime was related to DeFi. This rise has been attributed to a combination of developer incompetence and non-existent or poorly enforced regulations. Theft from DeFi can come from either external hackers stealing from vulnerable projects, or ""rug pulls"", where the developers and influencers promote a project and then take the money, as a form of pump-and-dump.
+
+
+== Regulation ==
+In October 2021, the FATF included DeFi in the guidance for crypto service providers, making the authority's aim to regulate this type of asset. They are expecting each individual country to determine if individuals involved in DeFi can be considered a virtual asset provider and be subjected to the FATF's guidelines.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Global financial system
+Cryptocurrency wallet
+
+
+== References =="
+Smart contract,"A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need for trusted intermediators, arbitration costs, and fraud losses, as well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions. Smart contracts are commonly associated with  cryptocurrencies, and the smart contracts introduced by Ethereum are generally considered a fundamental building block for decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT applications.Vending machines are mentioned as the oldest piece of technology equivalent to smart contract implementation. The original Ethereum white paper by Vitalik Buterin in 2014 describes the Bitcoin protocol as a weak version of the smart contract concept as originally defined by Nick Szabo, and proposed a stronger version based on the Solidity language, which is Turing complete. Since Bitcoin, various cryptocurrencies have supported programming languages which allow for more advanced smart contracts between untrusted parties.A smart contract should not be confused with a smart legal contract, which refers to a traditional, natural-language, legally-binding agreement that has selected terms expressed and implemented in machine-readable code.
+
+
+== Etymology ==
+Smart contracts were first proposed in the early 1990s by Nick Szabo, who coined the term, using it to refer to ""a set of promises, specified in digital form, including protocols within which the parties perform on these promises"". In 1998, the term was used to describe objects in rights management service layer of the system The Stanford Infobus, which was a part of Stanford Digital Library Project.
+
+
+== Legal status of smart contracts ==
+
+A smart contract does not typically constitute a valid binding agreement at law, although a smart legal contract is intended to be both executable by a machine and legally enforceable. Smart contracts are not legal agreements, but rather means of performing obligations deriving from agreements that can be executed automatically by a computer program or a transaction protocol, such as technological means for the automation of payment obligations or obligations consisting in the transfer of tokens or cryptocurrencies. Some scholars have argued that the imperative or declarative nature of programming languages would impact the legal validity of smart contracts.Since the 2015 launch of the Ethereum blockchain, the term ""smart contract"" has been more specifically applied toward the notion of general purpose computation that takes place on a blockchain or distributed ledger. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology describes a ""smart contract"" as a ""collection of code and data (sometimes referred to as functions and state) that is deployed using cryptographically signed transactions on the blockchain network"". In this interpretation, used for example by the Ethereum Foundation or IBM, a smart contract is not necessarily related to the classical concept of a contract, but can be any kind of computer program. A smart contract also can be regarded as a secured stored procedure, as its execution and codified effects (like the transfer of value between parties) are strictly enforced and cannot be manipulated; after a transaction with specific contract details is stored into a blockchain or distributed ledger, it cannot be changed. That is because the actual execution of contracts is controlled and audited by the platform, not by arbitrary server-side programs connecting to the platform.In 2017, by implementing the Decree on Development of Digital Economy, Belarus has become the first-ever country to legalize smart contracts. Belarusian lawyer Denis Aleinikov is considered to be the author of a smart contract legal concept introduced by the decree.In 2018, a US Senate report said:  ""While smart contracts might sound new, the concept is rooted in basic contract law. Usually, the judicial system adjudicates contractual disputes and enforces terms, but it is also common to have another arbitration method, especially for international transactions. With smart contracts, a program enforces the contract built into the code."" A number of states in the US have passed legislation on the use of smart contracts, such as Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wyoming. And in April 2020, Iowa's House of Representatives passed a bill legally recognizing smart contracts in the state.In April 2021, the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT) published the Digital Dispute Resolution Rules (the Digital DR Rules) to help enable the rapid resolution of blockchain and crypto legal disputes in Britain.
+
+
+== Workings ==
+Similar to a transfer of value on a blockchain, deployment of a smart contract on a blockchain occurs by sending a transaction from a wallet for the blockchain.  The transaction includes the compiled code for the smart contract as well as a special receiver address. That transaction must then be included in a block that is added to the blockchain, at which point the smart contract's code will execute to establish the initial state of the smart contract. Byzantine fault-tolerant algorithms secure the smart contract in a decentralized way from attempts to tamper with it. Once a smart contract is deployed, it cannot be updated. Smart contracts on a blockchain can store arbitrary state and execute arbitrary computations. End clients interact with a smart contract through transactions. Such transactions with a smart contract can invoke other smart contracts. These transactions might result in changing the state and sending coins from one smart contract to another or from one account to another.The most popular blockchain for running smart contracts is Ethereum. On Ethereum, smart contracts are typically written in a Turing-complete programming language called Solidity, and compiled into low-level bytecode to be executed by the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Due to the halting problem and other security problems, Turing-completeness is considered to be a risk and is deliberately avoided by languages like Vyper. Some of the other smart contract programming languages missing Turing-completeness are Simplicity, Scilla, Ivy and Bitcoin Script. However, measurements in 2020 using regular expressions showed that only 35.3% of 53,757 Ethereum smart contracts at that time included recursions and loops — constructs connected to the halting problem.Several languages are designed to enable formal verification: Bamboo, IELE, Simplicity, Michelson (can be verified with Coq), Liquidity (compiles to Michelson), Scilla, DAML and Pact.
+Processes on a blockchain are generally deterministic in order to ensure Byzantine fault-tolerance. Nevertheless, real world application of smart contracts, such as lotteries and casinos, require secure randomness. In fact, blockchain technology reduces the costs for conducting of a lottery and is therefore beneficial for the participants. Randomness on blockchain can be implemented by using block hashes or timestamps, oracles, commitment schemes, special smart contracts like RANDAO and Quanta, as well as sequences from mixed strategy Nash equilibria.
+
+
+== Applications ==
+In 1998, Szabo proposed that smart contract infrastructure can be implemented by replicated asset registries and contract execution using cryptographic hash chains and Byzantine fault-tolerant replication. Askemos implemented this approach in 2002 using Scheme (later adding SQLite) as the contract script language.One proposal for using bitcoin for replicated asset registration and contract execution is called ""colored coins"". Replicated titles for potentially arbitrary forms of property, along with replicated contract execution, are implemented in different projects.
+As of 2015, UBS was experimenting with ""smart bonds"" that use the bitcoin blockchain in which payment streams could hypothetically be fully automated, creating a self-paying instrument.Inheritance wishes could hypothetically be implemented automatically upon registration of a death certificate by means of smart contracts. Birth certificates can also work together with smart contracts.Chris Snook of Inc.com suggests smart contracts could also be used to handle real estate transactions and could be used in the field of title records and in the public register.Seth Oranburg and Liya Palagashvili argue that smart contracts could also be used in employment contracts, especially temporary employment contracts, which according to them would benefit the employer.Smart contract on block chain technology for smart villages
+
+
+== Security issues ==
+The transactions data from a blockchain-based smart contract is visible to all users in the blockchain. The data provides cryptographic view of the transactions, however, this leads to a situation where bugs, including security holes, are visible to all yet may not be quickly fixed. Such an attack, difficult to fix quickly, was successfully executed on The DAO in June 2016, draining approximately US$50 million worth of Ether at the time, while developers attempted to come to a solution that would gain consensus.  The DAO program had a time delay in place before the hacker could remove the funds; a hard fork of the Ethereum software was done to claw back the funds from the attacker before the time limit expired. Other high-profile attacks include the Parity multisignature wallet attacks, and an integer underflow/overflow attack (2018), totaling over US$184 million.Issues in Ethereum smart contracts, in particular, include ambiguities and easy-but-insecure constructs in its contract language Solidity, compiler bugs, Ethereum Virtual Machine bugs, attacks on the blockchain network, the immutability of bugs and that there is no central source documenting known vulnerabilities, attacks and problematic constructs.
+
+
+== Difference from smart legal contracts ==
+Smart legal contracts are distinct from smart contracts. As mentioned above, a smart contract is not necessarily legally enforceable as a contract. On the other hand, a smart legal contract has all the elements of a legally enforceable contract in the jurisdiction in which it can be enforced and it can be enforced by a court or tribunal. Therefore, while every smart legal contract will contain some elements of a smart contract, not every smart contract will be a smart legal contract.There is no formal definition of a smart legal contract in the legal industry.A Ricardian contract is a type of smart legal contract.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
+Decentralized application
+Ethereum
+Regulation by algorithms
+Regulation of algorithms
+Ricardian contract (a design pattern to capture the intent of the agreement of parties)
+Loan
+Secure multiparty computation
+Transparency
+
+
+== References =="
+Initial coin offering,"An initial coin offering (ICO) or initial currency offering is a type of funding using cryptocurrencies. It is often a form of crowdfunding, although a private ICO which does not seek public investment is also possible. In an ICO, a quantity of cryptocurrency is sold in the form of ""tokens"" (""coins"") to speculators or investors, in exchange for legal tender or other (generally established and more stable) cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ether. The tokens are promoted as future functional units of currency if or when the ICO's funding goal is met and the project successfully launches.
+An ICO can be a source of capital for startup companies. ICOs can allow startups to avoid regulations that prevent them from seeking investment directly from the public, and intermediaries such as venture capitalists, banks, and stock exchanges, which may demand greater scrutiny and some percentage of future profits or joint ownership. ICOs may fall outside existing regulations, depending on the nature of the project, or be banned altogether in some jurisdictions, such as China and South Korea.
+Due to the lack of regulation and enforcement of securities law, ICOs have been the vehicle for scams and fraud. Fewer than half of all ICOs survive four months after the offering, while almost half of ICOs sold in 2017 failed by February 2018. Despite their record of failure and the falling prices of cryptocurrencies, a record $7 billion was raised via ICO from January–June 2018.
+
+
+== History ==
+The first token sale (also known as an ICO) was held by Mastercoin in July 2013. Ethereum raised money with a token sale in 2014, raising around 31,000 BTC in July, equal to approximately $18.3 million at the time.ICOs and token sales became popular in 2017. There were at least 18 websites tracking ICOs before mid-year. In May, the ICO for a new web browser called Brave generated about $35 million in under 30 seconds. Messaging app developer Kik's September 2017 ICO raised nearly $100 million. At the start of October 2017, ICO coin sales worth $2.3 billion had been conducted during the year, more than ten times as much as in all of 2016. As of November 2017, there were around 50 offerings a month, with the highest-grossing ICO as of January 2018, being Filecoin raising $257 million (and $200 million of that within the first hour of their token sale).By the end of 2017, ICOs had raised almost 40 times as much capital as they had raised in 2016, although still amounting to less than two percent of the capital raised by IPOs.
+ICOs are sometimes called ""token sales"". Amy Wan, a crowdfunding and syndication lawyer, described the coin in an ICO as ""a symbol of ownership interest in an enterprise—a digital stock certificate"" stating that they are likely subject to regulation as securities in the U.S. under the Howey test.Ethereum is (as of February 2018) the leading blockchain platform for ICOs with more than 80% market share. Tokens are generally based on the Ethereum ERC-20 standard.On January 30, 2018, Facebook banned advertisements for ICOs as well as for cryptocurrencies and binary options. By April 2018, ICO advertising has been banned not only by Facebook, but by Twitter, Google, and MailChimp. Facebook changed their mind and June 26, 2018 announced to reopen for approved advertisers.Efforts are under way to deploy ICO technology to represent regulated securities, referred to as Security Token Offerings (STOs), Digital Security Offerings (DSOs), and when listed on a regulated stock exchange, tokenized IPOs.An initial stake-pool offering (ISPO), also known as an ISO, is a novel variation of an ICO for funding cryptocurrency projects. In an ISPO, users stake their cryptocurrency holdings (mostly notably ADA) through a stake-pool operated by the cryptocurrency project.The first formal ISPO, and so far most successful, was launched on July, 1st, 2021. By October 2021 more than 35,000 participants across the world contributed more than 600 million ADA (worth more than $1 billion USD in October 2021). Participants received 0.065 $MELD / $ADA staked / epoch while keeping full ownership of their ADA.
+
+
+== Criticisms ==
+
+
+=== As a mechanism for scams ===
+Although ICOs can be used for fraud, they are also used for legal activities such as corporate finance and charitable fundraising. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned investors to beware of scammers using ICOs to execute ""pump and dump"" schemes, in which the scammer talks up the value of an ICO in order to generate interest and drive up the value of the coins, and then quickly ""dumps"" the coins for a profit.Snapchat, LinkedIn and MailChimp all have limited companies from marketing ICOs via their platforms. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, stated in 2017 that ""there are a lot of these initial coin offerings which in my opinion are absolute scams and people should be very wary of things that are going on in that area.""Chinese internet platforms Baidu, Tencent, and Weibo have also prohibited ICO advertisements.  The Japanese platform Line and the Russian platform Yandex have similar prohibitions.The UK Financial Conduct Authority has warned that ICOs are very high risk and speculative investments, are scams in some cases, and often offer no protections for investors. Even in cases of legitimate ICOs, funded projects are typically in an early and therefore high-risk stage of development. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) notes high risks associated with ICOs and the risk that investors may lose all of their cash.
+
+
+=== As a bubble ===
+
+A 2017 Wired article predicted in 2017 that the bubble was about to burst. In 2017, some investors flooded into ICOs in hopes of participating in the financial gains of similar size to those enjoyed by early Bitcoin or Ethereum speculators.
+
+
+== Regulation ==
+Following a speculative boom in cryptocurrency prices that peaked in December 2017, regulation of cryptocurrencies has been rapidly changing. The pace of change has been driven in part by incidents of cybertheft, trading halts, and possible market manipulation.Cryptocurrencies are based on distributed ledger technologies which enable anyone to purchase or transfer their cryptocurrency holdings to any other person without the need for an intermediary (such as an exchange) or to update a central record of ownership. Cryptocurrencies can be transferred easily across national and jurisdictional boundaries. This makes it difficult for central authorities to control and monitor the ownership and movement of holdings of cryptocurrencies.
+Countries have different approaches to how they regulate cryptocurrencies. This can depend on the nature of the cryptocurrency itself.
+There are two main types of cryptocurrencies from a regulatory perspective: utility tokens and asset-backed tokens.  Utility tokens may have value because they enable the holder to exchange the token for a good or service in the future, such as Bitcoin. Asset-backed tokens may have value because there is an underlying asset which the holder of the token can attribute value to.  In many countries it is uncertain whether utility tokens require regulation, while it is more likely that asset-backed tokens do require regulation.
+This makes it complex for the issuers of cryptocurrencies to analyze which countries their tokens (or coins) can be sold into, and for the prospective purchasers of cryptocurrencies to understand which regulations, if any, should apply.
+The Gibraltar British Overseas Territory Financial Services Commission announced in early February 2018 that regulations are being developed to qualify ""authorized sponsors"" of ICOs, who are supposed to be ""responsible for assuring compliance with disclosure"" and compliance with ""financial crimes rules"".
+
+
+== See also ==
+Alternative currency
+Airdrop
+Digital asset
+Private currency
+
+
+== References =="
+Non-fungible token,"A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that is recorded on a blockchain, and is used to certify ownership and authenticity. It cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchain and can be transferred by the owner, allowing NFTs to be sold and traded. NFTs can be created by anybody, and require few or no coding skills to create. NFTs typically contain references to digital files such as artworks, photos, videos, and audio. Because NFTs are uniquely identifiable, they differ from cryptocurrencies, which are fungible.
+Proponents claim that NFTs provide a public certificate of authenticity or proof of ownership, but the legal rights conveyed by an NFT can be uncertain. The ownership of an NFT as defined by the blockchain has no inherent legal meaning and does not necessarily grant copyright, intellectual property rights, or other legal rights over its associated digital file. An NFT does not restrict the sharing or copying of its associated digital file and does not prevent the creation of NFTs that reference identical files.
+The trading of NFTs in 2021 increased to $17 billion over just $82 million in the previous year. NFTs have been used as speculative investments and they have drawn criticism for the energy cost and carbon footprint associated with some types of blockchain, as well as their use in art scams. The NFT market has also been compared to an economic bubble or a Ponzi scheme. During their peak, the three biggest NFT platforms were Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano. In 2022, the NFT market collapsed; a May 2022 estimate was that the number of sales was down over 90% compared to 2021. By September 2023, one report claimed that over 95% of NFT collections had zero monetary value.
+
+
+== Characteristics ==
+An NFT is a data file, stored on a type of digital ledger called a blockchain, which can be sold and traded. The NFT can be associated with a particular asset – digital or physical – such as an image, art, music, or recording of a sports event. It may confer licensing rights to use the asset for a specified purpose. An NFT (and, if applicable, the associated license to use, copy, or display the underlying asset) can be traded and sold on digital markets. However, the extralegal nature of NFT trading usually results in an informal exchange of ownership over the asset that has no legal basis for enforcement, and so often confers little more than use as a status symbol.NFTs function like cryptographic tokens, but unlike cryptocurrencies, NFTs are not usually mutually interchangeable, so they are not fungible. A non-fungible token contains data links, for example which point to details about where the associated art is stored, that can be affected by link rot.
+
+
+=== Copyright ===
+An NFT solely represents a proof of ownership of a blockchain record and does not necessarily imply that the owner possesses intellectual property rights to the digital asset the NFT purports to represent. Someone may sell an NFT that represents their work, but the buyer will not necessarily receive copyright to that work, and the seller may not be prohibited from creating additional NFT copies of the same work. According to legal scholar Rebecca Tushnet, ""In one sense, the purchaser acquires whatever the art world thinks they have acquired. They definitely do not own the copyright to the underlying work unless it is explicitly transferred.""Certain NFT projects, such as Bored Apes, explicitly assign intellectual property rights of individual images to their respective owners. The NFT collection CryptoPunks was a project that initially prohibited owners of its NFTs from using the associated digital artwork for commercial use, but later allowed such use upon acquisition by the collection's parent company.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Early projects ===
+The first known ""NFT"", Quantum, was created by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash in May 2014. It consists of a video clip made by McCoy's wife, Jennifer. McCoy registered the video on the Namecoin blockchain and sold it to Dash for $4, during a live presentation for the Seven on Seven conferences at the New Museum in New York City. McCoy and Dash referred to the technology as ""monetized graphics"". This explicitly linked a non-fungible, tradable blockchain marker to a work of art, via on-chain metadata (enabled by Namecoin).In October 2015, the first NFT project, Etheria, was launched and demonstrated at DEVCON 1 in London, Ethereum's first developer conference, three months after the launch of the Ethereum blockchain. Most of Etheria's 457 purchasable and tradable hexagonal tiles went unsold for more than five years until March 13, 2021, when renewed interest in NFTs sparked a buying frenzy. Within 24 hours, all tiles of the current version and a prior version, each hardcoded to 1 ETH (US$0.43 at the time of launch), were sold for a total of US$1.4 million.In 2016, Rare Pepes a ""semi-fungible"" NFT project centered around the Pepe the Frog meme involving a collective of artists contributing their works into a curated directory, emerged on Bitcoin through a protocol known as Counterparty (which had been created in 2014 and used to create other assets).In 2017, several NFT projects emerged on Ethereum that utilized a ""fungible"" token standard known as ERC-20. Curio Cards in May of that year is credited with being Ethereum's first art NFT project using the fungible standard and features artwork in the shape of a card among a variety of image types including satirized corporate logos The generative art project of 10,000 pixelated characters known as CryptoPunks emerged soon after in June and would later establish itself as one of the most commercially successful NFT projects. In December, a clipart based collection featuring images of rocks called EtherRock emerged.in November of 2017, the widely acclaimed blockchain game on Ethereum known as CryptoKitties launched and is credited with pioneering what is considered to be the very first bona fide non-fungible token standard, known as ERC-721.
+
+
+=== ERC-721: Non-Fungible Token Standard ===
+While experiments around non-fungibility have existed on blockchains since as early as 2012 with Colored Coins on Bitcoin, a community-driven paper called ERC-721: Non-Fungible Token Standard was published in 2018 under the initiative of civic hacker and lead author William Entriken and is recognized as pioneering the foundation for NFTs and enabling the growth of the wider eco-system. It introduced the formalization and defining of the term Non-Fungible Token ""NFT"" in blockchain nomenclature by establishing a standard for smart contracts known as ""ERC-721"" whose tokens would have unique attributes and ownership details, ensuring no two tokens are alike. The creation of derivative standards followed from its influence on Ethereum (like ERC-1155 enabling semi-fungibility) and other blockchains. Its versatility enabled the pioneering of numerous use cases, including digital artwork, deeds to physical items, real estate (including virtual), access passes, and game assets. Ultimately, the emergence of ERC-721 is recognized for having fundamentally changed the landscape of digital verification, authentication, and ownership.
+
+
+==== Origins of the term ""NFT"" and its adoption ====
+The term NFT, prior to the blockchain game CryptoKitties' adoption of ERC-721, is not known to have been used for earlier projects. Through discussion among stakeholders for the ERC-721 draft, the word deed was given consideration among other alternatives including distinguishable asset, title, token, asset, equity, ticket. Ultimately, a vote was held during the paper's drafting phase for which word would be used in the published version and ""NFT"" was chosen by the stakeholders.The term ""NFT"" and the awareness of the ERC-721 standard received significant exposure and adopted use through the popularity of CryptoKitties in 2017. While using the standard, CryptoKitties earned the recognition of being the first mainstream NFT dApp; the game's usage was significant enough to have overwhelmed Ethereum's processing power at the time.
+
+
+==== Influence ====
+During the height of the breakout success of CryptoKitties and the emergence of ERC-721 tokens in 2017, an NFT marketplace called OpenSea emerged to capitalize off of the new non-fungible token standard. It positioned itself early in the NFT market landscape and grew to a $1.4 billion market cap in 2021 during the NFT boom in 2021.in 2021, ArtReview's Power 100 ranked ERC-721 at the #1 spot, praising it as ""the most powerful art entity in the world"" for creating a new kind of market for artworks that deviated from traditional gatekeeping norms and ushered in a different kind of collector. Artist Beeple sold an ERC-721 NFT of his composite artwork known as Everydays: The First 5000 Days at Christie's for $69 million and was the first instance of a legacy arthouse dealing in NFTs.
+
+
+=== General NFT market ===
+The NFT market experienced rapid growth during 2020, with its value tripling to US$250 million. In the first three months of 2021, more than US$200 million were spent on NFTs.In the early months of 2021, interest in NFTs increased after a number of high-profile sales and art auctions.In May 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that the NFT market was ""collapsing"". Daily sales of NFT tokens had declined 92% from September 2021, and the number of active wallets in the NFT market fell 88% from November 2021. While rising interest rates had impacted risky bets across the financial markets, the Journal said ""NFTs are among the most speculative.""A September 2023 report from cryptocurrency gambling website dappGambl claimed 95% of NFTs had fallen to zero monetary value.
+
+
+== Uses ==
+
+
+=== Commonly associated files ===
+NFTs have been used to exchange digital tokens that link to a digital file asset. Ownership of an NFT is often associated with a license to use such a linked digital asset but generally does not confer the copyright to the buyer. Some agreements only grant a license for personal, non-commercial use, while other licenses also allow commercial use of the underlying digital asset. This kind of decentralized intellectual copyright poses an alternative to established forms of safeguarding copyright controlled by state institutions and middlemen within the respective industry.
+
+
+==== Digital art ====
+
+Digital art is a common use case for NFTs. High-profile auctions of NFTs linked to digital art have received considerable public attention; the first such major house auction took place at Christie's in 2021. The work entitled Merge by artist Pak was the most expensive NFT, with an auction price of US$91.8 million and Everydays: the First 5000 Days, by artist Mike Winkelmann (known professionally as Beeple) the second most expensive at US$69.3 million in 2021.
+Some NFT collections, including Bored Apes, EtherRocks, and CryptoPunks, are examples of generative art, where many different images are created by assembling a selection of simple picture components in different combinations.In March 2021, the blockchain company Injective Protocol bought a $95,000 original screen print entitled Morons (White) from English graffiti artist Banksy, and filmed somebody burning it with a cigarette lighter. They uploaded (known as ""minting"" in the NFT scene) and sold the video as an NFT. The person who destroyed the artwork, who called themselves ""Burnt Banksy"", described the act as a way to transfer a physical work of art to the NFT space.American curator and art historian Tina Rivers Ryan, who specializes in digital works, said that art museums are widely not convinced that NFTs have ""lasting cultural relevance."" Ryan compares NFTs to the net art fad before the dot-com bubble. In July 2022, after the controversial sale of Michelangelo's Doni Tondo in Italy, the sale of NFT reproductions of famous artworks was prohibited in Italy. Given the complexity and lack of regulation of the matter, the Ministry of Culture of Italy temporarily requested that its institutions refrain from signing contracts involving NFTs.No centralized means of authentication exists to prevent stolen and counterfeit digital works from being sold as NFTs, although auction houses like Sotheby's, Christie's, and various museums and galleries worldwide started collaborations and partnerships with digital artists such as Refik Anadol, Dangiuz and Sarah Zucker.
+NFTs associated with digital artworks could be sold and bought via NFT platforms. OpenSea, launched in 2017, was one of the first marketplaces to host various types of NFTs. In July 2019, the National Basketball Association, the NBA Players Association and Dapper Labs, the creator of CryptoKitties, started a joint venture NBA Top Shot for basketball fans that let users buy NFTs of historic moments in basketball. In 2020, Rarible was found, allowing multiple assets. In 2021, Rarible and Adobe formed a partnership to simplify the verification and security of metadata for digital content, including NFTs. In 2021, a cryptocurrency exchange Binance, launched its NFT marketplace. In 2022, eToro Art by eToro was founded, focusing on supporting NFT collections and emerging creators.Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses showcase artworks associated with the respective NFTs both in virtual galleries and physical screens, monitors, and TVs.Mars House, an architectural NFT created in May 2020 by artist Krista Kim, sold in 2021 for 288 Ether (ETH) — at that time equivalent to US$524,558.
+
+
+==== Games ====
+
+NFTs can represent in-game assets. Some commentators describe these as being controlled ""by the user"" instead of the game developer if they can be traded on third-party marketplaces without permission from the game developer. Their reception from game developers, though, has been generally mixed, with some like Ubisoft embracing the technology but Valve and Microsoft formally prohibiting them.
+CryptoKitties was an early successful blockchain online game in which players adopt and trade virtual cats. The monetization of NFTs within the game raised a $12.5 million investment, with some kitties selling for over $100,000 each. Following its success, CryptoKitties was added to the ERC-721 standard, which was created in January 2018 (and finalized in June).
+In October 2021, Valve Corporation banned applications from their Steam platform if those applications use blockchain technology or NFTs to exchange value or game artifacts.
+In December 2021, Ubisoft announced Ubisoft Quartz, ""an NFT initiative which allows people to buy artificially scarce digital items using cryptocurrency"". The announcement was heavily criticized by audiences, with the Quartz announcement video attaining a dislike ratio of 96% on YouTube. Ubisoft subsequently unlisted the video from YouTube. The announcement was also criticized internally by Ubisoft developers. The Game Developers Conference's 2022 annual report stated that 70 percent of developers surveyed said their studios had no interest in integrating NFTs or cryptocurrency into their games.
+Some luxury brands minted NFTs for online video game cosmetics. In November 2021, investment firm Morgan Stanley published a note claiming that this could become a US$56 billion market by 2030.
+In July 2022, Mojang Studios announced that NFTs would not be permitted in Minecraft, saying that they went against the game's ""values of creative inclusion and playing together"".
+
+
+==== Music and film ====
+NFTs have been proposed for use within the film-industry as a way to tokenize movie-scenes and sell them as collectibles in the form of NFTs. Artists involved in the entertainment-industry can seek royalties through NFTs.
+So far, NFTs have often been used in both the music- as well as the film-industry.
+
+In May 2018, 20th Century Fox partnered with Atom Tickets and released limited-edition Deadpool 2 digital posters to promote the film. They were available from OpenSea and the GFT exchange.
+In March 2021, Adam Benzine's 2015 documentary Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah became the first motion picture and documentary film to be auctioned as an NFT.
+Other examples of NFTs being used in the film-industry include a collection of NFT-artworks for Godzilla vs. Kong, the release of both Kevin Smith's horror-movie KillRoy Was Here , and the 2021 film Zero Contact as NFTs in 2021.
+In April 2021, an NFT was released for the score of the movie Triumph, composed by Gregg Leonard.
+In November 2021, film director Quentin Tarantino released seven NFTs based on uncut scenes of Pulp Fiction. Miramax subsequently filed a lawsuit claiming that their film rights were violated and that the original 1993 contract with Tarantino gave them the right to mint NFTs in relation to Pulp Fiction.
+In August 2022, Muse released album Will of the People as 1,000 NFTs; it became the first album for which NFT sales would qualify for the UK and Australian charts.By February 2021, NFTs accounted for US$25 million of revenue generated through the sale of artwork and songs as NFTs. On February 28, 2021, electronic dance musician 3LAU sold a collection of 33 NFTs for a total of US$11.7 million to commemorate the three-year anniversary of his Ultraviolet album. On March 3, 2021, an NFT was made to promote the Kings of Leon album When You See Yourself. Other musicians who have used NFTs include American rapper Lil Pump, Grimes, visual artist Shepard Fairey in collaboration with record producer Mike Dean, and rapper Eminem.A paper presented at the 40th International Conference on Information Systems in Munich in 2019 suggested using NFTs as tickets for different types of events. This would enable organizers of the respective events or artists performing there to receive royalties on the resale of each ticket.
+
+
+==== Other associated files ====
+A number of internet memes have been associated with NFTs, which were minted and sold by their creators or by their subjects. Examples include Doge, an image of a Shiba Inu dog, as well as Charlie Bit My Finger, Nyan Cat and Disaster Girl.
+Some virtual worlds, often marketed as metaverses, have incorporated NFTs as a means of trading virtual items and virtual real estate.
+Some pornographic works have been sold as NFTs, though hostility from NFT marketplaces towards pornographic material has presented significant drawbacks for creators. By using NFTs people engaged in this area of the entertainment-industry are able to publish their works without third-party platforms being able to delete them.
+The first credited political protest NFT (""Destruction of Nazi Monument Symbolizing Contemporary Lithuania"") was a video filmed by Professor Stanislovas Tomas on April 8, 2019, and minted on March 29, 2021. In the video, Tomas uses a sledgehammer to destroy a state-sponsored Lithuanian plaque located on the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences honoring Nazi war criminal Jonas Noreika.
+In 2020, CryptoKitties developer Dapper Labs released the NBA TopShot project, which allowed the purchase of NFTs linked to basketball highlights. The project was built on top of the Flow blockchain.
+In March 2021 an NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first-ever tweet sold for $2.9 million. The same NFT was listed for sale in 2022 at $48 million, but only achieved a top bid of $280.
+On December 15, 2022, Donald Trump, former president of the United States, announced a line of NFTs featuring images of himself for $99 each. It was reported that he made between $100,001 and $1 million from the scheme.
+
+
+=== Use cases of NFTs in science and medicine ===
+NFTs have been proposed for purposes related to scientific and medical purposes. Suggestions include turning patient data into NFTs, tracking supply chains and minting patents as NFTs.The monetary aspect of the sale of NFTs has been used by academic institutions to finance research projects.
+
+The University of California, Berkeley announced in May 2021 its intention to auction NFTs of two patents of inventions for which the creators had received a Nobel Prize: the patents for CRISPR gene editing and cancer immunotherapy. The university would, however, retain ownership of the patents. 85% of funds gathered through the sale of the collection were to be used to finance research. The collection included handwritten notices and faxes by James Allison and was named The Fourth Pillar. It sold in June 2022 for 22 Ether, about US$54,000 at the time.
+George Church, a US geneticist, announced his intention to sell his DNA via NFTs and use the profits to finance research conducted by Nebula Genomics. In June 2022, 20 NFTs with his likeness were published instead of the originally planned NFTs of his DNA due to the market conditions at the time. Despite mixed reactions, the project is considered to be part of an effort to use the genetic data of 15,000 individuals to support genetic research. By using NFTs the project wants to ensure that the users submitting their genetic data are able to receive direct payment for their contributions. Several other companies have been involved in similar and often criticized efforts to use blockchain-based genetic data in order to guarantee users more control over their data and enable them to receive direct financial compensation whenever their data is being sold.
+Molecule Protocol, a project based in Switzerland, is trying to use NFTs to digitize the intellectual copyright of individual scientists and research teams to finance research. The project's whitepaper explains the aim is to represent the copyright of scientific papers as NFTs and enable their trade between researchers and investors on a future marketplace. The project was able to raise US$12 million in seed money in July 2022. A similar approach has been announced by RMDS Lab.
+
+
+=== Speculation ===
+NFTs representing digital collectables and artworks are a speculative asset. The NFT buying surge was called an economic bubble by experts, who also compared it to the Dot-com bubble. In March 2021 Mike Winkelmann called NFTs an ""irrational exuberance bubble"". By mid-April 2021, demand subsided, causing prices to fall significantly. Financial theorist William J. Bernstein compared the NFT market to 17th-century tulip mania, saying any speculative bubble requires a technological advance for people to ""get excited about"", with part of that enthusiasm coming from the extreme predictions being made about the product. For regulatory policymakers, NFTs have exacerbated challenges such as speculation, fraud, and high volatility.
+
+
+=== Money laundering ===
+NFTs, as with other blockchain securities and with traditional art sales, can potentially be used for money laundering. NFTs can be used for wash trading by creating several wallets for one individual, generating several fictitious sales and consequently selling the respective NFT to a third party. According to a report by Chainalysis these types of wash trades are becoming popular among money launderers because of the largely anonymous nature of transactions on NFT marketplaces. Looksrare, created in early 2022, came to be known for the large sums generated through the sale of NFTs in its earliest days, amounting to US$400,000,000 a day. These large sums were generated in large part through wash trading. The Royal United Services Institute said that any risks in relation to money laundering through NFTs could be mitigated through the use of ""KYC best practices, strong cyber security measures and a stolen art registry (...) without restricting the growth of this new market"".Auction platforms for NFTs may face regulatory pressure to comply with anti-money laundering legislation. Gou Wenjun, the director of a monitoring centre for the People's Bank of China, said that NFTs could ""easily become money-laundering tools"". He pointed to unlawful exploitation of cryptographic technologies and said that illicit actors often presented themselves as innovators in financial technology.A 2022 study from the United States Treasury assessed that there was ""some evidence of money laundering risk in the high-value art market"", including through ""the emerging digital art market, such as the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)"". The study considered how NFT transactions may be a simpler option for laundering money through art by avoiding the transportation or insurance complications in trading physical art. Several NFT exchanges were labeled as virtual asset service providers that may be subject to Financial Crimes Enforcement Network regulations. In March 2022, two people were charged for the execution of a million-dollar NFT scheme through wire fraud.The European Commission announced in July 2022 that it was planning to draw up regulations to combat money laundering by 2024.
+
+
+=== Other uses ===
+In 2019, Nike patented a system called CryptoKicks that would use NFTs to verify the authenticity of its physical products and would give a virtual version of the shoe to the customer.
+Certain NFT releases have also added exclusivity to the NFT utility, including access to private online clubs.
+
+
+== Standards in blockchains ==
+Several blockchains have added support for NFTs since Ethereum created its ERC-721 standard.ERC-721 is an ""inheritable"" smart contract standard, which means that developers can create contracts by copying from a reference implementation. ERC-721 provides core methods that allow tracking the owner of a unique identifier, as well as a way for the owner to transfer the asset to others. Another standard, ERC-1155, offers ""semi-fungibility"" whereby a token represents a class of interchangeable assets.
+
+
+== Issues and criticisms ==
+
+
+=== Unenforceability of copyright ===
+Because the contents of NFTs are publicly accessible, anybody can easily copy a file referenced by an NFT. Furthermore, the ownership of an NFT on the blockchain does not inherently convey legally enforceable intellectual property rights to the file.
+It has become well known that an NFT image can be copied or saved from a web browser by using a right click menu to download the referenced image. NFT supporters disparage this duplication of NFT artwork as a ""right-clicker mentality"". One collector quoted by Vice compared the value of a purchased NFT (in contrast to an unpurchased copy of the underlying asset) to that of a status symbol ""to show off that they can afford to pay that much"".The ""right-clicker mentality"" phrase spread virally after its introduction, particularly among those who were critical of the NFT marketplace and who appropriated the term to flaunt their ability to capture digital art backed by NFT with ease. This criticism was promoted by Australian programmer Geoffrey Huntley who created ""The NFT Bay"", modeled after The Pirate Bay. The NFT Bay advertised a torrent file purported to contain 19 terabytes of digital art NFT images. Huntley compared his work to an art project from Pauline Pantsdown and hoped the site would help educate users on what NFTs are and are not.
+
+
+=== Storage off-chain ===
+NFTs that represent digital art generally do not store the associated artwork file on the blockchain due to the large size of such a file, and the limited processing speed of blockchains. Such a token functions like a certificate of ownership, with a web address that points to the piece of art in question; this however makes the art itself vulnerable to link rot.
+
+
+=== Environmental concerns ===
+
+NFT purchases and sales are enabled by the high energy usage, and consequent greenhouse gas emissions, associated with blockchain transactions. Though all forms of Ethereum transactions have an impact on the environment, the direct impact of the transaction is also dependent upon the size of the Ethereum transaction. The proof-of-work protocol required to regulate and verify blockchain transactions on networks such as Ethereum consumes a large amount of electricity. To estimate the carbon footprint of a given NFT transaction requires a variety of assumptions or estimations about the manner in which that transaction is set up on the blockchain, the economic behavior of blockchain miners (and the energy demands of their mining equipment), and the amount of renewable energy being used on these networks. There are also conceptual questions, such as whether the carbon footprint estimate for an NFT purchase should incorporate some portion of the ongoing energy demand of the underlying network, or just the marginal impact of that particular purchase. An analogy might be the carbon footprint associated with an additional passenger on a given airline flight.Some NFT technologies use validation protocols, such as proof of stake, that use much less energy per validation cycle. Other approaches to reducing electricity include the use of off-chain transactions as part of minting an NFT. A number of NFT art sites hope to address these concerns, and some are moving to technologies and protocols with lower associated footprints. Others now allow the option of buying carbon offsets when making NFT purchases, although the environmental benefits of this have been questioned. In some instances, NFT artists have decided against selling some of their own work to limit carbon emission contributions.
+
+
+=== Artist and buyer fees ===
+Sales platforms charge artists and buyers fees for minting, listing, claiming, and secondary sales. Analysis of NFT markets in March 2021, in the immediate aftermath of Beeple's ""Everydays: the First 5000 Days"" selling for US$69.3 million, found that most NFT artworks were selling for less than US$200, with a third selling for less than US$100. Those selling NFTs below $100 were paying platform fees between 72.5% and 157.5% of that amount. On average the fees make up 100.5% of the price, meaning that such artists were on average paying more money in fees than they were making in sales.
+
+
+=== Plagiarism and fraud ===
+There have been cases of artists and creators having their work sold by others as an NFT without permission. After the artist Qing Han died in 2020, her identity was assumed by a fraudster and a number of her works became available for purchase as NFTs. Similarly, a seller posing as Banksy succeeded in selling an NFT supposedly made by the artist for $336,000 in 2021; the seller refunded the money after the case drew media attention. In 2022, it was discovered that as part of their NFT marketing campaign, an NFT company that voice actor Troy Baker announced his partnership with had plagiarized voice lines generated from 15.ai, a free AI text-to-speech project.The anonymity associated with NFTs and the ease with which they can be forged make it difficult to pursue legal action against NFT plagiarists.In February 2023, artist Mason Rothschild was ordered to pay $133,000 in damages to Hermès by a New York court, after a jury sided with the copyright holder, for his 2021 digital depictions of the brand's Birkin handbag.Some NFT marketplaces responded to cases of plagiarism by creating ""takedown teams"" to respond to artist complaints. The NFT marketplace OpenSea has rules against plagiarism and deepfakes (non-consensual intimate imagery). Some artists criticized OpenSea's efforts, saying they are slow to respond to takedown requests and that artists are subject to support scams from users who claim to be representatives of the platform. Others argue that there is no market incentive for NFT marketplaces to crack down on plagiarism.
+A process known as ""sleepminting"" allows a fraudster to mint an NFT in an artist's wallet and transfer it back to their own account without the artist becoming aware. This allowed a white hat hacker to mint a fraudulent NFT that had seemingly originated from the wallet of the artist Beeple.
+Plagiarism concerns led the art website DeviantArt to create an algorithm that compares user art posted on the DeviantArt website against art on popular NFT marketplaces. If the algorithm identifies art that is similar, it notifies and instructs the author how they can contact NFT marketplaces to request that they take down their plagiarized work.
+The BBC reported a case of insider trading when an employee of the NFT marketplace OpenSea bought specific NFTs before they were launched, with prior knowledge those NFTs would be promoted on the company's home page. NFT trading is an unregulated market in which there is no legal recourse for such abuses.
+When Adobe announced they were adding NFT support to their graphics editor Photoshop, the company proposed creating an InterPlanetary File System database as an alternative means of establishing authenticity for digital works.
+The price paid for specific NFTs and the sales volume of a particular NFT author may be artificially inflated by wash trading, which is prevalent due to a lack of government regulation on NFTs.
+
+
+=== Security ===
+In January 2022, it was reported that some NFTs were being exploited by sellers to unknowingly gather users' IP addresses. The ""exploit"" works via the off-chain nature of NFT, as the user's computer automatically follows a web address in the NFT to display the content. The server at the address can then log the IP address and, in some cases, dynamically alter the returned content to show the result. OpenSea has a particular vulnerability to this loophole because it allows HTML files to be linked.
+
+
+=== Pyramid/Ponzi scheme claims ===
+Critics compare the structure of the NFT market to a pyramid or Ponzi scheme, in which early adopters profit at the expense of those buying in later. In June 2022, Bill Gates stated his belief that NFTs are ""100% based on greater fool theory"".
+
+
+=== ""Rug pull"" exit scams ===
+A ""rug pull"" is a scam, similar to an exit scam or a pump and dump scheme, in which the developers of an NFT or other blockchain project hype the value of a project to pump up the price and then suddenly sell all their tokens to lock in massive profits or otherwise abandon the project while removing liquidity, permanently destroying the value of the project.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Decentralized autonomous organization
+Web3
+William Entriken (Lead author of ERC-721)
+Deed
+Certificate of Authenticity
+Title (Property)
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+ Media related to Non-fungible token at Wikimedia Commons"
+Winklevoss twins,"Winklevoss twins refers collectively to:
+
+Cameron Winklevoss (born 1981), American investor, rower, and entrepreneur
+Tyler Winklevoss (born 1981), American investor, rower, and entrepreneur"
+Mt. Gox,"Mt. Gox was a bitcoin exchange based in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Launched in 2010, it was handling over 70% of all bitcoin (BTC) buys/sells worldwide by early 2014, when it abruptly ceased operations amid revelations of its involvement in the loss/theft of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, then worth hundreds of millions in US dollars.In February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended trading, closed its website and exchange service, and filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors. In April 2014, the company began liquidation proceedings. Although 200,000 bitcoins have since been ""found"", the reasons for the disappearance—theft, fraud, mismanagement, or a combination of these—were initially unclear. New evidence presented in April 2015 by Tokyo security company WizSec led them to conclude that ""most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot cryptocurrency wallet over time, beginning in late 2011.""
+
+
+== Founding (2006–2010) ==
+In late 2006, programmer Jed McCaleb thought of building a website for users of the Magic: The Gathering Online tradable card game service, to let them trade ""Magic: The Gathering Online"" cards like stocks. In January 2007, he purchased the domain name mtgox.com, short for ""Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange"". Initially in beta release, sometime around late 2007, the service went live for approximately three months before McCaleb moved on to other projects, having decided it was not worth his time. In 2009, he reused the domain name to advertise his card game The Far Wilds.In July 2010, McCaleb read about bitcoin on Slashdot, and decided that the bitcoin community needed an exchange for trading bitcoin and regular currencies. On 18 July, Mt. Gox launched its exchange and price quoting service deploying it on the spare mtgox.com domain name.
+
+
+== Security breach, user DB leak, and invalid addresses (2011) ==
+In March 2011, McCaleb sold the site to French developer Mark Karpelès, who was living in Japan, stating that ""to really make mtgox what it has the potential to be would require more time than I have right now. So I've decided to pass the torch to someone better able to take the site to the next level.""On 13 June 2011, the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange reported some BTC 25,000 (US$400,000 at the time) had been stolen from 478 accounts. Then on Friday 17 June, Mt. Gox's user database leaked for sale to pastebin, signed by ~cRazIeStinGeR~ and tied to auto36299386@hushmail.com. The theft of Bitcoins from Mt. Gox accounts continued, reportedly, throughout that day.  On 19 June, a stream of fraudulent trades caused the nominal price of a bitcoin to fraudulently drop to one cent on the Mt. Gox exchange, after a hacker allegedly used credentials from a Mt. Gox auditor's compromised computer to transfer a large number of bitcoins illegally to himself. He used the exchange's software to sell them all nominally, creating a massive ""ask"" order at any price. Within minutes the price corrected to its correct user-traded value. Accounts with the equivalent of more than $8,750,000 were affected. To prove that Mt. Gox still had control of the coins, the move of 424,242 bitcoins from ""cold storage"" to a Mt. Gox address was announced beforehand, and executed in Block 132749.In October 2011, about two dozen transactions appeared in the block chain (Block 150951) that sent a total of BTC 2,609 to invalid addresses. As no private key could ever be assigned to them, these bitcoins were effectively lost. While the standard client would check for such an error and reject the transactions, nodes on the network would not, exposing a weakness in the protocol.
+
+
+== Processor of most of world's bitcoin trades; issues (2013) ==
+On 22 February 2013, following the introduction of new anti-money laundering requirements by e-commerce/online payment system company Dwolla, some Dwolla accounts became temporarily restricted. As a result, transactions from Mt. Gox to those accounts were cancelled by Dwolla. The funds never made it back to Mt. Gox accounts. The Mt. Gox help desk issued the following comment: ""Please be advised that you are actually not allowed to cancel any withdrawals received from Mt. Gox as we have never had this case before and we are working with Dwolla to locate your returned funds."" The funds were finally returned on 3 May, nearly three months later, with a note: ""Please be advised never to cancel any Dwolla withdrawals from us again"".In March 2013, the bitcoin transaction log or ""blockchain"" temporarily forked into two independent logs, with differing rules on how transactions could be accepted. The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits. Bitcoin prices briefly dipped by 23%, to $37, as the event occurred, before recovering to their previous level (approximately $48) in the following hours.By April 2013 and into 2014 the site had grown to the point where it was handling over 70% of the world's bitcoin trades, as the largest bitcoin intermediary and the world's leading bitcoin exchange.  With prices increasing rapidly, Mt. Gox suspended trading from 11 to 12 April for a ""market cooldown"". The value of a single bitcoin fell to a low of $55.59 after the resumption of trading, before stabilizing above $100. Around mid-May 2013, Mt. Gox traded 150,000 bitcoins per day, per Bitcoin Charts.On 2 May 2013 CoinLab filed a $75 million lawsuit against Mt. Gox, alleging a breach of contract. The companies had formed a partnership in February 2013 under which CoinLab was to handle all of Mt. Gox's North American services. CoinLab's lawsuit contended that Mt. Gox failed to allow it to move existing U.S. and Canadian customers from Mt. Gox to CoinLab.On 15 May 2013 the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warrant to seize money from Mt. Gox's U.S. subsidiary's account with payment processor Dwolla. The warrant suggested the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an investigative branch of the DHS, asserted that the subsidiary, which was not licensed by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), was operating as an unregistered money transmitter in the US. Between May and July the DHS seized more than $5 million from the subsidiary. On 29 June 2013, Mt. Gox received its money services business (MSB) license from FinCEN.Mt. Gox suspended withdrawals in US dollars on 20 June 2013. The Mizuho Bank branch in Tokyo that handled Mt. Gox transactions pressured Mt. Gox from then on to close its account. On 4 July 2013, Mt. Gox announced that it had ""fully resumed"" withdrawals, but as of 5 September 2013, few US dollar withdrawals had been successfully completed.On 5 August 2013, Mt. Gox announced that it incurred ""significant losses"" due to crediting deposits which had not fully cleared, and that new deposits would no longer be credited until the funds transfer was fully completed.Wired Magazine reported in November 2013 that customers were experiencing delays of weeks to months in withdrawing cash from their accounts. The article said that the company had ""effectively been frozen out of the U.S. banking system because of its regulatory problems"".
+
+
+== Withdrawals halted; trading suspended; bitcoin missing (2014) ==
+Customer complaints about long delays were mounting as of February 2014, with more than 3,300 posts in a thread about the topic on the Bitcoin Talk online forum.On 7 February 2014, Mt. Gox halted all bitcoin withdrawals. The company said it was pausing withdrawal requests ""to obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes"". The company issued a press release on 10 February 2014, stating that the issue was due to transaction malleability: ""A bug in the bitcoin software makes it possible for someone to use the bitcoin network to alter transaction details to make it seem like a sending of bitcoins to a bitcoin wallet did not occur when in fact it did occur. Since the transaction appears as if it has not proceeded correctly, the bitcoins may be resent. Mt Gox is working with the bitcoin core development team and others to mitigate this issue.""On 17 February 2014, with all Mt. Gox withdrawals still halted and competing exchanges back in full operation, the company published another press release indicating the steps it claimed it was taking to address security issues. In an email interview with the Wall Street Journal, CEO Mark Karpelès refused to comment on increasing concerns among customers about the financial status of the exchange, did not give a definite date on which withdrawals would be resumed, and wrote that the exchange would impose ""new daily and monthly limits"" on withdrawals if and when they were resumed. A poll of 3,000 Mt. Gox customers by CoinDesk indicated that 68% of polled customers were still awaiting funds from Mt. Gox.  The median waiting time was between one and three months, and 21% of poll respondents had been waiting for three months or more.On 20 February 2014, with all withdrawals still halted, Mt. Gox issued yet another statement, not giving any date for the resumption of withdrawals. A protest by two bitcoin enthusiasts outside the building that houses the Mt. Gox headquarters in Tokyo continued. Citing ""security concerns"", Mt. Gox moved its offices to a different location in Shibuya. Bitcoin prices quoted by Mt. Gox dropped to below 20% of the prices on other exchanges, reflecting the market's estimate of the unlikelihood of Mt. Gox paying its customers.On 23 February 2014, Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès resigned from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation. The same day, all posts on the company's Twitter account were removed.On 24 February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended all trading, and hours later its website went offline, returning a blank page. A leaked alleged internal crisis management document claimed that the company was insolvent, after having lost 744,408 bitcoins in a theft which went undetected for years.Six other major bitcoin exchanges released a joint statement distancing themselves from Mt. Gox, shortly before Mt. Gox's website went offline.On 25 February 2014, Mt. Gox reported on its website that a ""decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being"", citing ""recent news reports and the potential repercussions on Mt Gox's operations"". Chief executive Mark Karpelès told Reuters that Mt. Gox was ""at a turning point"".From 1 February 2014 until the end of March, during the period of Mt. Gox problems, the value of bitcoin declined by 36%.The United States Department of Justice identified Alexander Vinnik, owner of the BTC-e bitcoin exchange, as an alleged key figure in the laundering of Mt. Gox's stolen bitcoins.
+
+
+== Bankruptcy; stolen bitcoin (2014–present) ==
+On 28 February 2014, Mt. Gox filed in Tokyo for a form of bankruptcy protection from creditors called minji saisei (or civil rehabilitation) to allow courts to seek a buyer, reporting that it had liabilities of about 6.5 billion yen ($65 million, at the time), and 3.84 billion yen in assets.The company said it had lost almost 750,000 of its customers' bitcoins, and around 100,000 of its own bitcoins, totaling around 7% of all bitcoins, and worth around $473 million near the time of the filing. Mt. Gox released a statement saying, ""The company believes there is a high possibility that the bitcoins were stolen,"" blamed hackers, and began a search for the missing bitcoins. Chief Executive Karpelès said technical issues opened up the way for fraudulent withdrawals.
+Mt. Gox also faced lawsuits from its customers.On 9 March 2014, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, to halt U.S. legal action temporarily by traders who alleged the bitcoin exchange operation was a fraud.On 20 March 2014, Mt. Gox reported on its website that it found 199999.99 bitcoins—worth around $116 million—in an old digital wallet used prior to June 2011. That brought the total number of bitcoins the firm lost down to 650,000, from 850,000.New evidence presented in April 2015 by Tokyo security company WizSec led them to conclude that ""most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot wallet over time, beginning in late 2011.""On 14 April, Mt. Gox lawyers said that Karpelès would not appear for a deposition in a Dallas court, or heed a subpoena by FinCEN.
+On 16 April 2014, Mt. Gox gave up its plan to rebuild under bankruptcy protection, and asked a Tokyo court to allow it to be liquidated.In a 6 January 2015 interview, Kraken bitcoin exchange CEO Jesse Powell discussed being appointed by the bankruptcy trustee to assist in processing claims by the 127,000 creditors of Mt. Gox.CEO Karpelès was arrested in August 2015 by Japanese police and charged with fraud and embezzlement, and manipulating the Mt. Gox computer system to increase the balance in an account—this charge was not related to the missing 650,000 bitcoins. After he was interrogated, Japanese prosecutors accused him of misappropriating ¥315M ($2.6M) in bitcoin deposited into their trading accounts by investors at Mt. Gox, and moving it into an account he controlled, approximately six months before Mt. Gox failed in early 2014.By May 2016, creditors of Mt. Gox had claimed they lost $2.4 trillion when Mt. Gox went bankrupt, which they asked be paid to them. The Japanese trustee overseeing the bankruptcy said that only $91 million in assets had been tracked down to distribute to claimants, despite Mt. Gox having asserted in the weeks before it went bankrupt that it had more than $500 million in assets. The trustee's interim legal and accounting costs through that date, to be paid ultimately by creditors, were $5.5 million.In March 2018, the trustee Kobayashi said that enough BTC has been sold to cover the claims of creditors.On 14 March 2019, the Tokyo District Court found Karpelès guilty of falsifying data to inflate Mt. Gox's holdings by $33.5 million, for which he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, suspended for four years, meaning he will serve no time unless he commits additional offenses over the next four years. The Court acquitted Karpelès on a number of other charges, including embezzlement and aggravated breach of trust, based on its belief that Karpelès had acted without ill intent. Nonetheless, the verdict said Karpelès had inflicted ""massive harm to the trust of his users"" and there was ""no excuse"" for him to ""abuse his status and authority to perform clever criminal acts."" Karpelès issued a statement saying he was ""happy to be judged not guilty"" on the more serious charges and was discussing how to proceed with his lawyers regarding his conviction on the falsifying data charge.On 15 January 2021 Bloomberg News reported CoinLab Inc. had made an agreement with Nobuaki Kobayashi, the trustee to the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, and the Mt. Gox Investment Fund LP (MGIFLP), a unit of Fortress Investment Group. As much as 90% of the remaining Bitcoin tied up in bankruptcy proceedings would be offered to creditors.At the creditors meeting on 20 October 2021 it was announced that the Civil Rehabilitation Plan was accepted by 99% of the creditors (representing 83% of the total amount of voting rights) and that billions of dollars in Bitcoin would be provided as compensation. The plan was officially approved on 16 November 2021.On April 6, 2023, MtGox announced that the deadline for filing claims for damages had expired. Payments are promised to begin before October 31, 2023.On September 21, 2023, MtGox announced that the deadline for payments to be finalized had been pushed back one year, and that the new promised end date is October 31, 2024, although they may begin before the end of 2023 for creditors who have provided all necessary information in good order.As of 6 July 2022, a Japanese trustee of Mt. Gox is holding close to 142,000 Bitcoins.
+
+
+== See also ==
+2016 Bitfinex hack
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+MtGox Co., Ltd. bankruptcy docket from the United States Courts Archive, Court Listener from Free Law Project"
+The DAO,"The DAO was a digital decentralized autonomous organization and a form of investor-directed venture capital fund. After launching in April 2016 via a token sale, it became one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in history, but it ceased activity after much of its funds were taken in a hack in June 2016.
+The DAO had an objective to provide a new decentralized business model for organizing both commercial and non-profit enterprises. It was instantiated on the Ethereum blockchain and had no conventional management structure or board of directors. The code of the DAO is open-source.
+In June 2016, users exploited a vulnerability in The DAO code to enable them to siphon off one-third of The DAO's funds to a subsidiary account. The Ethereum community controversially decided to hard-fork the Ethereum blockchain to restore approximately all funds to the original contract. This split the Ethereum blockchain into two branches, each with its own cryptocurrency, where the original unforked blockchain continued as Ethereum Classic.By September 2016, the value token of The DAO, known by the moniker DAO, was delisted from major cryptocurrency exchanges (such as Poloniex and Kraken). The DAO and had in effect become defunct.
+
+
+== History ==
+The open source computer code behind the organization was written principally by Christoph Jentzsch, and released publicly on GitHub, where other contributors added to and modified the code. Simon Jentzsch, Christoph Jentzsch's brother, was also involved in the venture.The DAO was launched on 30 April 2016 with a website and a 28-day crowdsale to fund the organization.The token sale had raised more than US$34 million by 10 May 2016, and more than US$50 million-worth of Ether (ETH)—the digital value token of the Ethereum network—by 12 May, and over US$100 million by 15 May 2016. On 17 May 2016, the largest investor in the DAO held less than 4% of all DAO tokens and the top 100 holders held just over 46% of all DAO tokens. The fund's Ether value as of 21 May 2016 was more than US$150 million, from more than 11,000 investors.As of May 2016, The DAO had attracted nearly 14% of all Ether tokens issued to date.On 28 May 2016 the DAO tokens became tradable on various cryptocurrency exchanges.A paper published in May 2016 noted a number of security vulnerabilities associated with The DAO and recommended that investors in The DAO hold off from directing The DAO to invest in projects until the problems had been resolved. An Ethereum developer on GitHub pointed out a flaw relating to ""recursive calls"". On June 9 it was blogged about by Peter Vessenes, founder of the Blockchain Foundation. By June 14, fixes had been proposed and were awaiting approval by members of The DAO.
+On June 16,  further attention was called to recursive call vulnerabilities by bloggers affiliated with the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies & Contracts (IC3).On June 17, 2016, the DAO was subjected to an attack exploiting a combination of vulnerabilities, including the one concerning recursive calls, that resulted in the transfer of 3.6 million Ether - around a third of the 11.5 million Ether that had been committed to The DAO - valued at the time at around $50M. The funds were moved into an account subject to a 28-day holding period under the terms of the Ethereum smart contract so were not actually gone.
+Members of The DAO and the Ethereum community debated what to do next, with some calling the attack unethical but valid, since it did not violate DAO rules as coded, while others called for the Ether to be re-appropriated and/or The DAO to be shut down. The DAO community manager, Griff Green, organized a volunteer group of coders known as The White Hat Group to recoup the funds in the other 500 wallets before they could also be hacked. Eventually on July 20, 2016, the Ethereum network was hard forked to move the funds in The DAO to a recovery address where they could be exchanged back to Ethereum by their original owners. However, some continued to use the original unforked Ethereum blockchain, now called Ethereum Classic.
+In September 2016, Poloniex de-listed DAO trading pairs, followed by Kraken in December 2016.
+
+
+== Operation ==
+The DAO was a decentralized autonomous organization that exists as a set of contracts on the Ethereum blockchain,
+with no physical address or officials with formal authority. The theory underlying the DAO was that keeping operational power directly in the hands of owners, not delegated to managers, would ensure that invested funds would be used in the owners' best interests, thus solving the principal–agent problem.As an on-chain organization, The DAO claimed to be completely transparent, since everything was done by the code which anyone could see and audit. However, the complexity of the code base and the rapid deployment of the DAO meant that neither the coders, the auditors, nor the owners could ensure the intended behavior of the organization, with the eventual attacker finding an unexpected loophole.The DAO was intended to operate as ""a hub that disperses funds (currently in Ether, the Ethereum value token) to projects"". Investors receive voting rights by means of a digital share token; they vote on proposals submitted by contractors, and a group of curator volunteer make sure the projects are legal and the contractors properly identified before whitelisting them. The profits from an investment will flow back to their stakeholders as specified in an on-chain smart contract.The DAO did not hold the money of investors; instead, the investors owned DAO tokens that gave them rights to vote on potential projects. Anyone could pull out their funds by the time they first voted.The DAO's reliance on Ether allowed people to send their money to it from anywhere in the world without providing any identifying information.In order to provide an interface with real-world legal structures, the founders of The DAO established a Swiss-based company, ""DAO.Link"", registered in Switzerland as a limited liablity corporation (Société à responsabilité limitée, SARL), apparently co-founded by Slock.it and Neuchâtel-based digital currency exchange Bity SA. According to Jentzsch, DAO.Link was incorporated in Switzerland because local law allowed it to ""take money from an unknown source as long as you know where it's going.""
+
+
+== Marketing ==
+In May 2016, TechCrunch described The DAO as ""a paradigm shift in the very idea of economic organization. ... It offers complete transparency, total shareholder control, unprecedented flexibility, and autonomous governance.""The group's logo featured a capital letter Đ.
+
+
+== Risks ==
+In May 2016, the plan called for The DAO to invest Ether into ventures. It would back contractors and receive in return ""clear payment terms"" from contractors. The organizers promoted the DAO as providing investors with a return on their investment via those ""clear payment terms"" and they warned investors that there was a ""significant risk"" that the ventures funded by them may fail.
+The risks included unknown attack vectors and programming errors. Additional risks included the lack of legal precedents: it was unknown how governments and their regulatory agencies would treat The DAO's ventures and contracts. For example, legal systems might not acknowledge a corporate veil protecting investors from individual legal and financial liability for actions taken by The DAO and its contractors. It was unclear if the DAO was selling securities, which are highly regulated, and if so, what type of securities.DAO has a democratized organizational structure so that control can be spread among members, with no official leadership or regulation. Normally, there is no way to recover funds if a member mistakenly transfers cryptocurrency to the wrong wallet, including in case of fraud.Additionally, to function in the real world, contractors would likely need to convert the invested Ether into national currencies. In May 2016, attorney Andrew Hinkes said that those sales of Ether would likely depress its market value.The code behind The DAO had several safeguards against anyone capturing the voting rights of shareholders to win investments. However, this would not prevent fraudulent or over-optimistic proposals. A paper cited a ""number of security vulnerabilities"".
+
+
+== Proposals ==
+Slock.it (a German Blockchain venture), and Mobotiq (a French electric vehicle start-up) were listed as seeking potential funding on the daohub.org website during the May ""creation period"". Both Jentzsch brothers were involved in Slock.it as well.
+
+
+== Regulation ==
+On 25 July 2017, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published a report on initial coin offerings (ICOs) and The DAO, examining ""whether The DAO and associated entities and individuals violated federal securities laws with unregistered offers and sales of DAO Tokens in exchange for 'Ether,' a virtual currency."" The SEC concluded that DAO tokens sold on the Ethereum blockchain were securities and therefore possible violations of U.S. securities laws.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Vessenes, Peter (18 June 2016). ""Deconstructing The DAO Attack: A Brief Code Tour"".
+DuPont, Quinn (2017). “Experiments in Algorithmic Governance: An ethnography of ""The DAO,"" a failed Decentralized Autonomous Organization” (archive link). In Bitcoin and Beyond: The Challenges and Opportunities of Blockchains for Global Governance, edited by Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn. Routledge (in press)."
+Uniswap,"Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that uses a set of smart contracts (liquidity pools) to execute trades. It is an open source project and falls into the category of a DeFi product (Decentralized finance) because it uses smart contracts to facilitate trades. The protocol facilitates automated transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contracts. As of October 2020, Uniswap was estimated to be the largest decentralized exchange and the fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange overall by daily trading volume.
+
+
+== History ==
+Uniswap was created on November 2, 2018 by Hayden Adams, a former mechanical engineer at Siemens.The Uniswap company received investments from business angel Ric Burton and venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm Venture Capital, Union Square Ventures LLC and ParaFi.  Uniswap’s average daily trading volume was US$220 million in October 2020. Traders and investors have utilized Uniswap because of its usage in decentralized finance (DeFi).
+
+
+== Overview ==
+Uniswap is a decentralized finance protocol that is used to exchange cryptocurrencies and tokens; it is provided on blockchain networks that run open-source software. This is in contrast to cryptocurrency exchanges that are run by centralized companies.
+Changes to the protocol are voted on by the owners of a native cryptocurrency and governance token called UNI, and then implemented by a team of developers. Uniswap launched without the UNI token, and the token is not needed to trade on the exchange. Tokens were initially distributed to early users of the protocol.  Each Ethereum address that had interacted with Uniswap before September 1, 2020 received the ability to claim 400 UNI tokens (worth approximately $1,400 at the time). The market capitalization for the UNI token is over US$6.6 billion as of February 2022.
+
+
+== Protocol ==
+Uniswap acts as an automated market maker and uses liquidity pools to fulfill orders, instead of relying on a traditional market maker, with an aim to create more efficient markets. Individuals and bots—termed ""liquidity providers""—provide liquidity to the exchange by adding a pair of tokens to a smart contract which can be bought and sold by other users according to the constant-product rule 
+  
+    
+      
+        ϕ
+        (
+        x
+        ,
+        y
+        )
+        =
+        x
+        y
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \phi (x,y)=xy}
+  . In return, liquidity providers are given a percentage of the trading fees earned for that trading pair. For each trade, a certain amount of tokens is removed from the pool for an amount of the other token, thereby changing the price. No fees are required to list tokens which allow a large amount of Ethereum tokens to be accessible and no registration is required for users. As open-source software, Uniswap's code can also be forked to create new exchanges.
+
+
+== References =="
+Michael Saylor,
+Sam Bankman-Fried,"Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried (born March 5, 1992), or SBF, is an American entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud and related crimes in November 2023. Bankman-Fried founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and was celebrated as ""a kind of poster boy for crypto"". At the peak of his success, he was ranked the 41st-richest American in the Forbes 400.The public persona of Bankman-Fried masked significant problems at FTX, and in November 2022 when evidence of potential fraud began to surface, depositors quickly withdrew their assets, forcing the company into bankruptcy. On December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States, where he was indicted on seven criminal charges including wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance law violations.On November 2, 2023, in the case of United States v. Bankman-Fried, he was convicted of all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. His sentencing, where experts say he faces decades in prison, is scheduled for March 28, 2024.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Bankman-Fried was born on March 5, 1992, in Stanford, California. He is the son of Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors at Stanford Law School. His aunt Linda P. Fried is the dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. His younger brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried (b. c. 1995), previously worked as a legislative assistant, Wall Street trader, and director of the non-profit Guarding Against Pandemics and its associated political action committee, which came under scrutiny by Federal investigators after it was discovered that much of the $35 million on its books had been stolen by his older brother, Sam, from Alameda Research accounts. Bankman-Fried attended Canada/USA Mathcamp, a summer program for mathematically talented high-school students. He attended high school at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in physics and a minor in mathematics. As an MIT student he lived in a coeducational group house called Epsilon Theta.
+
+
+== Career ==
+In the summer of 2013, Bankman-Fried worked as an intern at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading firm, trading international ETFs. He returned there to work full-time after graduating from MIT.In September 2017, Bankman-Fried left Jane Street and moved to Berkeley, California, where he worked briefly at the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) as director of development from October to November 2017. In November 2017, following fund injections from billionaire computer programmer Jaan Tallinn and investor Luke Ding, Bankman-Fried and CEA's Tara Hedley (née Mac Aulay) co-founded the quantitative trading firm Alameda Research. As of 2021, Bankman-Fried owned approximately 90 percent of Alameda Research. In January 2018, Bankman-Fried organized an arbitrage trade, moving up to $25 million per day to take advantage of the higher price of bitcoin in Japan compared to the United States. After attending a cryptocurrency conference in Macau in late 2018, he moved to Hong Kong.Bankman-Fried founded the FTX cryptocurrency derivatives exchange in April 2019; it opened for business the following month. In September 2021, Bankman-Fried and the entire senior staff of FTX moved from Hong Kong to the Bahamas.Bankman-Fried was included on the 2021 list Forbes 30 Under 30, but was also included on Forbes 2023 Hall of Shame list, featuring ten picks the publication wishes it could take back.On December 8, 2021, Bankman-Fried, along with other industry executives, testified before the Committee on Financial Services about regulating the cryptocurrency industry. On May 12, 2022, it was disclosed that Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd., which was majority owned by Bankman-Fried, had bought 7.6 percent of Robinhood Markets stock. In a November 2022 affidavit before the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, and prior to his arrest, Bankman-Fried said he and FTX co-founder Gary Wang together borrowed over $546 million from Alameda Research in order to finance Emergent Fidelity Technologies' purchase of Robinhood Markets stock.In September 2022, it was reported that Bankman-Fried's advisors had offered on his behalf to help fund Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. According to messages released as part of the lawsuit between Twitter and Musk during the latter's acquisition of Twitter, on April 25, 2022, investment banker Michael Grimes wrote that Bankman-Fried would be willing to commit up to $5 billion. No investment actually took place when Musk finalized the acquisition. Bankman-Fried invested $500 million in Anthropic and more than $500 million in venture capital firms, including $200 million in Sequoia Capital, itself an investor in FTX. Sequoia published a ""glowing"" profile of Bankman-Fried, which it subsequently removed after the solvency crisis at FTX.In July 2023, allegations emerged that Bankman-Fried had considered ""purchasing"" the island country of Nauru to use as a bunker in the event of an apocalyptic event, in what has been described as a ""misguided and sometimes dystopian"" project.
+
+
+=== Views on charity and market regulation ===
+Bankman-Fried has publicly stated he supports effective altruism, contending that he was pursuing ""earning to give"" as an ""altruistic career."" He claimed to make donations ""not based on personal interest but on the projects that are proven by data to be the most effective at helping people,"" such as those that reduced existential risks like nuclear war, pandemics, artificial intelligence, and threats to American democracy.He was a member of Giving What We Can and donated around half of his Jane Street salary to charity. In June 2022, he signed the Giving Pledge; his name was removed from the list in December 2022 following his arrest.Bankman-Fried is the founder of Future Fund, whose team included Scottish philosopher and author William MacAskill, one of the founders of the effective altruism movement. After the collapse of FTX, all members of Future Fund simultaneously resigned. As of September 1, 2022, Future Fund stated it had committed around $160 million to 110 non-profits.The stated reason for FTX's relocation to the Bahamas was the friendly regulatory environment, and Bankman-Fried openly discussed paying off the country's $9 billion national debt. In November 2022, Bankman-Fried participated in an interview with Vox writer Kelsey Piper over Twitter private messages. He said that his and his company's advocacy for crypto regulation was not sincere and was ""just PR"", adding that regulators ""make everything worse"" and ""don't protect customers at all"". On his ""ethics stuff"", he agreed it was ""mostly a front"" and described ethics as a ""dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us"". He later claimed to have been referring to ESG, CSR, and greenwashing, as opposed to effective altruism, bed nets, and pandemic prevention.
+
+
+=== Bankruptcy of FTX ===
+
+In November 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao revealed on Twitter that his firm intended to sell its holdings of FTT, FTX's token. Binance received $529 million worth of FTT as part of a sale of its equity in FTX in 2021. Zhao published his tweet soon after a report from CoinDesk stating that the bulk of the holdings of Alameda, Bankman-Fried's trading firm, were in FTT. Bloomberg and TechCrunch reported that any sale by Binance would likely have an outsized impact on FTT's price because of the token's low trading volume. The announcement by Zhao of the pending sale and disputes between Zhao and Bankman-Fried on Twitter led to a decline in the price of FTT and other cryptocurrencies. Shortly before, Zhao had criticized Bankman-Fried's lobbying efforts.On November 8, Zhao announced that Binance had entered into a non-binding agreement to purchase FTX due to a liquidity crisis at FTX. Zhao stated that Binance would complete due diligence soon and that all crypto exchanges should avoid using tokens as collateral. He also wrote that he expected FTT to be ""highly volatile in the coming days as things develop"". On the day of the announcement, FTT lost 80 percent of its value. On November 9, The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had decided not to acquire FTX. Binance cited reports of FTX's mishandling of customer funds and pending investigations of FTX as the reasons the firm would not pursue the deal. Amid the crisis, Bankman-Fried was no longer a billionaire, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The very next day, Bloomberg reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating FTX and the nature of its connections to Bankman-Fried's other holdings.On November 11, 2022, FTX, Alameda Research, and more than 130 associated legal entities declared bankruptcy.Anonymous sources cited by Reuters stated that, earlier in 2022, Bankman-Fried had transferred at least $4 billion from FTX to Alameda Research without any disclosure to the companies' insiders or the public. The sources said that the money transferred included customer funds and that it was ostensibly backed by FTT and shares in Robinhood. An anonymous source cited by The Wall Street Journal stated that Bankman-Fried had disclosed that Alameda owed FTX about $10 billion, which was secured through customer funds held by FTX when FTX had, at the time, $16 billion in customer assets. According to anonymous sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, the Chief Executive of Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, told employees that Bankman-Fried was aware that FTX had lent its customers' money to Alameda to help it meet its liabilities.Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO of FTX on November 11, 2022, and was immediately replaced by John J. Ray III, who from 2004 to 2009 had chaired the effort to recover Enron assets for creditors through litigation against numerous banks in the Enron bankruptcy case. FTX and related entities filed for bankruptcy in Delaware on the same day.One day after FTX declared bankruptcy, on November 12, Bankman-Fried was interviewed by the Royal Bahamas Police Force. On November 17, Ray stated in a sworn declaration submitted in bankruptcy court that according to the firm's records, Alameda Research had lent $1 billion to Bankman-Fried, adding, ""Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information.""In the testimony Bankman-Fried had prepared to present in December 2022 to the House Financial Services Committee, he maintained that ""[FTX] is solvent"" but he was ""pressured"" by FTX general counsel and former partner at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm, Ryne Miller, to declare bankruptcy. He also implied that the managing team and the law firms managing the bankruptcy were using the Enron precedent in an effort to reap inordinately large amounts of fees from the process. After his arrest and imprisonment, he did not testify in Congress; John J. Ray III testified instead.
+
+
+== Arrest and charges ==
+On December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested shortly after 6:00 p.m. in his apartment complex in New Providence, Bahamas by the Royal Bahamas Police Force, with the expectation that he would be extradited to the United States to face trial. The arrest took place the day before Bankman-Fried was scheduled to appear before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, but Forbes obtained and published his prepared testimony.Earlier that day, the Southern District of New York had charged Bankman-Fried with ""wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering"". Philip Davis, the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, commented on the arrest that ""the Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law ... [W]hile the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, the Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX"". Braden Perry, a former senior trial lawyer at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, opined that a conviction on any of the charges might result in a prison sentence of years or decades.After being held at Fox Hill Prison in Nassau for ten days, Bankman-Fried consented to his extradition from the Bahamas to the United States to face charges. He was allowed to remain free on a $250 million bond, the largest such bond ever set in an American criminal proceeding. Among the conditions was that he would stay at his parents' home in California.On January 3, 2023, Bankman-Fried pled ""not guilty"" to fraud and the other charges.On February 1, 2023, the judge presiding over his case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, tightened the bail conditions and forbade Bankman-Fried from contacting current or former employees of FTX without attorneys present. The restriction was imposed as Judge Kaplan considered his contact with a potential witness as a ""material threat of inappropriate contact with prospective witnesses"", and intimated Bankman-Fried might deserve to be jailed pending trial.Four additional criminal charges levied against Bankman-Fried were announced on February 23, 2023, primarily focused on his making ""more than 300 illegal political donations."" A March 2023 indictment accused Bankman-Fried and others that they had ""directed and caused the transfer"" of at least $40 million in cryptocurrency to Chinese government officials, in order to unfreeze accounts of Alameda Research. In July, prosecutors dropped a campaign finance charge filed against him due to treaty obligations to the Bahamas created by his extradition.In a separate illegal campaign finance indictment in August, Bankman-Fried was accused of using $100 million in stolen funds of FTX customers towards 2022 U.S. elections campaign contributions.
+
+
+=== Pre-sentencing incarceration ===
+Prior to August 11, 2023, Bankman-Fried was out on bail and living with his parents under court ordered restrictions. On July 26, 2023, prosecutors alleged witness tampering after Bankman-Fried gave a reporter personal writings of former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison. Three weeks later, on August 11, after Judge Kaplan concluded that witness tampering had likely occurred, he revoked Bankman-Fried's bail; Bankman-Fried was led from the courtroom in handcuffs and remanded into custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn.On August 22, 2023, Bankman-Fried's counsel averred that his client was not being provided a vegan diet and that his medications for ADHD and depression were running low. He added that Bankman-Fried could not prepare for the trial subsisting on bread, water, and peanut butter. By November it was reported he had access to a vegetarian diet, had access to prescription drugs, and that he was participating in the ""mack"" economy by buying packets of mackerel from the prison commissary and exchanging them for services from other prisoners, such as a hair-cut.
+
+
+== First trial ==
+
+The trial began on October 3, 2023, at the Manhattan federal court, presided over by Judge Lewis Kaplan. Bankman-Fried faced seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.The Guardian summarized the trial as a question of ""whether Bankman-Fried is a crypto criminal mastermind or just an unlucky 'math nerd'"". Bankman-Fried was accused of having ""stole[n] billions from thousands of people"" by funnelling customers' money from FTX into Alameda to fund investments, loan repayments, real estate, and political donations. The defense, on the other hand, told the story of a young but earnest entrepreneur critically out of his depth. Bankman-Fried, they said, worked 12 to 22 hours a day, ""didn't drink or party"", and wanted to fund more work on pandemic prevention. A series of mistakes from him and his inexperienced executive team, a devastating market crash, and adversarial action from external parties caused his companies to spiral into bankruptcy. But at no point, they insisted, was there any intention to commit fraud.Over a dozen witnesses testified for the prosecution, including three FTX executives as part of plea deals. Nearly all the testimony for the defense was provided by the defendant, with small contributions from a risk management expert and a Bahamian lawyer.The case revolved largely around two ways that Alameda was able to access the funds of other FTX customers. The first was the line of credit Alameda had on the exchange. A credit line is a relatively common facility that enables an entity to function more efficiently as a liquidity provider, and margin traders on FTX were generally allowed to borrow from one another and do as they pleased with the borrowed funds. However, Alameda's credit line was ""essentially unlimited"", and it was exempt from posting collateral on the exchange to formally secure the borrows. Senior engineers testified that they had added these features at the direction of their CEO. Bankman-Fried contended that he had merely requested something that would prevent erroneous liquidation. He was not aware of the specific solution implemented, he said, although he was aware that Alameda ultimately borrowed ""around $2 billion"" this way.Bankman-Fried also denied knowledge of a crucial part of the second way that Alameda accessed customer funds. Before FTX had a bank account, it had used Alameda and other payment processors to receive fiat deposits from customers. ""What I believed is that either the funds were just being held in a bank account and not used or moved, or that they were being sent to FTX in one way or another,"" Bankman-Fried testified. He assumed that if Alameda had been spending the funds, that would have been reflected as a borrow on Alameda's main account on FTX. It wasn't until October or November 2022, he claimed, that he finally confirmed otherwise. The main Alameda account was not tracking those borrows. And Alameda had taken $8 billion. Other FTX executives conceded that ""it seemed like he might not know"" exactly how these funds were being processed and that while FTX's systems were tracking this liability, it was not displayed on the admin user's dashboard. But they also emphasized that ultimately at both businesses, Bankman-Fried called the shots.Much attention was given to the contrast between Bankman-Fried's public statements about his companies and the private realities. For example, on November 8, 2022, he had tweeted, ""FTX is fine. Assets are fine."" One FTX executive said these statements were false after first describing them to prosecutors as true but ""misleading"" because Bankman-Fried had been careful to talk solvency rather than liquidity. Misleading but technically true statements were a common theme. Bankman-Fried maintained, for instance, that he had never said Alameda was treated the same as other customers in all respects, only that Alameda was not front-running other customers. He also claimed to have only skimmed the ""dishonest"" balance sheets that Alameda's CEO sent to lenders and the defense made a great effort to demonstrate her autonomy in the role, the prime example being her refusal to follow Bankman-Fried's advice to hedge against a market downturn.
+
+
+=== End of first trial ===
+The trial ended on November 2, 2023, with the jury pronouncing Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven counts. The sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 28, 2024. Federal criminal court sentencing experts speculated on the potential amount of prison time likely to be meted.
+
+
+== Second trial ==
+A second trial, on five charges including bank fraud and bribery, was originally scheduled for early March 2024. These charges were brought by federal prosecutors after Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas in December 2022. Bankman-Fried had asked for these charges to be dismissed because they were not part of the extradition agreement with Bahamanian authorities, or alternatively he requested that they be resolved under a separate trial. Prosecutors subsequently decided not to proceed in the interest of the victims, who wanted a quicker resolution to the first trial's sentencing phase. Furthermore, a second trial would not affect how much time Bankman-Fried could face in prison under recommended federal guidelines.
+
+
+== Donations ==
+
+
+=== Politics ===
+
+
+==== 2020 and earlier ====
+Bankman-Fried's only campaign finance activity prior to 2019 was a $1,000 contribution in 2010 to Michael Bennet. For the 2020 U.S. elections, he contributed $5.2 million to two super PACs that supported the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign. Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Biden in the 2020 election cycle, after Michael Bloomberg.
+
+
+==== 2021–2022 ====
+Contributions were made to members of both U.S. political parties. In 2022, Bankman-Fried provided initial financial support for Protect Our Future PAC. Protect Our Future was launched as a political action committee of the Democratic Party with $10 million in initial funding aiming to support ""lawmakers who play the long game on policymaking in areas like pandemic preparedness and planning"", according to Politico. Bankman-Fried donated $27 million in total to this PAC.Donations to Republican Party campaigns in the 2021–22 cycle have been estimated at $262,200, including donations to senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Journalist Matthew Kassel says that Bankman-Fried had often donated to politicians who cultivate good Israel–United States relations but concluded ""it is unclear if his backing of pro-Israel candidates was coincidental or motivated by any personal interest in Middle East policy.""Bankman-Fried has claimed that he also donated large amounts of money to Republicans through dark money channels.
+
+
+==== 2022 U.S. midterm elections ====
+Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Democratic causes for the 2022 U.S. elections, with total donations of $39.8 million, only behind George Soros, of which $27 million was given to the Protect Our Future PAC. Additional recipients included The Next 50 PAC, Guarding Against Pandemics PAC, and the leadership PAC for Brendan Boyle. Bankman-Fried said in February 2022 that his political contributions were not aimed at influencing his policy goals for the cryptocurrency ecosystem; however, FTX was circulating a list of suggestions to policymakers at the time. He said in an interview that he would prefer the Commodity Futures Trading Commission take a larger role in regulating and guiding the crypto industry. According to The New York Times, the CFTC has a reputation for favoring relatively relaxed regulations for the industry when contrasted with other regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission.Bankman-Fried pushed for regulations via the proposed Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA) by extensively lobbying Congress, which was perceived as being favorable to FTX but harmful to the broader industry, especially its decentralized finance competitors. In May 2022, Bankman-Fried stated that he planned to spend ""north of $100 million"" in the 2024 presidential election with a ""soft ceiling"" of $1 billion. In October 2022, he walked back his pledged spending, calling it a ""dumb quote on my part"". However, in Going Infinite, Michael Lewis revealed that Bankman-Fried had begun to investigate the legality of directly paying Donald Trump not to run for president in 2024, with Trump's team allegedly giving a potential figure of $5 billion.In the aftermath of the FTX scandal, recipients of Bankman-Fried's and other FTX executives' political campaign contributions have been donating equal amounts to charitable organizations. Elected officials doing so include Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as Representatives Chuy García and Kevin Hern. A spokesperson for former Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke said that his campaign had received a $1 million donation from Bankman-Fried in October 2022, but returned the funds in early November, prior to the election.
+
+
+=== Pandemic prevention contributions and related controversy ===
+Bankman-Fried and his younger brother, Gabriel, contributed toward pandemic prevention initiatives, according to an investigative report by The Washington Post. One funding recipient was the Guarding Against Pandemics PAC, founded by Gabriel.On May 15, 2022, FTX announced it had donated $18 million to support ""TOGETHER Trial,"" a private, international, research consortium conducting clinical trials to test existing drugs as treatments for various conditions, including COVID-19.On July 20, 2023, an Insiders Avoidance Complaint was filed against Bankman-Fried and three former FTX/Alameda senior executives seeking to recover ""hundreds of millions of dollars that Defendants misappropriated."" The plaintiffs were FTX Trading Ltd., Alameda Research LLC, Alameda Research Ltd., North Dimension Inc., Cottonwood Grove Ltd., and Realm Shires, Inc. Their complaint stated that Guarding Against Pandemics—which received $35 million from Bankman-Fried between October 2021 and May 2022—and its associated political action committee ""needless to say, did nothing to prevent pandemics.""
+
+
+=== Attempts to recoup donations ===
+In December 2022, FTX's new management commenced efforts to ""claw back"" donations that had been made to politicians, celebrities, and charities as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. The company announced that it ""intends to...require the return of such payments, with interest accruing from the date any action is commenced."" Reports on this development included the assessment that ""clawing back payments made to politicians and charities is likely to be one of the easier parts of the bankruptcy process,"" on the basis of U.S. legislation that presumes ""payments or transfers made within 90 days of bankruptcy to be preferential if they result in a creditor getting more than it would have been entitled to at the end of the bankruptcy process,"" with the caveat that a ""clawback can attempt to recover the difference in the payments.""As of April 2023, $7.3 billion of the original $8 billion in missing funds had been recuperated in liquid assets. While an anonymous bidder reportedly valued the remaining portfolio at ""at least $2 billion"", Bloomberg's Matt Levine noted that ""'We lucked into enough money to pay everyone back' is not a legal defense to fraud"".In October 2023, FTX and its affiliated debtors revealed a proposed settlement of customer-property disputes, set to be presented for approval to the competent bankruptcy court. Accounting for both priority and non-priority claims against FTX, the settlement's parties offered their estimate that customers of FTX.com and FTX US would receive, collectively, over 90% of distributable value worldwide.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+Bankman-Fried is vegan. He was raised in a Jewish family. As of mid-2021, it was reported that he lived with approximately ten roommates in a five-bedroom Bahamian penthouse bought by co-CEO of FTX Ryan Salame. After FTX's collapse, the penthouse was put up for sale for close to $40 million.Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison was romantically involved with Bankman-Fried until their final split on April 15, 2022. While testifying against him in court in October 2023, she claimed that his hairstyle and clothes were part of a ""well calculated"" image that he tried to project. She stated that Bankman-Fried believed he had received higher bonuses while working at Jane Street because of his hair and used his appearance as ""an important part"" of FTX's ""narrative and image."" In court, Bankman-Fried appeared wearing a gray suit with hair trimmed down.Bankman-Fried once played the video game League of Legends while on a call attempting to secure an investment from Sequoia Capital. An article in the Financial Times characterized Bankman-Fried's ""win ratios"" in League of Legends as ""average-to-bad"".Τhroughout the recent developments, Bankman-Fried's parents have stood by him, writing in a December 2022 letter, around the time of the arrest, ""You are innocent."" In an e-mail to The New Yorker, his mother, Barbara Fried, denounced the actions of the prosecution and the bankruptcy team as ""McCarthyite"" and a ""relentless pursuit of total destruction,"" which is enabled by ""a credulous public."" After being jailed, Bankman-Fried's parents have taken turns traveling every Tuesday from California to be with him at the Brooklyn jail.
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Appearances on C-SPAN"
+USI Tech,"USI Tech Limited (also known as United Software Intelligence, or stylised as USI-TECH) was a Dubai-based cryptocurrency and forex platform trading provider, suspected to be a high-yield investment program and a Ponzi scheme. Prior to going offline with its users' funds, USI-Tech moved its website from a .com top-level domain, to a .io domain, while also appearing on a number of mirror domains.  Joseph Rotunda, Director of the Enforcement Division at the Texas State Securities Board, estimates that the scammers were able to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from all over the world.
+
+
+== Promoters ==
+Based on reports from Engadget, USI was initially promoted by Lee Oakey, Kerry Stockton, Rodney Burton, and Michael Faust. Oakey and Stockton are British, and currently live in Australia. Burton (49, in 2018), also known as ""Bitcoin Rodney"", was known for purchasing a $350,000 Lamborghini Huracan from Lamborghini Newport Beach in Costa Mesa, California, using Bitcoin. Burton was released from jail in 2010 after serving five years for drug dealing.Dan Putnam, who identifies as the CEO of R&D Global, a suspected USI parent company, was also seen boasting that a mere $40 investment can grow to US$10 million in just 18 months at Eyeline Trading. Eyeline's homepage was redirected to USI Tech for a brief period, before also going offline. R&D Global is registered as a limited liability company in Putnam's home state of Utah under the name of Richard Theodore Putnam.
+
+
+== Related companies ==
+
+
+=== Eyeline Trading ===
+As of March 2019, a domain belonging to USI Tech was redirected to Eyeline Trading, another company claiming to be a cryptocurrency and forex platform trading provider. The redirect suggests that the owners of the original website have relaunched the ponzi scheme through Eyeline Trading, following USI Tech's exposure to law enforcement.
+
+
+=== Wealthboss ===
+Eyeline Trading collapsed following non-payment, and was subsequently rebranded to WealthBoss after British Columbia Securities Commission issued a cautionary notice against dealing with Eyeline.
+
+
+=== R&D Global ===
+According to Engadget, both Eyeline and WealthBoss listed R&D Global as a parent company.
+
+
+== History ==
+On 20 December 2017, the Texas State Securities Board issued an emergency cease and desist order as neither USI-Tech nor the sales agents, Clifford Thomas and Michael Rivera, were registered to sell securities in Texas.
+On 21 December 2017, the Government of New Brunswick issued a consumer alert against investing at USI-Tech, and advised consumers to contact the Commission if approached about investing in the company.
+On 12 January 2018, the Attorney General of Guam issued a statement advising people to exercise caution when investing at USI Tech.
+On 26 January 2018, the Government of Saskatchewan issued a Cease Trade Order, and requested anyone contacted by USI-TECH to inform the Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Saskatchewan.
+On 9 April 2018, the Spanish financial regulator Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores added USI-Tech to its warning list of unauthorised firms and entities.
+On 16 August 2018, the Financial Markets Authority of New Zealand updated its warning list to include USI Tech on basis that it is offering financial services and products to residents of New Zealand without authorization, while also warning that the operators have the characteristics of a scam.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitconnect
+OneCoin
+PlusToken
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+History of bitcoin,"Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that uses cryptography to control its creation and management rather than relying on central authorities. Originally designed as a medium of exchange, Bitcoin is now primarily regarded as a store of value. The history of bitcoin started with its invention and implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto, who integrated many existing ideas from the cryptography community. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant store of value both on- and offline. From the mid-2010s, some businesses began accepting bitcoin in addition to traditional currencies.
+
+
+== Background ==
+Prior to the release of bitcoin, there were a number of digital cash technologies, starting with the issuer-based ecash protocols of David Chaum and Stefan Brands. The idea that solutions to computational puzzles could have some value was first proposed by cryptographers Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1992. The idea was independently rediscovered by Adam Back who developed hashcash, a proof-of-work scheme for spam control in 1997. The first proposals for distributed digital scarcity-based cryptocurrencies were Wei Dai's b-money and Nick Szabo's bit gold. Hal Finney developed reusable proof of work (RPOW) using hashcash as its proof of work algorithm.In the bit gold proposal which proposed a collectible market-based mechanism for inflation control, Nick Szabo also investigated some additional aspects including a Byzantine fault-tolerant agreement protocol based on quorum addresses to store and transfer the chained proof-of-work solutions, which was vulnerable to Sybil attacks, though.
+
+
+== Creation ==
+On the 18th of August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. Later that year, on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This paper detailed methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as ""a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust"". On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins. Embedded in the genesis block was the text:
+
+The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
+The text refers to a headline in The Times published on 3 January 2009. This note has been interpreted as both a timestamp of the genesis date and a derisive comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.: 18 The first open source bitcoin client was released on 9 January 2009, hosted at SourceForge.One of the first supporters, adopters, contributors to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world's first bitcoin transaction on 12 January 2009 (bloc 170). Other early supporters were Wei Dai, creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold.In the early days, Nakamoto is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins. Before disappearing from any involvement in bitcoin, Nakamoto in a sense handed over the reins to developer Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the 'anarchic' bitcoin community's closest thing to an official public face.
+
+
+=== Satoshi Nakamoto ===
+
+""Satoshi Nakamoto"" is presumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who designed the original bitcoin protocol in 2008 and launched the network in 2009. Nakamoto was responsible for creating the majority of the official bitcoin software and was active in making modifications and posting technical information on the bitcoin forum. There has been much speculation as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto with suspects including Dai, Szabo, and Finney –  and accompanying denials. The possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto was a computer collective in the European financial sector has also been discussed.Investigations into the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto were attempted by The New Yorker and Fast Company. The New Yorker's investigation brought up at least two possible candidates: Michael Clear and Vili Lehdonvirta. Fast Company's investigation brought up circumstantial evidence linking an encryption patent application filed by Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry on 15 August 2008, and the bitcoin.org domain name which was registered 72 hours later. The patent application (#20100042841) contained networking and encryption technologies similar to bitcoin's, and textual analysis revealed that the phrase ""... computationally impractical to reverse"" appeared in both the patent application and bitcoin's whitepaper. All three inventors explicitly denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.In May 2013, Ted Nelson speculated that Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki is Satoshi Nakamoto. Later in 2013 the Israeli researchers Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir pointed to Silk Road-linked Ross William Ulbricht as the possible person behind the cover. The two researchers based their suspicion on an analysis of the network of bitcoin transactions. These allegations were contested and Ron and Shamir later retracted their claim.Nakamoto's involvement with bitcoin does not appear to extend past mid-2010. In April 2011, Nakamoto communicated with a bitcoin contributor, saying that he had ""moved on to other things"".Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active community member, graphed the time stamps for each of Nakamoto's 500-plus bitcoin forum posts; the resulting chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Because this pattern held true even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was asleep at this time, and the hours of 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. GMT are midnight to 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (North American Eastern Standard Time). Other clues suggested that Nakamoto was British: A newspaper headline he had encoded in the genesis block came from the UK-published newspaper The Times, and both his forum posts and his comments in the bitcoin source code used British English spellings, such as ""optimise"" and ""colour"".An Internet search by an anonymous blogger of texts similar in writing to the bitcoin whitepaper suggests Nick Szabo's ""bit gold"" articles as having a similar author. Nick denied being Satoshi, and stated his official opinion on Satoshi and bitcoin in a May 2011 article.In a March 2014 article in Newsweek, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman doxed Dorian S. Nakamoto of Temple City, California, saying that Satoshi Nakamoto is the man's birth name. Her methods and conclusion drew widespread criticism.In June 2016, the London Review of Books published a piece by Andrew O'Hagan about Nakamoto.After a May 2020 YouTube documentary pointed to Adam Back as the creator of bitcoin, widespread discussion ensued. The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still remains a matter of dispute.
+
+
+== Growth ==
+
+
+=== 2010 ===
+The first notable retail transaction involving physical goods was paid on May 22, 2010, by exchanging 10,000 mined BTC for two pizzas delivered from a local pizza restaurant in Florida, marking May 22 as the Bitcoin Pizza Day for crypto-fans. At the time, a transaction's value was typically negotiated on the Bitcoin forum.On 6 August 2010, a major vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol was spotted. While the protocol did verify that a transaction's outputs never exceeded its inputs, a transaction whose outputs summed to more than 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          2
+          
+            64
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 2^{64}}
+   would overflow, permitting the transaction author to create arbitrary amounts of bitcoin. On 15 August, the vulnerability was exploited; a single transaction spent 0.5 bitcoin to send just over 92 billion bitcoins (
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          2
+          
+            63
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 2^{63}}
+   satoshis) to each of two different addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted, the bug was fixed, and the blockchain was forked by miners using an updated version of the bitcoin protocol. Since the blockchain was forked below the problematic transaction, the transaction no longer appears in the blockchain used by the Bitcoin network today. This was the only major security flaw found and exploited in bitcoin's history.
+
+
+=== 2011 ===
+Based on bitcoin's open-source code, other cryptocurrencies started to emerge.The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, started accepting bitcoins in January 2011, then stopped accepting them in June 2011, citing concerns about a lack of legal precedent about new currency systems. The EFF's decision was reversed on 17 May 2013 when they resumed accepting bitcoin.In May 2011, bitcoin payment processor, BitPay was founded to provide mobile checkout services to companies wanting to accept bitcoins as a form of payment.
+In June 2011, WikiLeaks and other organizations began to accept bitcoins for donations.
+
+
+=== 2012 ===
+In January 2012, bitcoin was featured as the main subject within a fictionalized trial on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife in the third-season episode ""Bitcoin for Dummies"". The host of CNBC's Mad Money, Jim Cramer, played himself in a courtroom scene where he testifies that he does not consider bitcoin a true currency, saying, ""There's no central bank to regulate it; it's digital and functions completely peer to peer"".In September 2012, the Bitcoin Foundation was launched to ""accelerate the global growth of bitcoin through standardization, protection, and promotion of the open source protocol"". The founders were Gavin Andresen, Jon Matonis, Mark Karpelès, Charlie Shrem, and Peter Vessenes.In October 2012, BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants accepting bitcoin under its payment processing service. In November 2012, WordPress started accepting bitcoins.
+
+
+=== 2013 ===
+In February 2013, the exchange Coinbase reported selling US$1 million worth of bitcoins in a single month at over $22 per bitcoin. The Internet Archive announced that it was ready to accept donations as bitcoins and that it intends to give employees the option to receive portions of their salaries in bitcoin currency.In Charles Stross's 2013 science fiction novel Neptune's Brood, the universal interstellar payment system is known as ""bitcoin"" and operates using cryptography. Stross later blogged that the reference was intentional, saying ""I wrote Neptune's Brood in 2011. Bitcoin was obscure back then, and I figured had just enough name recognition to be a useful term for an interstellar currency: it'd clue people in that it was a networked digital currency.""In March, the bitcoin transaction log, called the blockchain, temporarily split into two independent chains with differing rules on how transactions were accepted. For six hours two bitcoin networks operated at the same time, each with its own version of the transaction history. The core developers called for a temporary halt to transactions, sparking a sharp sell-off. Normal operation was restored when the majority of the network downgraded to version 0.7 of the bitcoin software. The Mt. Gox exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits and the exchange rate briefly dipped by 23% to $37 as the event occurred before recovering to previous level of approximately $48 in the following hours. In the US, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for ""decentralized virtual currencies"" such as bitcoin, classifying American bitcoin miners who sell their generated bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (or MSBs), that may be subject to registration and other legal obligations.In April, payment processors BitInstant and Mt. Gox experienced processing delays due to insufficient capacity resulting in the bitcoin exchange rate dropping from $266 to $76 before returning to $160 within six hours. Bitcoin gained greater recognition when services such as OkCupid and Foodler began accepting it for payment. In April 2013, Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, stated that ""a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems more like a collective delusion.""On 15 May 2013, the US authorities seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox after discovering that it had not registered as a money transmitter with FinCEN in the US.On 17 May 2013, it was reported that BitInstant processed approximately 30 percent of the money going into and out of bitcoin, and in April alone facilitated 30,000 transactions,On 23 June 2013, it was reported that the US Drug Enforcement Administration listed 11.02 bitcoins as a seized asset in a United States Department of Justice seizure notice pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881. This was the first time a government agency was reported to have seized bitcoin.In July 2013, a project began in Kenya linking bitcoin with M-Pesa, a popular mobile payments system, in an experiment designed to spur innovative payments in Africa. During the same month the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department in Thailand stated that bitcoin lacks any legal framework and would therefore be illegal, which effectively banned trading on bitcoin exchanges in the country.On 6 August 2013, Federal Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas of the Fifth Circuit ruled that bitcoins are ""a currency or a form of money"" (specifically securities as defined by Federal Securities Laws), and as such were subject to the court's jurisdiction, and Germany's Finance Ministry subsumed bitcoins under the term ""unit of account"" –  a financial instrument –  though not as e-money or a functional currency, a classification nonetheless having legal and tax implications.In September 2013, Chinese Govt. banned financial institution from trading in Bitcoin fearing a risk of money laundering.In October 2013, the FBI seized roughly 26,000 BTC from website Silk Road during the arrest of alleged owner Ross William Ulbricht. Two companies, Robocoin and Bitcoiniacs launched the world's first bitcoin ATM on 29 October 2013 in Vancouver, BC, Canada, allowing clients to sell or purchase bitcoin currency at a downtown coffee shop. Chinese internet giant Baidu had allowed clients of website security services to pay with bitcoins.In November 2013, the University of Nicosia announced that it would be accepting bitcoin as payment for tuition fees, with the university's chief financial officer calling it the ""gold of tomorrow"". During November 2013, the China-based bitcoin exchange BTC China overtook the Japan-based Mt. Gox and the Europe-based Bitstamp to become the largest bitcoin trading exchange by trade volume.In December 2013, Overstock.com announced plans to accept bitcoin in the second half of 2014. 
+On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China prohibited Chinese financial institutions from using bitcoins. After the announcement, the value of bitcoins dropped, and Baidu no longer accepted bitcoins for certain services. Buying real-world goods with any virtual currency had been illegal in China since at least 2009.On 4 December 2013, Alan Greenspan referred to it as a ""bubble"".
+
+
+=== 2014 ===
+In January 2014, Zynga announced it was testing bitcoin for purchasing in-game assets in seven of its games. That same month, The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino properties in downtown Las Vegas announced they would also begin accepting bitcoin, according to an article by USA Today. The article also stated the currency would be accepted in five locations, including the front desk and certain restaurants. The network rate exceeded 10 petahash/sec. TigerDirect and Overstock.com started accepting bitcoin.
+The same month, an operator of a U.S. bitcoin exchange, Robert Faiella better known as Charlie Shrem, was arrested for money laundering.In early February 2014, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox, suspended withdrawals citing technical issues. By the end of the month, Mt. Gox had filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan amid reports that 744,000 bitcoins had been stolen. Months before the filing, the popularity of Mt. Gox had waned as users experienced difficulties withdrawing funds.In June 2014, the network exceeded 100 petahash/sec. On 18 June 2014, it was announced that bitcoin payment service provider BitPay would become the new sponsor of St. Petersburg Bowl under a two-year deal, renamed the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl. Bitcoin was to be accepted for ticket and concession sales at the game as part of the sponsorship, and the sponsorship itself was also paid for using bitcoin.In July 2014, Newegg and Dell started accepting bitcoin.
+In September 2014, TeraExchange, LLC, received approval from the U.S.Commodity Futures Trading Commission ""CFTC"" to begin listing an over-the-counter swap product based on the price of a bitcoin. The CFTC swap product approval marks the first time a U.S. regulatory agency approved a bitcoin financial product.In December 2014, Microsoft began to accept bitcoin to buy Xbox games and Windows software.In 2014, several light-hearted songs celebrating bitcoin such as the ""Ode to Satoshi"" were released.A documentary film, The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, was released in 2014, featuring interviews with bitcoin users such as a computer programmer and a drug dealer.On 13 March 2014, Warren Buffett called bitcoin a ""mirage"".
+
+
+=== 2015 ===
+In January 2015, Coinbase raised US$75 million as part of a Series C funding round, smashing the previous record for a bitcoin company. Less than one year after the collapse of Mt. Gox, United Kingdom-based exchange Bitstamp announced that their exchange would be taken offline while they investigate a hack which resulted in about 19,000 bitcoins (equivalent to roughly US$5 million at that time) being stolen from their hot wallet. The exchange remained offline for several days amid speculation that customers had lost their funds. Bitstamp resumed trading on 9 January after increasing security measures and assuring customers that their account balances would not be impacted.In February 2015, the number of merchants accepting bitcoin exceeded 100,000.In 2015, the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna) became the first museum to acquire art using bitcoin, when it purchased the screensaver ""Event listeners"" of van den Dorpel.In September 2015, the establishment of the peer-reviewed academic journal Ledger (ISSN 2379-5980) was announced. It covers studies of cryptocurrencies and related technologies, and is published by the University of Pittsburgh. The journal encourages authors to digitally sign a file hash of submitted papers, which will then be timestamped into the bitcoin blockchain. Authors are also asked to include a personal bitcoin address in the first page of their papers.In October 2015, a proposal was submitted to the Unicode Consortium to add a code point for the bitcoin symbol.
+
+
+=== 2016 ===
+In January 2016, the network rate exceeded 1 exahash/sec.In March 2016, the Cabinet of Japan recognized virtual currencies like bitcoin as having a function similar to real money. Bidorbuy, the largest South African online marketplace, launched bitcoin payments for both buyers and sellers.In July 2016, researchers published a paper showing that by November 2013 bitcoin commerce was no longer driven by ""sin"" activities but instead by legitimate enterprises.In July 2016, the CheckSequenceVerify soft fork activated.In August 2016, a major bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex, was hacked and nearly 120,000 BTC (around $60m) was stolen.In November 2016, the Swiss Railway operator SBB (CFF) upgraded all their automated ticket machines so that bitcoin could be bought from them using the scanner on the ticket machine to scan the bitcoin address on a phone app.Bitcoin generates more academic interest year after year; the number of Google Scholar articles published mentioning bitcoin grew from 83 in 2009, to 424 in 2012, and 3580 in 2016. Also, the academic journal Ledger published its first issue. It is edited by Peter Rizun.
+
+
+=== 2017 ===
+The number of businesses accepting bitcoin continued to increase. In January 2017, NHK reported the number of online stores accepting bitcoin in Japan had increased 4.6 times over the past year. BitPay CEO Stephen Pair declared the company's transaction rate grew 3× from January 2016 to February 2017, and explained usage of bitcoin is growing in B2B supply chain payments.Bitcoin gains more legitimacy among lawmakers and legacy financial companies. For example, Japan passed a law to accept bitcoin as a legal payment method, and Russia has announced that it will legalize the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.Exchange trading volumes continue to increase. For the 6-month period ending March 2017, Mexican exchange Bitso saw trading volume increase 1500%.
+Between January and May 2017 Poloniex saw an increase of more than 600% active traders online and regularly processed 640% more transactions.In June 2017, the bitcoin symbol was encoded in Unicode version 10.0 at position U+20BF (₿) in the Currency Symbols block.Up until July 2017, bitcoin users maintained a common set of rules for the cryptocurrency. On 1 August 2017 bitcoin split into two derivative digital currencies, the bitcoin (BTC) chain with 1 MB blocksize limit and the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain with 8 MB blocksize limit. The split has been called the Bitcoin Cash hard fork.On 6 December 2017 the software marketplace Steam announced that it would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for its products, citing slow transactions speeds, price volatility, and high fees for transactions.
+
+
+=== 2018 ===
+
+On 22 January 2018, South Korea brought in a regulation that requires all the bitcoin traders to reveal their identity, thus putting a ban on anonymous trading of bitcoins.On 24 January 2018, the online payment firm Stripe announced that it would phase out its support for bitcoin payments by late April 2018, citing declining demand, rising fees and longer transaction times as the reasons.On 25 January 2018, George Soros referred to bitcoin as a bubble.In October 2018, Nelson Saiers installed a 9-foot inflatable rat covered with bitcoin references and code in front of the Federal Reserve as a homage to Satoshi Nakamoto and protests in New York City.In May 2018, the United States Department of Justice investigated bitcoin traders for possible price manipulation, focusing on practices like spoofing and wash trades. The investigation, which involved key exchanges like Bitstamp, Coinbase, and Kraken, led to subpoenas from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission after these exchanges failed to comply with information requests.
+
+
+=== 2019 ===
+The dawn of 2019 found Bitcoin trading below the $4000 mark after a difficult year for the global crypto market. It climbed to just over $12,000 in July before.
+
+
+=== 2020 ===
+On 2 July 2020, the Indian company 69
+Shares started to quote a set of bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETP) on the Xetra trading system of the Deutsche Boerse.On 1 September 2020, the Wiener Börse listed its first 21 titles denominated in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, including the services of real-time quotation and securities settlement.On 3 September 2020, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange admitted in its Regulated Market the quotation of the first bitcoin exchange-traded note (ETN), centrally cleared via Eurex Clearing.In October 2020, PayPal announced that it would allow its users to buy and sell bitcoin on its platform, although not to deposit or withdraw bitcoins.
+
+
+=== 2021 ===
+On 19 January 2021, Elon Musk placed the handle #Bitcoin in his Twitter profile, tweeting ""In retrospect, it was inevitable"", which caused the price to briefly rise about $5,000 in an hour to $37,299. On 25 January 2021, Microstrategy announced that it continued to buy bitcoin and as of the same date it had holdings of ₿70,784 worth $2.38 billion. On 8 February 2021 Tesla's announcement of a bitcoin purchase of US$1.5 billion and the plan to start accepting bitcoin as payment for vehicles, pushed the bitcoin price to $44,141. On 18 February 2021, Elon Musk stated that ""owning bitcoin was only a little better than holding conventional cash, but that the slight difference made it a better asset to hold"". After 49 days of accepting the digital currency, Tesla reversed course on 12 May 2021, saying they would no longer take bitcoin due to concerns that ""mining"" the cryptocurrency was contributing to the consumption of fossil fuels and climate change. The decision resulted in the price of bitcoin dropping around 12% on 13 May. During a July bitcoin conference, Musk suggested Tesla could possibly help bitcoin miners switch to renewable energy in the future and also stated at the same conference that if bitcoin mining reaches, and trends above 50 percent renewable energy usage, that ""Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin."" The price for bitcoin rose after this announcement.From February 2021, the Swiss canton of Zug allows for tax payments in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.On 1 June 2021, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced his plans to adopt bitcoin as legal tender; this would render El Salvador the world's first country to do so.On June 7, 2021, United States Justice Department recovered $2.3 million worth of bitcoin paid by Colonial Pipeline to a criminal cyber group in cyber-security ransom.On 8 June 2021, at the initiative of the president, pro-government deputies in the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted legislation—Ley Bitcoin or the Bitcoin Law—to make Bitcoin legal tender in the country alongside the US Dollar.
+
+
+=== 2022 ===
+Global economic factors that stemmed from Russia's War in Ukraine negatively affected the price of Bitcoin.On April 22, 2022, its price fell back down below $40,000. It further dropped to as low as $26,970 in May after the collapse of Terra-Luna and its sister stablecoin, UST, in addition to a shedding of tech stocks. On 18 June, Bitcoin dropped below $18,000, to trade at levels beneath its 2017 highs.In May 2022, following a vote by Wikipedia editors the previous month, the Wikimedia Foundation announced it would stop accepting donations in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies—eight years after it had first started taking contributions in bitcoin.
+
+
+=== 2023 ===
+In 2023, ordinals, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Bitcoin, went live.
+
+
+== Prices and value history ==
+Among the factors which may have contributed to this rise were the European sovereign-debt crisis – particularly the 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis – statements by FinCEN improving the currency's legal standing, and rising media and Internet interest.Until 2013, almost all market with bitcoins were in United States dollars (US$).As the market valuation of the total stock of bitcoins approached US$1 billion, some commentators called bitcoin prices a bubble. In early April 2013, the price per bitcoin dropped from $266 to around $50 and then rose to around $100. Over two weeks starting late June 2013 the price dropped steadily to $70. The price began to recover, peaking once again on 1 October at $140. On 2 October, The Silk Road was seized by the FBI. This seizure caused a flash crash to $110. The price quickly rebounded, returning to $200 several weeks later. The latest run went from $200 on 3 November to $900 on 18 November. Bitcoin passed US$1,000 on 28 November 2013 at Mt. Gox.
+
+
+== Forks ==
+
+A fork, referring to a blockchain, is defined variously as a blockchain split into two paths forward, or as a change of protocol rules. Accidental forks on the bitcoin network regularly occur as part of the mining process. They happen when two miners find a block at a similar point in time. As a result, the network briefly forks. This fork is subsequently resolved by the software which automatically chooses the longest chain, thereby orphaning the extra blocks added to the shorter chain (that were dropped by the longer chain).
+
+
+=== March 2013 ===
+On 12 March 2013, a bitcoin miner running version 0.8.0 of the bitcoin software created a large block that was considered invalid in version 0.7 (due to an undiscovered inconsistency between the two versions).
+This created a split or ""fork"" in the blockchain since computers with the recent version of the software accepted the invalid block and continued to build on the diverging chain, whereas older versions of the software rejected it and continued extending the blockchain without the offending block.
+This split resulted in two separate transaction logs being formed without clear consensus, which allowed for the same funds to be spent differently on each chain. In response, the Mt. Gox exchange temporarily halted bitcoin deposits. The exchange rate fell 23% to $37 on the Mt. Gox exchange but rose most of the way back to its prior level of $48.Miners resolved the split by downgrading to version 0.7, putting them back on track with the canonical blockchain.
+User funds largely remained unaffected and were available when network consensus was restored. The network reached consensus and continued to operate as normal a few hours after the split.
+
+
+=== August 2017 ===
+Two significant forks took place in August. One, Bitcoin Cash, is a hard fork off the main chain in opposition to the other, which is a soft fork to implement Segregated Witness.
+
+
+== Regulatory issues ==
+On 18 March 2013, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (or FinCEN), a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury, issued a report regarding centralized and decentralized ""virtual currencies"" and their legal status within ""money services business"" (MSB) and Bank Secrecy Act regulations. It classified digital currencies and other digital payment systems such as bitcoin as ""virtual currencies"" because they are not legal tender under any sovereign jurisdiction. FinCEN cleared American users of bitcoin of legal obligations by saying, ""A user of virtual currency is not an MSB under FinCEN's regulations and therefore is not subject to MSB registration, reporting, and recordkeeping regulations."" However, it held that American entities who generate ""virtual currency"" such as bitcoins are money transmitters or MSBs if they sell their generated currency for national currency: ""...a person that creates units of convertible virtual currency and sells those units to another person for real currency or its equivalent is engaged in transmission to another location and is a money transmitter."" This specifically extends to ""miners"" of the bitcoin currency who may have to register as MSBs and abide by the legal requirements of being a money transmitter if they sell their generated bitcoins for national currency and are within the United States. Since FinCEN issued this guidance, dozens of virtual currency exchangers and administrators have registered with FinCEN, and FinCEN is receiving an increasing number of suspicious activity reports (SARs) from these entities.Additionally, FinCEN claimed regulation over American entities that manage bitcoins in a payment processor setting or as an exchanger: ""In addition, a person is an exchanger and a money transmitter if the person accepts such de-centralized convertible virtual currency from one person and transmits it to another person as part of the acceptance and transfer of currency, funds, or other value that substitutes for currency.""In summary, FinCEN's decision would require bitcoin exchanges where bitcoins are traded for traditional currencies to disclose large transactions and suspicious activity, comply with money laundering regulations, and collect information about their customers as traditional financial institutions are required to do.Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of FinCEN said, ""Virtual currencies are subject to the same rules as other currencies. ... Basic money-services business rules apply here.""In its October 2012 study, Virtual currency schemes, the European Central Bank concluded that the growth of virtual currencies will continue, and, given the currencies' inherent price instability, lack of close regulation, and risk of illegal uses by anonymous users, the Bank warned that periodic examination of developments would be necessary to reassess risks.In 2013, the U.S. Treasury extended its anti-money laundering regulations to processors of bitcoin transactions.In June 2013, Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis wrote in Forbes that he received a warning letter from the California Department of Financial Institutions accusing the foundation of unlicensed money transmission. Matonis denied that the foundation is engaged in money transmission and said he viewed the case as ""an opportunity to educate state regulators.""In late July 2013, the industry group Committee for the Establishment of the Digital Asset Transfer Authority began to form to set best practices and standards, to work with regulators and policymakers to adapt existing currency requirements to digital currency technology and business models and develop risk management standards.In 2014, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed an administrative action against Erik T. Voorhees, for violating Securities Act Section 5 for publicly offering unregistered interests in two bitcoin websites in exchange for bitcoins.By December 2017, bitcoin futures contracts began to be offered, and the US Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) was formally settling the futures daily.
+By 2019, multiple trading companies were offering services around bitcoin futures.
+
+
+== Bitcoin faucets ==
+
+A bitcoin faucet is a reward system, in the form of a website or software app, that dispenses rewards in the form of a satoshi, which is worth a hundredth of a millionth BTC, for visitors to claim in exchange for completing a captcha or task as described by the website. There are also faucets that dispense alternative cryptocurrencies. The first bitcoin faucet was called ""The Bitcoin Faucet"" and was developed by Gavin Andresen in 2010. It originally gave out five bitcoins per person.
+The rewards are dispensed at various predetermined intervals of time as rewards for completing simple tasks such as captcha completion and as prizes from simple games. Faucets usually give fractions of a bitcoin, but the amount will typically fluctuate according to the value of bitcoin. Some faucets also have random larger rewards. To reduce mining fees, faucets normally save up these small individual payments in their own ledgers, which then add up to make a larger payment that is sent to a user's bitcoin address.Because bitcoin transactions are irreversible and there are many faucets, they have become targets for hackers interested in stealing bitcoins. Advertisements are the main income source of bitcoin faucets. Faucets try to get traffic from users by offering free bitcoin as an incentive. Some ad networks also pay directly in bitcoin. This means that faucets often have a low profit margin. Some faucets also make money by mining altcoins in the background, using the user's CPU.
+
+
+== Theft and exchange shutdowns ==
+Bitcoins can be stored in a bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet. Theft of bitcoin has been documented on numerous occasions. At other times, bitcoin exchanges have shut down, taking their clients' bitcoins with them. A Wired study published April 2013 showed that 45 percent of bitcoin exchanges end up closing.On 19 June 2011, a security breach of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange caused the nominal price of a bitcoin to fraudulently drop to one cent on the Mt. Gox exchange, after a hacker used credentials from a Mt. Gox auditor's compromised computer illegally to transfer a large number of bitcoins to himself. They used the exchange's software to sell them all nominally, creating a massive ""ask"" order at any price. Within minutes, the price reverted to its correct user-traded value. Accounts with the equivalent of more than US$8,750,000 were affected.In July 2011, the operator of Bitomat, the third-largest bitcoin exchange, announced that he had lost access to his wallet.dat file with about 17,000 bitcoins (roughly equivalent to US$220,000 at that time). He announced that he would sell the service for the missing amount, aiming to use funds from the sale to refund his customers.In August 2011, MyBitcoin, a now defunct bitcoin transaction processor, declared that it was hacked, which caused it to be shut down, paying 49% on customer deposits, leaving more than 78,000 bitcoins (equivalent to roughly US$800,000 at that time) unaccounted for.In early August 2012, a lawsuit was filed in San Francisco court against Bitcoinica –  a bitcoin trading venue –  claiming about US$460,000 from the company. Bitcoinica was hacked twice in 2012, which led to allegations that the venue neglected the safety of customers' money and cheated them out of withdrawal requests.In late August 2012, an operation titled Bitcoin Savings and Trust was shut down by the owner, leaving around US$5.6 million in bitcoin-based debts; this led to allegations that the operation was a Ponzi scheme. In September 2012, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had reportedly started an investigation on the case.In September 2012, Bitfloor, a bitcoin exchange, also reported being hacked, with 24,000 bitcoins (worth about US$250,000) stolen. As a result, Bitfloor suspended operations. The same month, Bitfloor resumed operations; its founder said that he reported the theft to FBI, and that he plans to repay the victims, though the time frame for repayment is unclear.On 3 April 2013, Instawallet, a web-based wallet provider, was hacked, resulting in the theft of over 35,000 bitcoins which were valued at US$129.90 per bitcoin at the time, or nearly $4.6 million in total. As a result, Instawallet suspended operations.On 11 August 2013, the Bitcoin Foundation announced that a bug in a pseudorandom number generator within the Android operating system had been exploited to steal from wallets generated by Android apps; fixes were provided 13 August 2013.In October 2013, Inputs.io, an Australian-based bitcoin wallet provider was hacked with a loss of 4100 bitcoins, worth over A$1 million at time of theft. The service was run by the operator TradeFortress. Coinchat, the associated bitcoin chat room, was taken over by a new admin.On 26 October 2013, a Hong Kong–based bitcoin trading platform owned by Global Bond Limited (GBL) vanished with 30 million yuan (US$5 million) from 500 investors.Mt. Gox, the Japan-based exchange that in 2013 handled 70% of all worldwide bitcoin traffic, declared bankruptcy in February 2014, with bitcoins worth about $390 million missing, for unclear reasons. The CEO was eventually arrested and charged with embezzlement.On 3 March 2014, Flexcoin announced it was closing its doors because of a hack attack that took place the day before. In a statement that once occupied their homepage they announced on 3 March 2014 that ""As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss [the hack], we are closing our doors immediately."" Users can no longer log into the site.
+Chinese cryptocurrency exchange Bter lost $2.1 million in BTC in February 2015.
+The Slovenian exchange Bitstamp lost bitcoin worth $5.1 million to a hack in January 2015.
+The US-based exchange Cryptsy declared bankruptcy in January 2016, ostensibly because of a 2014 hacking incident; the court-appointed receiver later alleged that Cryptsy's CEO had stolen $3.3 million.
+In August 2016, hackers stole some $72 million in customer bitcoin from the Hong Kong–based exchange Bitfinex.In December 2017, hackers stole 4,700 bitcoins from NiceHash, a platform that allowed users to sell hashing power. The value of the stolen bitcoins totaled about $80 million at the time.On 19 December 2017, Yapian, a company that owns the Youbit cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, filed for bankruptcy following a hack, the second in eight months.On 11 November 2022 FTX filed for bankruptcy with an estimated $8 billion missing in customer funds.
+
+
+== Taxation and regulation ==
+
+In 2012, the Cryptocurrency Legal Advocacy Group (CLAG) stressed the importance for taxpayers to determine whether taxes are due on a bitcoin-related transaction based on whether one has experienced a ""realization event"": when a taxpayer has provided a service in exchange for bitcoins, a realization event has probably occurred and any gain or loss would likely be calculated using fair market values for the service provided.""In August 2013, the German Finance Ministry characterized bitcoin as a unit of account, usable in multilateral clearing circles and subject to capital gains tax if held less than one year.On 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China announced in a press release regarding bitcoin regulation that whilst individuals in China are permitted to freely trade and exchange bitcoins as a commodity, it is prohibited for Chinese financial banks to operate using bitcoins or for bitcoins to be used as legal tender currency, and that entities dealing with bitcoins must track and report suspicious activity to prevent money laundering. The value of bitcoin dropped on various exchanges between 11 and 20 percent following the regulation announcement, before rebounding upward again.
+
+
+== Arbitrary blockchain content ==
+Bitcoin's blockchain can be loaded with arbitrary data. In 2018 researchers from RWTH Aachen University and Goethe University identified 1,600 files added to the blockchain, 59 of which included links to unlawful images of child exploitation, politically sensitive content, or privacy violations. ""Our analysis shows that certain content, e.g. illegal pornography, can render the mere possession of a blockchain illegal.""Interpol also sent out an alert in 2015 saying that ""the design of the blockchain means there is the possibility of malware being injected and permanently hosted with no methods currently available to wipe this data"".
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Interactive bitcoin history"
+Bitcoin scalability problem,"The Bitcoin scalability problem refers to the limited capability of the Bitcoin network to handle large amounts of transaction data on its platform in a short span of time. It is related to the fact that records (known as blocks) in the Bitcoin blockchain are limited in size and frequency.Bitcoin's blocks contain the transactions on the bitcoin network.: ch. 2  The on-chain transaction processing capacity of the bitcoin network is limited by the average block creation time of 10 minutes and the original block size limit of 1 megabyte. These jointly constrain the network's throughput. The transaction processing capacity maximum estimated using an average or median transaction size is between 3.3 and 7 transactions per second. There are various proposed and activated solutions to address this issue.
+
+
+== Background ==
+The block size limit, in concert with the proof-of-work difficulty adjustment settings of bitcoin's consensus protocol, constitutes a bottleneck in bitcoin's transaction processing capacity. This can result in increasing transaction fees and delayed processing of transactions that cannot be fit into a block. Various proposals have come forth on how to scale bitcoin, and a contentious debate has resulted. Business Insider in 2017 characterized this debate as an ""ideological battle over bitcoin's future.""
+
+
+== Forks ==
+
+Increasing the network's transaction processing limit requires making changes to the technical workings of bitcoin, in a process known as a fork. Forks can be grouped into two types:
+
+
+=== Hard fork ===
+A hard fork is a change to the blockchain protocol that is not backward compatible and requires all users to upgrade their software in order to continue participating in the network. In a hard fork, the network splits into two separate versions: one that follows the new rules and one that follows the old rules.
+For example, Ethereum was hard forked in 2016 to ""make whole"" the investors in The DAO, which had been hacked by exploiting a vulnerability in its code. In this case, the fork resulted in a split creating Ethereum and Ethereum Classic chains. In 2014 the Nxt community was asked to consider a hard fork that would have led to a rollback of the blockchain records to mitigate the effects of a theft of 50 million NXT from a major cryptocurrency exchange. The hard fork proposal was rejected, and some of the funds were recovered after negotiations and ransom payment. Alternatively, to prevent a permanent split, a majority of nodes using the new software may return to the old rules, as was the case of bitcoin split on 12 March 2013.A more recent hard-fork example is of Bitcoin in 2017, which resulted in a split creating Bitcoin Cash. The network split was mainly due to a disagreement in how to increase the transactions per second to accommodate for demand.Bitcoin Cash (""BCH"") is a hard fork of bitcoin increasing the maximum block size. Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited each supported an increase to the maximum block size.  On 1 August 2017, the day when BTC forked, the BTC blockchain split into two separate blockchains: one maintained in accordance with the rules currently valid for Bitcoin, and the other maintained in accordance with the rules currently valid for Bitcoin Cash. If one had coins on the Bitcoin chain prior to the fork and has not yet moved them, one could move them on one or the other or both chains. Thus, all holders of Bitcoin also became holders of Bitcoin Cash at the time of the split. Henceforth Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are separate and trade at entirely independent valuations relative to each other, fiat currencies, and other assets.  
+Bitcoin SV (""BSV"") is a hard fork of Bitcoin Cash and offers a competing implementation of the Bitcoin protocol that aims to solve the Bitcoin scalability problem by implementing an unbounded block cap size, enabling the network to produce blocks of unlimited size.
+
+
+=== Soft fork ===
+A soft fork is a backward-compatible change to the blockchain protocol that allows new rules to be introduced without requiring all users to upgrade their software. In a soft fork, a majority of the network’s miners implement the new rules and begin following the updated version of the blockchain. The rest of the network can continue to follow the blockchain, but they will be unable to validate that new blocks follow the updated rules. Because a soft fork is backward-compatible, it does not result in the creation of a new blockchain or the splitting of the network. Instead, it allows the network to gradually transition to the new rules while still maintaining compatibility with the old rules. Segregated Witness is an example of a soft fork.
+In case of a soft fork, all mining nodes meant to work in accordance with the new rules need to upgrade their software.
+
+
+== Efficiency improvements ==
+Technical optimizations may decrease the amount of computing resources required to receive, process and record bitcoin transactions, allowing increased throughput without placing extra demand on the bitcoin network. These modifications can be to either the network, in which case a fork is required, or to individual node software (such as Bitcoin Core).
+
+Schnorr signatures have been proposed as a scaling solution by long-time developer and Blockstream co-founder Pieter Wuille.
+Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST) is a proposal by Johnson Lau which reduces the size of smart contracts (complex scripts), and increases their privacy.
+A 2006 paper by Mihir Bellare enables signature aggregation in O(1) size, which means that it will not take more space to have multiple signers. Bellare-Neven reduces to Schnorr for a single key. Bellare-Neven has been implemented.
+
+
+== ""Layer 2"" systems ==
+
+The Lightning Network (LN) is a protocol that aims to improve bitcoin's scalability and speed without sacrificing trustless operation. The Lightning Network requires putting a funding transaction on the blockchain to open a payment channel. Once a channel is opened, connected participants are able to make rapid payments within the channel or may route payments by ""hopping"" between channels at intermediate nodes for little to no fee.
+In January 2018 Blockstream launched a payment processing system for web retailers called ""Lightning Charge"", noted that lightning was live on mainnet with 200 nodes operating as of 27 January 2018 and advised it should still be considered ""in testing"".
+On 15 March 2018, Lightning Labs released the beta version of its lnd Lightning Network implementation for bitcoin mainnet, and on 28 March 2018, ACINQ released a mainnet beta of its eclair implementation and desktop application.
+In January 2019 the online retailer Bitrefill announced that it receives more payments in Bitcoin via the lightning network than any other cryptocurrency they accept.
+In June 2021, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted legislation to make Bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador. The decision was based on the success of the Bitcoin Beach ecosystem in El Zonte that used a LN based wallet. The government will be introducing a wallet utilising the Lightning Network protocol while giving the freedom for citizens to use other Bitcoin Lightning wallets.
+
+
+== Block size increases ==
+Bitcoin's transaction throughput is limited by two parameters:
+
+the block time determines how often a new block is added to the chain,
+the block size determines the amount of data that can be added with every block.Bitcoin has a block time of 10 minutes and a block size of 1 MB. Various increases to this limit, and proposals to remove it completely, have been proposed over bitcoin's history. Litecoin produces blocks four times faster than Bitcoin which leads to a 4x improvement in throughput. Dogecoin has even more throughput with a block time of 1 minute. Bitcoin Cash has a block size of 32 MB and hence 32x more throughput than Bitcoin. Bitcoin SV removed the block size limit altogether.
+
+
+=== Proposed ===
+In 2015, BIP100 by Jeff Garzik and BIP101 by Gavin Andresen were introduced.
+Bitcoin XT was proposed in 2015 to increase the transaction processing capacity of bitcoin by increasing the block size limit.
+Bitcoin Classic was proposed in 2016 to increase the transaction processing capacity of bitcoin by increasing the block size limit.
+""The Hong Kong Agreement"" was a 2016 agreement of some miners and developers that contained a timetable that would see both the activation of the Segregated Witness (SegWit) proposal established in December 2015 by Bitcoin Core developers, and the development of a block size limit increased to 2 MB. However, both timelines were missed.
+SegWit2x was a proposed hard fork of the cryptocurrency bitcoin. The implementation of Segregated Witness in August 2017 was only the first half of the so-called ""New York Agreement"" by which those who wanted to increase effective block size by SegWit compromised with those who wanted to increase block size by a hard fork to a larger block size.  The second half of SegWit2x involved a hard fork in November 2017 to increase the blocksize to 2 megabytes. On 8 November 2017 the developers of SegWit2x announced that the hard fork planned for around 16 November 2017 was canceled for the time being due to a lack of consensus.
+Bitcoin Unlimited advocated for miner flexibility to increase the block size limit and is supported by mining pools ViaBTC, AntPool and investor Roger Ver.Bitcoin Unlimited's proposal is different from Bitcoin Core in that the block size parameter is not hard-coded, and rather the nodes and miners flag support for the size that they want, using an idea they refer to as 'emergent consensus'. Those behind Bitcoin Unlimited proposal argue that from an ideological standpoint the miners should decide about the scaling solution since they are the ones whose hardware secure the network.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Software development
+List of bitcoin forks
+
+
+== References =="
+Lightning Network,"The Lightning Network (LN) is a ""layer 2"" payment protocol built on the  Bitcoin blockchain and those of other cryptocurrencies. It is intended to enable fast transactions among participating nodes (independently run members of the network) and has been proposed as a solution to the bitcoin scalability problem. It is a peer-to-peer system for making micropayments of cryptocurrency through a network of bidirectional payment channels, without delegating custody of funds.Transacting parties use the Lightning Network by opening a payment channel and transferring (committing) funds to the relevant layer-1 blockchain (e.g. Bitcoin) under a smart contract. The parties then make any number of off-chain Lightning Network transactions that update the tentative distribution of the channel's funds, without broadcasting to the blockchain. Whenever the parties have finished their transaction session, they close the payment channel, and the smart contract distributes the committed funds according to the transaction record.To initiate closing, one node first broadcasts the current state of the transaction record to the network, including a proposed settlement, a distribution of the committed funds. If both parties confirm the proposal, the funds are immediately paid on-chain. The other option is uncooperative closure, for example if one node has dropped from the network, or if it is broadcasting an incorrect (possibly fraudulent) transaction state. In this case settlement is delayed during a dispute period, when nodes may contest the proposal. If the second node broadcasts a more up-to-date timestamped distribution, including some transactions omitted by the first proposal, then all committed funds are transferred to the second node: this punitive breach remedy transaction thwarts attempts to defraud the other node by broadcasting out-of-date transactions.
+
+
+== History ==
+Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja published a Lightning Network white paper in February 2015.
+
+
+=== 2019 Bitcoin Lightning Torch ===
+On January 19, 2019, pseudonymous Twitter user hodlonaut began a game-like promotional test of the Lightning Network by sending 100,000 satoshis (0.001 bitcoin) to a trusted recipient where each recipient added 10,000 satoshis ($0.34 at the time) to send to the next trusted recipient. The ""lightning torch"" payment reached notable personalities including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Litecoin Creator Charlie Lee, Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark, and Binance CEO ""CZ"" Changpeng Zhao, among others.
+
+
+== Design ==
+Andreas Antonopoulos calls the Lightning Network a second layer routing network. The payment channels allow participants to transfer money to each other without having to make all their transactions public on the blockchain. This is secured by penalizing uncooperative participants. When opening a channel, participants must commit an amount on the blockchain (a funding transaction). Time-based script extensions like CheckSequenceVerify and CheckLockTimeVerify make the penalties possible.
+
+
+== Implementations ==
+Lightning operates under the BOLT (Basis of Lightning Technology) standard specification. Its four major implementations are: Lightning Network Daemon, CoreLightning, Eclair, and Lightning Dev Kit.
+
+
+=== Benefits ===
+The Lightning Network claims to provide several advantages over on-chain transactions:
+
+Granularity: According to Andreas Antonopoulos, some implementations of the Lightning Network allow for payments that are smaller than a satoshi, the smallest unit on the base layer of bitcoin.
+Privacy: The details of individual lightning network payments are not publicly recorded on the blockchain. Lightning network payments may be routed through many sequential channels where each node operator will be able to see payments across their channels, but they will not be able to see the source nor destination of those funds if they are non-adjacent.
+Speed: Settlement time for lightning network transactions is under a minute and can occur in milliseconds. Confirmation time on the bitcoin blockchain, for comparison, occurs every ten minutes, on average.
+Transaction throughput: There are no fundamental limits to the amount of payments per second that can occur under the protocol. The amount of transactions are only limited by the capacity and speed of each node.
+
+
+=== Limitations ===
+The Lightning Network is made up of bidirectional payment channels between two nodes which combined create smart contracts. If at any time either party drops the channel, the channel will close and be settled on the blockchain.Lightning Network's dispute mechanism requires all users to watch the blockchain constantly for fraud. This vigilance can be outsourced to watchtower nodes, trusted providers who are paid to monitor for fraud.
+A period of 24 hours is allotted to create a bidirectional channel after receiving a request.
+
+
+=== Routing ===
+In the event that a bi-directional payment channel is no longer open between the transacting parties, the payment must be routed through network intermediaries via an onion routing technique similar to Tor. This requires that the sender and receiver of the payment have open channels with enough established peer nodes to find a path for the payment.The original whitepaper on routing suggests that ""eventually, with optimizations, the network will look a lot like Tier-1 ISPs"".
+
+
+== Use cases ==
+Laszlo Hanyecz, famous for paying 10,000 BTC for two pizzas in 2010, bought two more pizzas in 2018 via Lightning Network for 0.00649 BTC.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+lightning.network"
+Silk Road (marketplace),"Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market. It was launched in 2011 by its American founder Ross Ulbricht under the pseudonym ""Dread Pirate Roberts"". As part of the dark web, Silk Road operated as a hidden service on the Tor network, allowing users to buy and sell products and services between each other anonymously. All transactions were conducted with bitcoin, a cryptocurrency which aided in protecting user identities. The website was known for its illegal drug marketplace, among other illegal and legal product listings. Between February 2011 and July 2013, the site facilitated sales amounting to 9,519,664 Bitcoins.In October 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down Silk Road and arrested Ulbricht. Silk Road 2.0 came online the next month, run by former site administrators, but was shut down the following year as part of Operation Onymous. In 2015, Ulbricht was convicted in federal court for multiple charges related to operating Silk Road and was given two life sentences without possibility of parole.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Operations ===
+The website was launched in February 2011; development had begun six months prior. The name ""Silk Road"" comes from a historical network of trade routes started during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) between Europe, India, China, and many other countries on the Afro-Eurasian landmass. Silk Road was operated by the pseudonymous ""Dread Pirate Roberts"" (named after the fictional character from The Princess Bride), who was known for espousing libertarian ideals and criticizing regulation. Two other individuals were also closely involved in the site's growth and success, known as Variety Jones and Smedley.In June 2011, Gawker published an article about the site which led to an increase in notoriety and website traffic. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer asked federal law enforcement authorities to shut it down, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Department of Justice.In May 2013, Silk Road was taken down for a short period of time by a sustained DDoS attack. On 23 June 2013, it was first reported that the DEA seized 11.02 bitcoins, then worth a total of $814, which the media suspected was a result of a Silk Road honeypot sting. The FBI has claimed that the real IP address of the Silk Road server was found via data leaked directly from the site's CAPTCHA and it was located in Reykjavík, Iceland. IT security experts have doubted the FBI's claims because technical evidence suggests that no misconfiguration that could cause the specific leak was present at the time.Henry Farrell, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, analyzed Silk Road in an essay for Aeon in 2015. He noted that Ulbricht created the marketplace to function without government oversight but found it difficult to verify anonymous transactions. To sustain a steady stream of revenue, he started increasing oversight to ensure low transaction costs. To do this, he added measures to ensure trustworthiness with implementation of an automated escrow payment system and automated review system.
+
+
+=== Arrest and trial of Ross Ulbricht ===
+Due, in part, to off-duty research conducted by IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent Gary Alford, Ross Ulbricht was alleged by the FBI to be the founder and owner of Silk Road and the person behind the pseudonym ""Dread Pirate Roberts"" (DPR). Alford searched for any mentions of the .onion URL or .tor address, stating that someone might have advertised or suggested the marketplace on Google. The first mention of the website was by a user named ""altoid."" Further searching into this altoid profile led him to a post about an open position that told interested applicants to contact what was Ross Ulbricht's personal email. He was arrested on 2 October 2013 in San Francisco in Glen Park Library, a branch of the San Francisco Public Library. During the arrest, the FBI seized Ulbricht's laptop which he was using to connect to the servers and manage the marketplace. Ulbricht was indicted on charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, and four conspiracy charges related to distribution of narcotics, computer hacking, money laundering, and false identity documents. He was separately indicted for a single murder-for-hire charge. Prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht paid $730,000 to others to commit the murders, although none of the murders actually occurred. Ulbricht ultimately was not prosecuted for any of the alleged murder attempts.The FBI initially seized 26,000 bitcoins from accounts on Silk Road, worth approximately $3.6 million at the time. An FBI spokesperson said that the agency would hold the bitcoins until Ulbricht's trial finished, after which the bitcoins would be liquidated. In October 2013, the FBI reported that it had seized 144,000 bitcoins, worth $28.5 million, and that the bitcoins belonged to Ulbricht. On 27 June 2014, the U.S. Marshals Service sold 29,657 bitcoins in 10 blocks in an online auction, estimated to be worth $18 million at contemporary rates and only about a quarter of the seized bitcoins. Another 144,342 bitcoins were kept which had been found on Ulbricht's computer, roughly $87 million. Tim Draper bought the bitcoins at the auction with an estimated worth of $17 million, to lend them to a bitcoin start-up called Vaurum which is working in developing economies of emerging markets.Ulbricht's trial began on 13 January 2015 in federal court in Manhattan. At the start of the trial, Ulbricht admitted to founding the Silk Road website, but claimed to have transferred control of the site to other people soon after he founded it. Ulbricht's lawyers contended that Dread Pirate Roberts was really Mark Karpelès, and that Karpelès set up Ulbricht as a fall guy. However, Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled that any speculative statements regarding whether Karpelès or anyone else ran Silk Road would not be allowed, and statements already made would be stricken from the record.In the second week of the trial, prosecutors presented documents and chat logs from Ulbricht's computer that, they said, demonstrated how Ulbricht had administered the site for many months, which contradicted the defense's claim that Ulbricht had relinquished control of Silk Road. Ulbricht's attorney suggested that the documents and chat logs were planted there by way of BitTorrent, which was running on Ulbricht's computer at the time of his arrest.On 4 February 2015, the jury convicted Ulbricht of seven charges, including charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and computer hacking. The continuing criminal enterprise charge has a minimum sentence of 20 years. The amount of narcotics distributed also triggered an additional 10-year minimum. The government also accused Ulbricht of paying for the murders of at least five people, but there is no evidence that the murders were actually carried out, and the accusations never became formal charges against Ulbricht.During the trial, Judge Forrest received death threats. Users of an underground site called The Hidden Wiki posted her personal information there, including her address and Social Security number. Ulbricht's lawyer Joshua Dratel said that he and his client ""obviously, and as strongly as possible, condemn"" the anonymous postings against the judge. ""They do not in any way have anything to do with Ross Ulbricht or anyone associated with him or reflect his views or those of anyone associated with him"", Dratel said.In late March 2015, a criminal complaint issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California led to the arrest of two former federal agents who had worked undercover in the Baltimore Silk Road investigation of Ulbricht, former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Mark Force IV and Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges. The agents are alleged to have kept funds that Ulbricht transferred to them in exchange for purported information about the investigation. The agents were charged with wire fraud and money laundering. In late November 2016, Ulbricht's lawyers brought forward a case on a third DEA agent, who they claim was leaking information about the investigation and tampered with evidence to omit chat logs showing conversations with him.In a letter to Judge Forrest before his sentencing, Ulbricht stated that his actions through Silk Road were committed through libertarian idealism and that ""Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices"" and admitted that he made a ""terrible mistake"" that ""ruined his life"". On 29 May 2015, Ulbricht was given five sentences to be served concurrently, including two of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He was also ordered to forfeit $183 million. Ulbricht's lawyer Joshua Dratel said that he would appeal the sentencing and the original guilty verdict. On 31 May 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied Ulbricht's appeal, and affirmed the judgment of conviction and life sentence, in a written opinion authored by Gerard E. Lynch, United States circuit judge. The Supreme Court declined to review the case.
+
+
+=== Other trials ===
+In February 2013, an Australian cocaine and MDMA (""ecstasy"") dealer became the first person to be convicted of crimes directly related to Silk Road, after authorities intercepted drugs that he was importing through the mail, searched his premises, and discovered his Silk Road alias in an image file on his personal computer. Australian police and the DEA have targeted Silk Road users and made arrests, albeit with limited success at reaching convictions. In December 2013, a New Zealand man was sentenced to two years and four months in jail after being convicted of importing 15 grams of methamphetamine that he had bought on Silk Road.23-year-old Dutch drug dealer Cornelis Jan ""Maikel"" Slomp pled guilty to large-scale selling of drugs through the Silk Road website, and was sentenced in Chicago to 10 years in prison on 29 May 2015 with his attorney, Paul Petruzzi, present. Dealer Steven Sadler was sentenced to five years in prison. There have been over 130 other arrests connected with Silk Road, although some of these arrests may not be directly related to Silk Road, and may not be public information due to legal reasons.
+
+
+=== Later seizures ===
+On 3 November 2020, after years of inactivity, observers of the bitcoin blockchain detected that two transactions totaling 69,370 bitcoin and bitcoin cash, worth approximately $1 billion in total at the time of transfer, had been made from a bitcoin address associated with the Silk Road. At the time of transfer, it was worth 58 times its value in 2015. It was subsequently revealed that the transfer had been made by the United States government in a civil forfeiture action. According to a press release by the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Northern District of California, the bitcoin wallet belonged to an ""Individual X"" who had originally acquired the bitcoins by hacking the Silk Road.
+
+
+== Products ==
+In March 2013, the site had 10,000 products for sale by vendors, 70% of which were drugs. Drugs were grouped under the headings stimulants, psychedelics, prescription, precursors, other, opioids, ecstasy, dissociatives, and steroids/PEDs. Fake driver's licenses were also offered for sale. The site's terms of service prohibited the sale of certain items. When the Silk Road marketplace first began, the creator and administrators instituted terms of service that prohibited the sale of anything whose purpose was to ""harm or defraud"". This included child pornography, stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of any type; other darknet markets such as Black Market Reloaded gained user notoriety because they were not as restrictive on these items as the Silk Road incarnations were. There were also legal goods and services for sale, such as apparel, art, books, cigarettes, erotica, jewellery, and writing services. A sister site, called ""The Armoury"", sold weapons (primarily firearms) during 2012, but was shut down, due to a lack of demand.The Silk Road offers over 24,400 products related to drugs for sale and an infrastructure to make these transactions. The official sellers guide states the prohibition of any sale of goods that are meant for harm or fraud, but allows for prescription drugs, pornography, and counterfeit documents. Only users of Tor can access the Silk Road.Buyers were able to leave reviews of sellers' products on the site and in an associated forum, where crowdsourcing provided information about the best sellers and worst scammers. Most products were delivered through the mail, with the site's seller's guide instructing sellers how to vacuum-seal their products to escape detection.
+
+
+== Sales ==
+Silk Road provided goods and services to over 100,000 buyers. Over the two-and-a-half years in which the website was in operation, it generated $183 million in sales and $13 million in commissions, based on the value of bitcoin at the time of transactions. Due to the significant rise in bitcoin value over that period, the revenue and commission are also sometimes reported as $1.2 billion and $80 million, respectively.Initially there were a limited number of new seller accounts available; new sellers had to purchase an account in an auction. Later, a fixed fee was charged for each new seller account. Buyers and sellers conducted all transactions with bitcoins (BTC), a cryptocurrency that provides a certain degree of anonymity. Silk Road held buyers' bitcoins in escrow until the order had been received and a hedging mechanism allowed sellers to opt for the value of bitcoins held in escrow to be fixed to their value in US$ at the time of the sale to mitigate against Bitcoin's volatility. Any changes in the price of bitcoins during transit were covered by Dread Pirate Roberts.The complaint published when Ulbricht was arrested included information the FBI gained from a system image of the Silk Road server collected on 23 July 2013. It noted that, ""From February 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013 there were approximately 1,229,465 transactions completed on the site. The total revenue generated from these sales was 9,519,664 Bitcoins, and the total commissions collected by Silk Road from the sales amounted to 614,305 Bitcoins. According to the government, total sales were equivalent to roughly $1.2 billion and involved 146,946 buyers and 3,877 vendors. According to information users provided upon registering, 30 percent were from the United States, 27 percent chose to be ""undeclared"", and beyond that, in descending order of prevalence: the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, France, Russia, Italy, and the Netherlands. During the 60-day period from 24 May to 23 July, there were 1,217,218 messages sent over Silk Road's private messaging system.
+
+
+== Similar sites ==
+The Farmer's Market was a Tor site similar to Silk Road, but which did not use bitcoins. It has been considered a 'proto-Silk Road' but the use of payment services such as PayPal and Western Union allowed law enforcement to trace payments and it was subsequently shut down by the FBI in 2012. Other sites already existed when Silk Road was shut down and The Guardian predicted that these would take over the market that Silk Road previously dominated. Atlantis was founded in March 2013 and closed six months later, while Project Black Flag closed in October 2013; both websites stole their users' bitcoins. In October 2013, Black Market Reloaded closed temporarily after its source code was leaked. The market shares of various Silk Road successor sites were described by The Economist in May 2015.
+
+
+== Book club ==
+Silk Road had a Tor-based book club that continued to operate following the initial site's closure and even following the arrest of one of its members. Reading material included conspiracy theories and computer hacking. Some of the titles included mainstream books as well as books such as The Anarchist Cookbook and Defeating Electromagnetic Door Locks. Most of the titles on this book club were pirated. This book club still exists as a private Tor-based chatroom.
+
+
+== Direct successors ==
+
+
+=== Silk Road 2.0 ===
+On 6 November 2013, administrators from the closed Silk Road relaunched the site, led by a new pseudonymous Dread Pirate Roberts, and dubbed it ""Silk Road 2.0"". It recreated the original site's setup and promised improved security. The new DPR took the precaution of distributing encrypted copies of the site's source code to allow the site to be quickly recreated in the event of another shutdown.On 20 December 2013, it was announced that three alleged Silk Road 2.0 administrators had been arrested; two of these suspects, Andrew Michael Jones and Gary Davis, were named as the administrators ""Inigo"" and ""Libertas"" who had continued their work on Silk Road 2.0. Around this time, the new Dread Pirate Roberts abruptly surrendered control of the site and froze its activity, including its escrow system. A new temporary administrator under the screenname ""Defcon"" took over and promised to bring the site back to working order.On 13 February 2014, Defcon announced that Silk Road 2.0's escrow accounts had been compromised through a vulnerability in Bitcoin protocol called ""transaction malleability"". While the site remained online, all the bitcoins in its escrow accounts, valued at $2.7 million, were reported stolen. It was later reported that the vulnerability was in the site's ""Refresh Deposits"" function, and that the Silk Road administrators had used their commissions on sales since 15 February to refund users who lost money, with 50 percent of the hack victims being completely repaid as of 8 April.On 6 November 2014, authorities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, and Eurojust announced the arrest of Blake Benthall, allegedly the owner and operator of Silk Road 2.0 under the pseudonym ""Defcon"", the previous day in San Francisco as part of Operation Onymous. The creator of the relaunched website—an English computer programmer named Thomas White—was also arrested in the course of the shutdown, but his arrest was not made public until 2019 after he pled guilty to charges stemming from running the website and was sentenced to five years in prison. Among the charges White admitted to was creating child pornography, and chat logs recovered by police showed White discussing the possibility of launching a website to host such material.
+
+
+=== Others ===
+Following the closure of Silk Road 2.0 in November 2014, Diabolus Market renamed itself to 'Silk Road 3 Reloaded' in order to capitalize on the brand. In January 2015, Silk Road Reloaded launched on I2P with multiple cryptocurrency support and similar listing restrictions to the original Silk Road market. This website is also defunct.
+
+
+== Advocates of dark web drug sales & Ulbricht ==
+Meghan Ralston, a former harm reduction manager for the Drug Policy Alliance, was quoted as saying that the Silk Road was ""a peaceable alternative to the often deadly violence so commonly associated with the global drug war, and street drug transactions, in particular"". Proponents of the Silk Road and similar sites argue that buying illegal narcotics from the safety of your home is better than buying them in person from criminals on the streets.
+
+
+== Media ==
+Deep Web (2015) – A film by director/screenwriter Alex Winter based on Silk Road which gives the inside story of the arrest of Ross Ulbricht
+Silk Road: Drugs, Death, and the Dark Web. A&E Television, 2018.
+Casefile True Crime Podcast – Case 76: Silk Road (Parts 1, 2, 3) - aired 10, 17, 24 February 2018
+American Kingpin - A New York Times best-selling biography, by Nick Bilton, of Ross Ulbricht's life prior to, during, and after the Silk Road
+Silk Road – A 2021 film starring Jason Clarke, and Nick Robinson as Ross Ulbricht
+
+
+== See also ==
+Agorism
+Crypto-anarchism
+James Zhong
+OpenBazaar
+War on drugs
+
+
+== References ==
+
+""Ross Ulbricht, the Creator and Owner of the Silk Road Website, Found Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court on All Counts — FBI"". www.fbi.gov. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
+Christin, Nicolas (13 May 2013). ""Traveling the silk road"". Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on World Wide Web. WWW '13. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 213–224. doi:10.1145/2488388.2488408. ISBN 978-1-4503-2035-1. S2CID 4534396.
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+""'Silk Road' website called the Amazon of heroin, cocaine"". ABC Action News. YouTube.  10 June 2011
+""Silk Road: Theory & Practice""
+""United States of America v. Ross William Ulbricht"" Grand Jury Indictment, District of Maryland (1 October 2013)
+""United States of America v. Ross William Ulbricht"" Trial Transcript
+Archived early advertisement page for Silk Road"
+BitLicense,"A BitLicense is the common term used for a business license for virtual currency activities, issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) under regulations designed for companies. The regulations are limited to activities involving the state of New York or a New York resident. People residing in, located in, having a place of business in, or conducting business in the State of New York count as New York Residents under these regulations. The license was introduced and designed by Benjamin Lawsky, New York's first Superintendent of Financial Services, in July 2014. Chartered entities do not require an explicit BitLicense, but may instead proceed with virtual currency activities via limited purpose trust charters approved by the NYDFS.
+
+
+== Overview ==
+The regulations define virtual currency business activity as any one of the following types of activities:
+
+receiving virtual currency for Transmission or Transmitting virtual Currency, except where the transaction is undertaken for non-financial purposes and does not involve the transfer of more than a nominal amount of virtual currency;
+storing, holding, or maintaining custody or control of virtual currency on behalf of others;
+buying and selling virtual currency as a customer business;
+performing Exchange Services as a customer business, or;
+controlling, administering, or issuing a virtual currency.The two following activities are excluded from the definition of virtual currency business activity:
+
+development and dissemination of software in and of itself;
+merchants and consumers that utilize virtual currency solely for the purchase or sale of goods or services or for investment purposes.
+
+
+== History ==
+On July 17, 2014, the department released details on a proposed ""BitLicense"", which places regulations on any company or person that uses cryptocurrencies residing in New York. The proposed regulations were officially published in the New York State Register on July 23, beginning a 45-day comment period. On February 25, 2015, a revised proposal notice was published, beginning another 30-day comment period.It came into effect on August 8, 2015. At least ten bitcoin companies announced they were stopping all business in New York State because of the new regulations. The New York Business Journal called this the ""Great Bitcoin Exodus"".In September 2015, Boston-based Circle was granted the first BitLicense, although in December 2016 the company had pivoted away from its bitcoin exchange to focus more on payments.Two virtual currency limited purpose trust company charters were approved by the NYDFS in 2015, the first in May 2015 to itBit, now Paxos Trust Company, and the second charter in October 2015 to Gemini.In October 2015, an article 78 was filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York challenging the authority of the New York State Department of Financial Services to define virtual currency. Justice St George heard the case on October 10, 2017 and dismissed the case on December 27, 2017. The case is currently on appeal.On June 13, 2016, XRP II, LLC, an affiliate of Ripple Labs, was approved for a BitLicense.On 22 March 2017, Coinbase was awarded the second BitLicense.In November 2017, Tokyo based bitFlyer was awarded the fourth BitLicense and Genesis Global Trading was awarded the fifth BitLicense in May 2018.In June 2018, Hong Kong based Xapo was awarded the sixth BitLicense and Square, Inc. was awarded the seventh BitLicense.BitPay was awarded the eighth BitLicense in July 2018.In November 2018, Texas-based Coinsource, an operator of Bitcoin Teller Machines, was awarded the twelfth virtual currency license or charter.In November 2018, New York-based institutional Bitcoin provider NYDIG was awarded a BitLicense.In January 2019, Robinhood Crypto LLC, a subsidiary of Robinhood Markets Inc., and Moon Inc., dba LibertyX were awarded a BitLicense.On April 9, 2019 Bitstamp USA, Inc., a subsidiary of Bitstamp Ltd. was awarded a BitLicense.One day later, the NYDFS rejected Bittrex's application, citing concerns over capital requirements and lax anti-money laundering controls.On December 3, 2019, SoFi Digital Assets, LLC, a subsidiary of Social Finance, Inc. was awarded a BitLicense as well as a money transmitter license.On December 11, 2019, the NYDFS proposed a revision to BitLicense whereby a licensee can offer any coin from a public list on the NYDFS website. The revision is still pending.In May 2020, Eris Clearing, LLC, a subsidiary of ErisX, secured a Virtual Currency License.On June 24, 2020, DFS proposed a new conditional licensing framework that makes it easier for start-ups to enter the New York market. Under the proposed conditional licensing framework, entities may apply for a conditional license when partnering with an existing entity authorized by DFS to engage in virtual currency business activity.On October, 21, 2020, PayPal was the first entity approved for a conditional license in partnership with Paxos Trust Company.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Virtual Currencies in (Part 200 of Title 23 of) the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations
+BitLicense Frequently Asked Questions From NYSDFS"
+Bitcoin ATM,"Bitcoin ATMs (automated teller machine) are kiosks that allow a person to purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by using cash or debit card. Some Bitcoin ATMs offer bidirectional functionality, enabling both the purchase of Bitcoin and the sale of Bitcoin for cash. In some cases, Bitcoin ATM providers require users to have an existing account to transact on the machine.
+
+
+== History ==
+On October 29, 2013, a Robocoin machine opened in the Waves coffee shop in downtown Vancouver, Canada. On December 8, 2013, Europe's first Bitcoin ATM was installed in Bratislava, Slovakia. The first machine in the United States went online on February 18, 2014, in a cigar bar in Albuquerque, New Mexico, though it was removed 30 days later. Months later, in May 2014, the first licensed bitcoin ATM in the U.S. was developed by Coinme and installed at the Spitfire Grill in Seattle, WA.
+
+
+=== Canada ===
+In 2014, Canada was the first country to approve regulation of cryptocurrencies, although it took some time to enforce. In February 2014, the Finance Minister mentioned plans to introduce anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulations for virtual currencies such as Bitcoin. In June of that year, the Governor General approved an amendment to Bill C-31 that would treat cryptocurrency businesses as Money Services Businesses (MSBs), and the Department of Finance circulated a draft of the proposed regulations in June 2018. As of July 2020, businesses dealing in virtual currencies are considered MSBs by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.In 2018, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) commissioned an investigation on Bitcoin ATMs to find out if tax laws were being followed by users. From December 2017 to February 2018, the number of Bitcoin ATMs in Canada increased by 20%. In June 2019, Vancouver was considering a ban on the machines due to money-laundering concerns.
+
+
+=== Europe ===
+As per Coin ATM Radar, there are 1,026 Bitcoin ATMs across the European Union member area. The nations of the Union with the highest number of Bitcoin ATMs are Spain (174), Austria (133), Poland (114), Romania (87), Czechia (69), Greece (63) and Italy (60).
+
+
+=== United States ===
+According to Coin ATM Radar, there were more than 24,700 bitcoin ATMs in the US as of September 2021, up from 2,342 in Jan 2018. Some small shop owners earning a reported $300 a month for rental space.Most US cryptocurrency ATMS charge transaction fees between 6.5% and 20%. Several bitcoin ATM companies, including the two largest bitcoin ATM companies Bitcoin Depot and Coin Cloud, charge this fee as a percentage of an exchange rate that is significantly less favorable to customers than the market rate. This functionally adds an additional 20% fee for using bitcoin ATMs. According to comments made by Bitcoin Depot to its investors, the company specifically targets middle and lower income areas for placement of bitcoin ATMs. The company also attempts to minimize its own exposure to cryptocurrency as a volatile asset.In February 2023, Cash Cloud, the company which operates the Coin Cloud ATMs, filed for bankruptcy. This was due to the company's exposure to Genesis Capital and the cryptocurrency crash which started in 2021. In March 2023, three people were arrested for operating 51 bitcoin ATMS in Northeast Ohio. The trio were charged with multiple violations, including money laundering, licensing violations, and receiving stolen property.Several analysts and regulators have compared US bitcoin ATMs to payday loans, as both are poverty industries which increase the cost of poverty by charging significantly higher fees to people who lack access to mainstream banking.Some bitcoin ATMs operating in the US are imported from other countries; for example, Czech company General Bytes sold thousands of their machines to operators operating in US. Through Coinme, bitcoin can be exchanged in the United States for local currency at ATMs located in select MoneyGram locations and Coinstar machines.
+
+
+=== South Africa ===
+In South Africa, ATMs accept the Rand (ZAR) and transactions over 10,000ZAR ($667) require ID verification. These ATMs are mostly found in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria.
+
+
+== Compliance ==
+Bitcoin ATM operators need to adjust the limits on deposits and withdrawals according to AML/KYC standards applicable in the jurisdiction where their ATMs are placed. In some countries / states this requires a money transmitter license.
+In the United States, the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) requires Bitcoin ATM operators to establish and maintain an effective written AML program reasonably designed to prevent ATM machines from being used to facilitate money laundering and the financing of terrorist activities. Bitcoin ATM operators must be registered as Money Service Businesses and are regulated by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.In March 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom declared that all cryptocurrency ATMs in the country were illegal and would need to be shut down. None of the ATM's operators had successfully registered with the agency. The FCA cited a failure to comply with know your customer laws (KYC), which track and prevent money laundering, as well as the high risk to customers, due to a lack of regulation and protection. At the time, Coin ATM Radar listed 81 such ATMs in the country.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Digital currency
+Cryptocurrency
+Cryptocurrencies in Europe
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+ Media related to Bitcoin ATMs at Wikimedia Commons"
+Bitcoin Foundation,"The Bitcoin Foundation is an American organization that was formerly a nonprofit corporation. It was founded in September 2012 in an effort to restore the reputation of Bitcoin after several scandals, and to try to promote its development and uptake. The organization is modeled on the Linux Foundation and was funded mainly through grants made by for-profit companies that depend on the bitcoin technology.
+
+
+== History ==
+The foundation was formed in late 2012, after Bitcoin had earned a reputation for criminality and fraud, and was modeled on the Linux Foundation.  The founding chairman of the board was Peter Vessenes.Former lead Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen was hired by the foundation as ""chief scientist."" In June 2013, the foundation received a letter from the California Department of Financial Institutions requesting that they ""cease and desist from conducting the business of money transmission in this state,"" and again when it published their detailed response to the regulators. In November 2013, Patrick Murck, general counsel of the foundation, testified before a United States Senate committee convened to assess digital currencies, at which the reception of bitcoin by lawmakers was generally positive.In January 2014, the foundation's vice-chairman, Charlie Shrem, was arrested for aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money-transmitting business related to his role in assisting agents of the online marketplace Silk Road; he resigned later that month and pled guilty in September 2014.In February 2014, Mark Karpeles, then CEO of the Mt. Gox exchange, resigned from the board after Mt. Gox lost 750,000 of its customers' bitcoins and went bankrupt, causing the value of bitcoin to crash; Executive chairman Peter Vessenes' business relationship to Karpeles has been described as inappropriate.  Professor and author Mark T. Williams criticized the foundation's priorities, published an editorial in Business Insider that month, and wrote: ""A Foundation of 'B' players has no business claiming it is a protector of a system that remains vulnerable and untrustworthy.""In March 2014, the foundation hired Jim Harper of the Cato Institute to help it deal with policy issues and the government with the title Global Policy Counsel, and also hired Amy Weiss of Weiss Public Affairs as a media consultant. In July 2014, the foundation retained a lobbying firm, Thorsen French Advocacy, to work for a favorable regulatory environment in the United States for bitcoin. Some libertarian bitcoin advocates have criticized the organization's strategy of political lobbying and participation with federal regulators.In May 2014, BTC China (now BTCC) CEO Bobby Lee and venture capitalist Brock Pierce were appointed to the foundation's board of directors, filling vacancies left by the resignations of Shrem and Karpelès. Ten people resigned from the foundation due to allegations dating from 2000 that Pierce had pressured minors into sex at a company he had founded. Nine members of the foundation resigned following the May election, citing opposition to the appointments and the direction of the organization.After the election, the foundation's directors included chairperson Peter Vessenes, Gavin Andresen, Bobby Lee, Micky Malka, Jon Matonis, Brock Pierce, and Elizabeth Ploshay. In October 2014, Jon Matonis resigned from his position of Executive Director of the Foundation, and at the end of the election cycle on 31 December 2014 stepped down from the group's board of directors.In November 2014, American crypto-anarchist Cody Wilson announced his run for a board seat, stating ""I will run on a platform of the complete dissolution of the Bitcoin Foundation and will begin and end every single one of my public statements with that message.""In March 2015, Harper and Olivier Janssens, a founder of the Freedom Investment Group, were elected to the board.In April 2015, the board appointed investor and financial consultant Bruce Fenton as Executive Director of the foundation. In July 2016, Fenton was replaced by Llew Claasen.In July 2015, Janssens made a public announcement on both the foundation's online forum and Reddit concerning the near-term insolvency of the organization, which had been kept secret by the board. As a result of this and a lack of cash flow, various staff were terminated. Following disagreement over the future of the organization—Harper and Janssens having both cast votes to dissolve the Foundation—Harper resigned and Janssens was removed from the Board in December 2015.As of June 2022, the organization is active. Its 501(c)(6) tax status was revoked by the IRS on May 15, 2022.
+
+
+== References =="
+Craig Wright,"Craig Wright may refer to:
+
+Craig Wright (cricketer) (born 1974), Scottish cricketer
+Craig Wright (playwright) (born 1965), American playwright, television writer, and producer
+Craig M. Wright (born 1944), Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Music at Yale University
+Craig R. Wright (20th Century), American baseball writer and proponent of sabermetrics
+Craig Steven Wright (born 1970), Australian computer scientist, cryptocurrency investor and businessman
+
+
+== See also ==
+J. Craig Wright (1929–2010), American lawyer and judge, justice of the Ohio Supreme Court"
+Ross Ulbricht,"Ross William Ulbricht (born March 27, 1984) is an American serving life imprisonment for creating and operating the darknet market website Silk Road from 2011 until his arrest in 2013. The site operated as a hidden service on the Tor network and facilitated the sale of narcotics and other illegal products and services. Ulbricht ran the site under the pseudonym ""Dread Pirate Roberts"", after the fictional character from The Princess Bride.
+In October 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Ulbricht and Silk Road was taken offline. In 2015, he was convicted of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the internet, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents and conspiracy to commit computer hacking. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Ulbricht's appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2017 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 were unsuccessful. He is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Ulbricht grew up in Austin, Texas. He was a Boy Scout, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. He attended West Ridge Middle School and Westlake High School both near Austin, graduating from high school in 2002.Ulbricht attended the University of Texas at Dallas on a full academic scholarship and graduated in 2006 with a bachelor's degree in physics. Ulbricht received an additional scholarship to attend Pennsylvania State University, where he was in a master's degree program in materials science and engineering and studied crystallography. By the time Ulbricht graduated, he had become interested in libertarian economic theory and adhered to the political philosophy of Ludwig von Mises, supported Ron Paul, promoted agorism and participated in college debates to discuss his economic views. Ulbricht graduated from Penn State in 2009 and returned to Austin. He tried day trading and started a video game company but both ventures failed. He eventually partnered with his friend Donny Palmertree to help build an online used book seller, Good Wagon Books.
+
+
+== Silk Road ==
+
+
+=== Creation and operation of Silk Road ===
+Palmertree, cofounder of Good Wagon Books, eventually moved to Dallas, leaving Ulbricht to run the bookseller by himself. Around this time, Ulbricht began planning Silk Road (initially called Underground Brokers). In his personal diary, he outlined his idea for a website ""where people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them."" Ulbricht's ex-girlfriend said, ""I remember when he had the idea ... He said something about ... the Silk Road in Asia ... and what a big network it was ... And that's what he wanted to create, so he thought it was the perfect name."" Ulbricht alluded to Silk Road on his public LinkedIn page, where he discussed his wish to ""use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind"" and claimed, ""I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.""Silk Road ran as an onion service on the Tor network, which implements data encryption and routes traffic through intermediary servers to anonymize the source and destination Internet Protocol addresses. By hosting his market as a Tor site, Ulbricht could conceal the server's IP address and thus its location. Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, was used for transactions on the site. While all bitcoin transactions were recorded in a public ledger called the blockchain, users who avoided linking their legal names to their cryptocurrency wallets were able to conduct transactions with considerable anonymity. Ulbricht used the ""Dread Pirate Roberts"" username for Silk Road, although it is disputed whether only he used that account. He attributed his inspiration for creating the Silk Road marketplace to the novel Alongside Night and the works of Samuel Edward Konkin III.
+
+
+=== Arrest ===
+Law enforcement broke Silk Road's cover in a number of ways. A drug agency investigator infiltrated the site and became an admin, thereby gaining inside information about the site operations, and finding Ulbricht's chats showed Pacific time, narrowing down his likely location. Law enforcement seized a Silk Road server in Iceland and gained a trove of chat logs, further enriching their knowledge. Ulbricht was connected to ""Dread Pirate Roberts"" by Gary Alford, an Internal Revenue Service investigator working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on the Silk Road case, in mid-2013. The connection was made by linking the username ""altoid"", used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname ""altoid"", asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained his full name. On October 1, 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Ulbricht at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library and accused him of being the ""mastermind"" behind the site.To prevent Ulbricht from encrypting or deleting files on the laptop he was using to run the site as he was arrested, two agents pretended to be quarreling lovers. When they had sufficiently distracted him, according to Joshuah Bearman of Wired, they quickly moved in to arrest him while a third agent grabbed the laptop and handed it to agent Thomas Kiernan. Kiernan then inserted a flash drive into one of the laptop's USB ports, with software that copied key files.Ulbricht was ordered held without bail.
+
+
+=== Trial ===
+On February 4, 2014, Ulbricht was charged with engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics conspiracy, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to commit computer hacking.  On August 21, 2014, a superseding indictment added three additional charges. On February 4, 2015, Ulbricht was convicted on all counts after a jury trial that had taken place in January 2015. On May 29, 2015, he was sentenced to double life imprisonment plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole. Ulbricht was also ordered to pay about $183 million in restitution, based on the total sales of illegal drugs and counterfeit IDs through Silk Road.
+
+
+=== Murder-for-hire allegations ===
+Federal prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht had paid $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting at least five people, allegedly because they threatened to reveal the Silk Road enterprise. Prosecutors believe no contracted killing actually occurred. Ulbricht was not charged in his trial in New York federal court with murder for hire but evidence was introduced at trial supporting the allegations. The district court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Ulbricht did commission the murders. The evidence that Ulbricht had commissioned murders was considered by the judge in sentencing Ulbricht to life and was a factor in the Second Circuit's decision to uphold the sentence.Ulbricht was separately indicted in federal court in Maryland on a single murder-for-hire charge, alleging that he contracted to kill one of his employees (a former Silk Road moderator). Prosecutors moved to drop this indictment after his New York conviction and sentence became final.
+
+
+== Attempts to reverse the trial outcome ==
+
+
+=== Appeal ===
+Ulbricht appealed his conviction and sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in January 2016, claiming that the prosecution illegally withheld evidence of DEA agents' malfeasance in the investigation of Silk Road, of which two agents were convicted. Ulbricht also argued his sentence was too harsh. Oral arguments were heard in October 2016, and the Second Circuit issued its decision in May 2017, upholding Ulbricht's conviction and sentence in an opinion by Judge Gerard E. Lynch. In a 139-page opinion, the court affirmed the district court's denial of Ulbricht's motion to suppress certain evidence, affirmed the district court's decisions on discovery and the admission of expert testimony, and rejected Ulbricht's argument that a life sentence was procedurally or substantively unreasonable.In December 2017, Ulbricht filed a petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court, asking the Court to hear his appeal on evidentiary and sentencing issues. Ulbricht's petition asked whether the warrantless seizure of an individual's internet traffic information, without probable cause, violated the Fourth Amendment, and whether the Sixth Amendment permits judges to find facts necessary to support an otherwise unreasonable sentence. Twenty-one amici filed five amicus curiae briefs in support of Ulbricht, including the National Lawyers Guild, American Black Cross, Reason Foundation, Drug Policy Alliance, and Downsize DC Foundation. The U.S. government filed a response in opposition to Ulbricht's petition. On June 28, 2018, the Supreme Court denied the petition, declining to consider Ulbricht's appeal.
+
+
+=== Plea deal ===
+In a 2020 Vanity Fair article Nick Bilton claimed that Ulbricht had rejected a plea deal that would have potentially given Ulbricht a decade-long sentence. Bilton writes ""According to more than a dozen investigators and attorneys involved in the case who I spoke to for the book, Ulbricht’s sentence could have been a lot less severe..."" Assistant US Attorney Timothy Howard, who was co-responsible for prosecuting the case, testified that ""...no such plea offer was ever extended to Ross William Ulbricht, or conveyed to his then-counsel..."" before Ulbricht's indictment. Howard stated that a plea deal with a mandatory minimum of 10 years was, ""...discussed at the final pretrial conference on December 17, 2014..."", but that the maximum sentence of life imprisonment was strongly recommended based on the sentencing guideline.
+
+
+== After the conviction ==
+
+
+=== Incarceration ===
+During his trial, Ulbricht was incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. Starting in July 2017, he was held at USP Florence High. His mother, Lyn, moved to Colorado so she could visit him regularly. Ulbricht has since been transferred to USP Tucson.
+
+
+=== Restitution paid from seized assets ===
+In 2021, Ulbricht's prosecutors and defense agreed that Ulbricht would relinquish any ownership of a newly discovered fund of 50,676 Bitcoin (worth nearly $3.4 billion in 2021) seized from a hacker in November 2021. The Bitcoins had been stolen from Silk Road in 2013. Ulbricht had been unsuccessful in getting them back. The U.S. government traced and seized the stolen bitcoin. Ulbricht and the government agreed the fund would be used to pay off Ulbricht's $183 million debt in his criminal case, while the Department of Justice would take custody of the bitcoins.
+
+
+=== Documentaries and films ===
+Deep Web is a 2015 documentary film chronicling events surrounding Silk Road, bitcoin, and the politics of the dark web, including Ulbricht's trial. Silk Road—Drugs, Death and the Dark Web is a documentary covering the FBI operation to track down Ulbricht and close Silk Road. The documentary was shown on UK television in 2017 in the BBC Storyville documentary series.The film Silk Road was released on February 19, 2021. Directed by Tiller Russell, it follows Ulbricht's creation of the website and the FBI and DEA investigations. Ulbricht is portrayed by American actor Nick Robinson.
+
+
+=== NFT sale ===
+Ulbricht's family raised money for efforts to release him from jail via the decentralized autonomous organization FreeRossDAO, which accepted donations from the public. In December 2021 the family auctioned a collection of his writings and artwork as an NFT, which FreeRossDAO bought for 1,442 Ethereum, worth about $6.27 million at the time.
+
+
+=== Calls for commutation ===
+Ulbricht's conviction became a cause célèbre in libertarian circles. In May 2022, Congressman Thomas Massie called for a commutation of Ulbricht's conviction. The libertarian-oriented Reason Foundation attempted to raise funds, citing Ulbricht's case without taking any legal action, and 2020 Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen made a campaign pledge to pardon Ulbricht.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Variety Jones and Smedley: pseudonyms of people reported to have been closely involved with Silk Road's founding
+USBKill: kill-switch software created in response to the circumstances of Ulbricht's arrest
+Kevin Mitnick
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Greenberg, Andy. ""Meet The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Man Behind Booming Black Market Drug Website Silk Road"". Forbes. August 14, 2013.
+Greenberg, Andy. ""An Interview With A Digital Drug Lord: The Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts (Q&A)"". Forbes. August 14, 2013.
+Howell O’Neill, Patrick. ""The mystery of the disappearing Silk Road murder charges"". The Daily Dot. October 22, 2014.
+Bertrand, Natasha. ""Eerie diary entries written by the Silk Road founder who just got a life sentence"". Business Insider. May 29, 2015.
+Mullin, Joe. ""Sunk: How Ross Ulbricht ended up in prison for life"". Ars Technica. May 29, 2015.
+Bearman, Joshuah. ""Silk Road: The Untold Story"" Wired Magazine. April/May 2015.
+Bilton, Nick (2017). American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road. Portfolio/Penguin. ISBN 9781591848141.
+Doherty, Brian. ""Ross Ulbricht's Murder-for-Hire Charges Dropped by U.S. Attorney"". Reason. July 25, 2018."
+Bitcoin protocol,"The Bitcoin protocol is the set of rules that govern the functioning of Bitcoin. Its key components and principles are: a peer-to-peer decentralized network with no central oversight; the blockchain technology, a public ledger that records all Bitcoin transactions; mining and proof of work, the process to create new bitcoins and verify transactions; and cryptographic security.
+Users broadcast cryptographically signed messages to the network using Bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet software. These messages are proposed transactions, changes to be made in the ledger. Each node has a copy of the ledger's entire transaction history. If a transaction violates the rules of the Bitcoin protocol, it is ignored, as transactions only occur when the entire network reaches a consensus that they should take place. This ""full network consensus"" is achieved when each node on the network verifies the results of a proof-of-work operation called mining. Mining packages groups of transactions into blocks, and produces a hash code that follows the rules of the Bitcoin protocol. Creating this hash requires expensive energy, but a network node can verify the hash is valid using very little energy. If a miner proposes a block to the network, and its hash is valid, the block and its ledger changes are added to the blockchain, and the network moves on to yet unprocessed transactions. In case there is a dispute, then the longest chain is considered to be correct. A new block is created every 10 minutes, on average.
+Changes to the Bitcoin protocol require consensus among the network participants. The Bitcoin protocol has inspired the creation of numerous other digital currencies and blockchain-based technologies, making it a foundational technology in the field of cryptocurrencies.
+
+
+== Blockchain ==
+Blockchain technology is a decentralized and secure digital ledger that records transactions across a network of computers. It ensures transparency, immutability, and tamper resistance, making data manipulation difficult. Blockchain is the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and has applications beyond finance, such as supply chain management and smart contracts.
+
+
+=== Transactions ===
+The network requires minimal structure to share transactions.  An ad hoc decentralized network of volunteers is sufficient. Messages are broadcast on a best-effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will. Upon reconnection, a node downloads and verifies new blocks from other nodes to complete its local copy of the blockchain.
+
+
+== Mining ==
+To form a distributed timestamp server as a peer-to-peer network, bitcoin uses a proof-of-work system. This work is often called bitcoin mining.
+During mining, practically the entire computing power of the Bitcoin network is used to solve cryptographic tasks, the proof of work. Their purpose is to ensure that the generation of valid blocks involves a certain amount of effort, so that subsequent modification of the block chain, such as in the 51% attack scenario, can be practically ruled out. Because of the difficulty, miners form ""mining pools"" to get payouts despite these high power requirements, costly hardware deployments, and/or hardware under their own control. As a result of  the Chinese ban on Bitcoin mining in 2021, the United States currently holds the largest share of Bitcoin mining pools.Requiring a proof of work to accept a new block to the blockchain was Satoshi Nakamoto's key innovation. The mining process involves identifying a block that, when hashed twice with SHA-256, yields a number smaller than the given difficulty target. While the average work required increases in inverse proportion to the difficulty target, a hash can always be verified by executing a single round of double SHA-256.
+For the bitcoin timestamp network, a valid proof of work is found by incrementing a nonce until a value is found that gives the block's hash the required number of leading zero bits. Once the hashing has produced a valid result, the block cannot be changed without redoing the work. As later blocks are chained after it, the work to change the block would include redoing the work for each subsequent block. If there is a deviation in consensus then a blockchain fork can occur.
+Majority consensus in bitcoin is represented by the longest chain, which required the greatest amount of effort to produce. If a majority of computing power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow fastest and outpace any competing chains. To modify a past block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of that block and all blocks after it and then surpass the work of the honest nodes. The probability of a slower attacker catching up diminishes exponentially as subsequent blocks are added.
+To compensate for increasing hardware speed and varying interest in running nodes over time, the difficulty of finding a valid hash is adjusted roughly every two weeks. If blocks are generated too quickly, the difficulty increases and more hashes are required to make a block and to generate new bitcoins.
+
+
+=== Difficulty and mining pools ===
+
+Bitcoin mining is a competitive endeavor. An ""arms race"" has been observed through the various hashing technologies that have been used to mine bitcoins: basic central processing units (CPUs), high-end graphics processing units (GPUs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) all have been used, each reducing the profitability of the less-specialized technology. Bitcoin-specific ASICs are now the primary method of mining bitcoin and have surpassed GPU speed by as much as 300-fold. The difficulty of the mining process is periodically adjusted to the mining power active on the network. As bitcoins have become more difficult to mine, computer hardware manufacturing companies have seen an increase in sales of high-end ASIC products.Computing power is often bundled together or ""pooled"" to reduce variance in miner income. Individual mining rigs often have to wait for long periods to confirm a block of transactions and receive payment. In a pool, all participating miners get paid every time a participating server solves a block. This payment depends on the amount of work an individual miner contributed to help find that block, and the payment system used by the pool.
+
+
+=== Environmental effects ===
+
+
+=== Mined bitcoins ===
+By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that produces new bitcoins owned by the creator of the block. This is the incentive for nodes to support the network. It provides the way to move new bitcoins into circulation.  The reward for mining halves every 210,000 blocks.  It started at 50 bitcoin, dropped to 25 in late 2012 and to 12.5 bitcoin in 2016.  The most recent halving, which occurred in May 2020 (with block number 630,000), reduced the block reward to 6.25 bitcoin. This halving process is programmed to continue a maximum 64 times before new coin creation ceases.
+
+
+== Payment verification ==
+
+Each miner can choose which transactions are included in or exempted from a block.  A greater number of transactions in a block does not equate to greater computational power required to solve that block.As noted in Nakamoto's whitepaper, it is possible to verify bitcoin payments without running a full network node (simplified payment verification, SPV). A user only needs a copy of the block headers of the longest chain, which are available by querying network nodes until it is apparent that the longest chain has been obtained; then, get the Merkle tree branch linking the transaction to its block. Linking the transaction to a place in the chain demonstrates that a network node has accepted it, and blocks added after it further establish the confirmation.
+
+
+== Protocol features ==
+
+
+=== Decentralization ===
+
+
+=== Security ===
+Various potential attacks on the bitcoin network and its use as a payment system, real or theoretical, have been considered.  The bitcoin protocol includes several features that protect it against some of those attacks, such as unauthorized spending, double spending, forging bitcoins, and tampering with the blockchain.  Other attacks, such as theft of private keys, require due care by users.
+
+
+==== Unauthorized spending ====
+Unauthorized spending is mitigated by bitcoin's implementation of public-private key cryptography. For example, when Alice sends a bitcoin to Bob, Bob becomes the new owner of the bitcoin. Eve, observing the transaction, might want to spend the bitcoin Bob just received, but she cannot sign the transaction without the knowledge of Bob's private key.
+
+
+==== Double spending ====
+A specific problem that an internet payment system must solve is double-spending, whereby a user pays the same coin to two or more different recipients. An example of such a problem would be if Eve sent a bitcoin to Alice and later sent the same bitcoin to Bob. The bitcoin network guards against double-spending by recording all bitcoin transfers in a ledger (the blockchain) that is visible to all users, and ensuring for all transferred bitcoins that they have not been previously spent.: 4 
+
+
+==== Race attack ====
+If Eve offers to pay Alice a bitcoin in exchange for goods and signs a corresponding transaction, it is still possible that she also creates a different transaction at the same time sending the same bitcoin to Bob. By the rules, the network accepts only one of the transactions. This is called a race attack, since there is a race between the recipients to accept the transaction first. Alice can reduce the risk of race attack stipulating that she will not deliver the goods until Eve's payment to Alice appears in the blockchain.A variant race attack (which has been called a Finney attack by reference to Hal Finney) requires the participation of a miner. Instead of sending both payment requests (to pay Bob and Alice with the same coins) to the network, Eve issues only Alice's payment request to the network, while the accomplice tries to mine a block that includes the payment to Bob instead of Alice.  There is a positive probability that the rogue miner will succeed before the network, in which case the payment to Alice will be rejected. As with the plain race attack, Alice can reduce the risk of a Finney attack by waiting for the payment to be included in the blockchain.
+
+
+==== History modification ====
+Each block that is added to the blockchain, starting with the block containing a given transaction, is called a confirmation of that transaction. Ideally, merchants and services that receive payment in bitcoin should wait for at least a few confirmations to be distributed over the network before assuming that the payment was done. The more confirmations that the merchant waits for, the more difficult it is for an attacker to successfully reverse the transaction—unless the attacker controls more than half the total network power, in which case it is called a 51% attack, or a majority attack.
+Although more difficult for attackers of a smaller size, there may be financial incentives that make history modification attacks profitable.
+
+
+=== Scalability ===
+
+
+=== Privacy ===
+
+
+==== Deanonymisation of clients ====
+Deanonymisation is a strategy in data mining in which anonymous data is cross-referenced with other sources of data to re-identify the anonymous data source. Along with transaction graph analysis, which may reveal connections between bitcoin addresses (pseudonyms), there is a possible attack which links a user's pseudonym to its IP address. If the peer is using Tor, the attack includes a method to separate the peer from the Tor network, forcing them to use their real IP address for any further transactions. The cost of the attack on the full bitcoin network was estimated to be under €1500 per month, as of 2014.
+
+
+== Consensus mechanism and upgrades ==
+
+
+== Impact and influence ==
+
+
+== See also ==
+Lists of network protocols
+Web3
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+=== Works cited ===
+de Vries, Alex; Gallersdörfer, Ulrich; Klaaßen, Lena; Stoll, Christian (16 March 2022). ""Revisiting Bitcoin's carbon footprint"". Joule. 6 (3): 498–502. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2022.02.005. ISSN 2542-4351. S2CID 247143939."
+Cryptocurrency wallet,"A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or an online service which stores the public and/or private keys for cryptocurrency transactions. In addition to this basic function of storing the keys, a cryptocurrency wallet more often offers the functionality of encrypting and/or signing information. Signing can for example result in executing a smart contract, a cryptocurrency transaction (see ""bitcoin transaction"" image), identification, or legally signing a 'document' (see ""application form"" image).
+
+
+== History ==
+In 2008 bitcoin was introduced as the first cryptocurrency following the principle outlined by Satoshi Nakamoto in the paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” The project was described as an electronic payment system using cryptographic proof instead of trust. It also mentioned using cryptographic proof to verify and record transactions on a blockchain.Starting in 2022, Forbes reported 60 large crypto exchanges trading above USD 100 billion.In March 2022, approximately 600 crypto exchanges globally facilitated digital asset trading, including  Binance, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gemini, GMO Coin, Huobi, eToro, Kraken, Robinhood. Asside from cryptocurrency exchanges, consumers had an option to utilize cryptocurrency wallets such as Ledger, Trezor, MetaMask and others for the secure storage and management of digital assets.
+
+
+=== Software wallets ===
+The first wallet program, simply named Bitcoin, and sometimes referred to as the Satoshi client, was released in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto as open-source software. In version 0.5 the client moved from the wxWidgets user interface toolkit to Qt, and the whole bundle was referred to as Bitcoin-Qt. After the release of version 0.9, the software bundle was renamed Bitcoin Core to distinguish itself from the underlying network. Bitcoin Core is, perhaps, the best known implementation or client. Forks of Bitcoin Core exist, such as Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Unlimited, and Parity Bitcoin.There are several modes in which wallets can operate. They have an inverse relationship with regard to trustlessness and computational requirements.
+Full clients verify transactions directly by downloading a full copy of the blockchain (over 150 GB as of January 2018). They do not require trust in any external parties. Full clients check the validity of mined blocks, preventing them from transacting on a chain that breaks or alters network rules.: ch. 1  Because of its size and complexity, downloading and verifying the entire blockchain is not suitable for all computing devices.
+Lightweight clients consult full nodes to send and receive transactions without requiring a local copy of the entire blockchain (see simplified payment verification – SPV). This makes lightweight clients much faster to set up and allows them to be used on low-power, low-bandwidth devices such as smartphones. When using a lightweight wallet, however, the user must trust full nodes, as it can report faulty values back to the user. Lightweight clients follow the longest blockchain and do not ensure it is valid, requiring trust in full nodes.Third-party internet services called online wallets or webwallets offer similar functionality but may be easier to use. In this case, credentials to access funds are stored with the online wallet provider rather than on the user's hardware. As a result, the user must have complete trust in the online wallet provider. A malicious provider or a breach in server security may cause entrusted bitcoins to be stolen. An example of such a security breach occurred with Mt. Gox in 2011.
+
+
+=== Cold storage ===
+
+Wallet software is targeted by hackers because of the lucrative potential for stealing bitcoins. A technique called ""cold storage"" keeps private keys out of reach of hackers; this is accomplished by keeping private keys offline at all times: ch. 4  by generating them on a device that is not connected to the internet.: 39  The credentials necessary to spend bitcoins can be stored offline in a number of different ways, from specialized hardware wallets to simple paper printouts of the private key.: ch. 10 
+
+
+==== Paper wallets ====
+A paper wallet is created with a keypair generated on a computer with no internet connection; the private key is written or printed onto the paper and then erased from the computer.: ch. 4  The paper wallet can then be stored in a safe physical location for later retrieval.: 39 Physical wallets can also take the form of metal token coins with a private key accessible under a security hologram in a recess struck on the reverse side.: 38  The security hologram self-destructs when removed from the token, showing that the private key has been accessed. Originally, these tokens were struck in brass and other base metals, but later used precious metals as bitcoin grew in value and popularity.: 80  Coins with stored face value as high as ₿1,000 have been struck in gold.: 102–104  The British Museum's coin collection includes four specimens from the earliest series: 83  of funded bitcoin tokens; one is currently on display in the museum's money gallery. In 2013, a Utah manufacturer of these tokens was ordered by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to register as a money services business before producing any more funded bitcoin tokens.: 80 
+
+
+==== Hardware wallets ====
+A hardware wallet is a computer peripheral that signs transactions as requested by the user. These devices store private keys and carry out signing and encryption internally, and do not share any sensitive information with the host computer except already signed (and thus unalterable) transactions. Because hardware wallets never expose their private keys, even computers that may be compromised by malware do not have a vector to access or steal them.: 42–45 The user sets a passcode when setting up a hardware wallet. As hardware wallets are tamper-resistant,: ch. 10  the passcode will be needed to extract any money.
+
+
+== Technology ==
+
+
+=== Private and public key generation ===
+A cryptocurrency wallet works by a theoretical or random number being generated and used with a length that depends on the algorithm size of the cryptocurrency's technology requirements. The number is converted to a private key using the specific requirements of the cryptocurrency cryptography algorithm requirement. A public key is then generated from the private key using whichever cryptographic algorithm is required. The private key is used by the owner to access and send cryptocurrency and is private to the owner, whereas the public key is to be shared to any third party to receive cryptocurrency.Up to this stage no computer or electronic device is required and all key pairs can be mathematically derived and written down by hand. The private key and public key pair (known as an address) are not known by the blockchain or anyone else. The blockchain will only record the transaction of the public address when cryptocurrency is sent to it, thus recording in the blockchain ledger the transaction of the public address.
+
+
+=== Duplicate private keys ===
+Collision (two or more wallets having the same private key) is theoretically possible, since keys can be generated without being used for transactions, and are therefore offline until recorded in the blockchain ledger. However, this possibility is effectively negated because the theoretical probability of two or more private keys being the same is extremely low. The number of possible wallets and thus private keys is extremely high, so duplicating or hacking a certain key would be inconceivable.
+
+
+=== Seed phrases ===
+In modern convention a seed phrase is now utilised which is a random 12 to 24 (or even greater) list of dictionary words which is an unencrypted form of the private key. (Words are easier to memorize than numerals). When online, exchange and hardware wallets are generated using random numbers, and the user is asked to supply a seed phrase. If the wallet is misplaced, damaged or compromised, the seed phrase can be used to re-access the wallet and associated keys and cryptocurrency in toto.
+
+
+=== Wallets ===
+A number of technologies known as wallets exist that store the key value pair of private and public key known as wallets. A wallet hosts the details of the key pair making cryptocurrency transactions possible. Multiple methods exist for storing keys or seeds in a wallet.A brainwallet or brain wallet is a type of wallet in which one memorizes a passcode (a private key or seed phrase). Brainwallets may be attractive due to plausible deniability or protection against governmental seizure, but are vulnerable to password guessing (especially large-scale offline guessing). Several hundred brainwallets exist on the Bitcoin blockchain, but most of them have been drained, sometimes repeatedly.
+
+
+=== Crypto wallets vis-à-vis DApp browsers ===
+DApp browsers are specialized software that supports decentralized applications. DApp browsers are considered to be the browsers of Web3 and are the gateway to access the decentralized applications which are based on blockchain technology. That means all DApp browsers must have a unique code system to unify all the different codes of the DApps.
+While crypto wallets are focused on the exchange, purchase, sale of digital assets and support narrowly targeted applications, the browsers support different kinds of applications of various formats, including exchange, games, NFTs marketplaces, etc.
+
+
+== Characteristics ==
+In addition to the basic function of storing the keys, a cryptocurrency wallet may also have one or more of the following characteristics.
+
+
+=== Simple cryptocurrency wallet ===
+A simple cryptocurrency wallet contains pairs of public and private cryptographic keys. The keys can be used to track ownership, receipt or spend cryptocurrencies. A public key allows others to make payments to the address derived from it, whereas a private key enables the spending of cryptocurrency from that address.The cryptocurrency itself is not in the wallet. In the case of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies derived from it, the cryptocurrency is decentrally stored and maintained in a publicly available distributed ledger called the blockchain.
+
+
+=== eID wallet ===
+Some wallets are specifically designed to be compatible with a framework. The European Union is creating an eIDAS compatible European Self-Sovereign Identity Framework (ESSIF) which runs on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). The EBSI wallet is designed to (securely) provide information, an eID and to sign 'transactions'.
+
+
+=== Multisignature wallet ===
+In contrast to simple cryptocurrency wallets requiring just one party to sign a transaction, multi-sig wallets require multiple parties to sign a transaction. Multisignature wallets are designed for increased security. Usually, a multisignature algorithm produces a joint signature that is more compact than a collection of distinct signatures from all users.
+
+
+=== Smart contract ===
+In the cryptocurrency space, smart contracts are digitally signed in the same way a cryptocurrency transaction is signed. The signing keys are held in a cryptocurrency wallet.
+
+
+=== Key derivation ===
+
+
+==== Sequential deterministic wallet ====
+A sequential deterministic wallet utilizes a simple method of generating addresses from a known starting string or ""seed"". This would utilize a cryptographic hash function, e.g. SHA-256 (seed + n), where n is an ASCII-coded number that starts from 1 and increments as additional keys are needed.
+
+
+==== Hierarchical deterministic wallet ====
+The hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet was publicly described in BIP32. As a deterministic wallet, it also derives keys from a single master root seed, but instead of having a single ""chain"" of keypairs, an HD wallet supports multiple key pair chains. 
+This allows a single key string to be used to generate an entire tree of key pairs with a stratified structure.BIP39 proposed the use of a set of human-readable words to derive the master private key of a wallet. This mnemonic phrase allows for easier wallet backup and recovery, due to all the keys of a wallet being derivable from a single plaintext string.
+
+
+==== Non-deterministic wallet ====
+In a non-deterministic wallet, each key is randomly generated on its own accord, and they are not seeded from a common key. Therefore, any backups of the wallet must store each and every single private key used as an address, as well as a buffer of 100 or so future keys that may have already been given out as addresses but not received payments yet.: 94 
+
+
+== Concerns ==
+When choosing a wallet, the owner must keep in mind who is supposed to have access to (a copy of) the private keys and thus potentially has signing capabilities. In case of cryptocurrency the user needs to trust the provider to keep the cryptocurrency safe, just like with a bank. Trust was misplaced in the case of the Mt. Gox exchange, which 'lost' most of their clients' bitcoins. Downloading a cryptocurrency wallet from a wallet provider to a computer or phone does not automatically mean that the owner is the only one who has a copy of the private keys.A wallet can also have known or unknown vulnerabilities. A supply chain attack or side-channel attack are ways of introducing vulnerabilities. In extreme cases even a computer which is not connected to any network can be hacked.To mitigate the risk of crypto wallet hacking, one can choose for a cold wallet, which remains offline and disconnected from the internet. A cold wallet refers to a physical device, such as a pen drive, that is utilized as a secure storage medium for transferring money from a hot wallet.
+
+
+== Security ==
+Digital wallets provide similar security and benefits as traditional currency. When using a digital wallet, consumers don't need to fill out order forms on each site because their information is stored and automatically updated and inserted into merchant sites' order fields. Electronic wallets safeguard consumers' data with a private software code, while retailers get fraud protection, faster payment acceptance, lower transaction costs, and less theft loss.Digital wallets are free and simple to get. When using a merchant site that accepts server-side digital wallets, customers enter their name, payment, and delivery information. Following the purchase, the customer is requested to register for a wallet with a user name and password for future purchases. Sites selling wallets can also be visited.Digital wallets can be dedicated to a single cryptocurrency (examples: Bitcoin  , Etherium, Ripple, Litecoin), or they can be multi-currency (Coinomi, CoinSpot, CoinVault, Cryptonator multi-cryptocurrency wallet, Exodus, Gatehub, Holy Transaction, Jaxx Wallet , UberPay Wallet, AnCrypto Wallet.
+Wallets are free for consumers but cost retailers. Wallet sellers may receive a portion of merchant purchases made through their wallets. In other circumstances, digital wallet vendors conduct cardholder-merchant transactions for a set fee.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Cryptocurrency
+Cryptocurrency exchange
+Bitcoin
+List of bitcoin companies
+Cryptography
+Cryptocurrency and security
+Medium of exchange
+Private and Public key cryptography
+Mobile payment
+Digital gold currency
+
+
+== References =="
+Bitcoin halving,
+Hardware wallet,
+BitPay,"BitPay is a bitcoin payment service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in May 2011 by Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair. BitPay provides Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash payment processing services for merchants.
+
+
+== History ==
+BitPay was founded in 2011 to provide mobile checkout services to companies that wanted to accept bitcoins. By October 2012, BitPay had grown to having 1,100 active merchants, including being WordPress's bitcoin merchant.BitPay announced in January 2013 that they would be relocating their headquarters to Atlanta, Georgia, from their previous location, Orlando, Florida. The move came following the announcement the company had secured $510,000 in seed funding. According to the company's co-founder, the city of Atlanta was chosen due to the number of fintech companies located in Georgia.In May 2013, BitPay announced that they had raised $2 million via Founders Fund.In September 2013, the company announced it had reached the milestone of 10,000 merchants. Gallippi stated that since the foundation of the company, they had processed over $34m, which was equivalent to 270,830 bitcoins at the time on the Bitcoin Price Index.In 2014, BitPay expanded its North American presence beyond its headquarters in Atlanta, opening offices in New York City, San Francisco and St. Petersburg, Florida. BitPay's European headquarters opened in Amsterdam and their South American Headquarters were opened in Argentina.In January at CES 2014, BitPay announced that 12,000 merchants had signed up to their service. The D Las Vegas and Golden Gate Hotel and Casino both announced that BitPay would be used as their chosen merchant for Bitcoin in Las Vegas. They were two of the first casinos in Las Vegas to accept Bitcoin.Shortly after CES 2014, the NBA basketball team the Sacramento Kings announced they would become the first major sports franchise in North America to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment for tickets and merchandise and would be processed by BitPayWithin the same month, it was announced that Zynga would also begin to accept Bitcoin, with BitPay as its merchant.In 2014, BitPay merchant BitGive became the first bitcoin charity to be recognized as a charitable organization by the IRS and was granted 501(c)(3) status. The 2014 FEC ruling that bitcoin donations can be accepted by political campaigns and organizations led to BitPay partnering with CoinVox and other fundraising organizations. In June, BitPay became the first Bitcoin company to sponsor a North American sports event. They sponsored the St. Petersburg Bowl, a college bowl game. Following the announcement, over 100 companies in the St. Petersburg area took steps so that they could accept the digital currency before the first event.In September 2015, the company sued its insurance provider in regards to non-coverage of a 5000 BTC theft that occurred in December 2014.In May 2016, BitPay launched the BitPay Visa Prepaid Debit Card, the first prepaid Visa debit card available for bitcoin users in all 50 US states.  The company also added new bitcoin-accepting firms, including gaming platform Steam. New collaborations and releases with Intel and Microsoft's Azure Cloud platform brought new features and capabilities to BitPay's Copay and Bitcore open source platforms.
+In 2017, BitPay launched another round B funding campaign. Later that year, they raised the minimum payment on the platform to US $100 from its previous US $5; the change was reversed only a few days later.  In Dec 2017, Steam stopped accepting bitcoin payments from BitPay, citing transaction costs for small items were too high, along with volatility concerns.Bitcoin's prepaid WaveCrest Visa was discontinued in January 2018. BitPay received its virtual currency license from the New York Department of Financial Services in July 2018.
+
+
+== Funding ==
+Initial funding came from a variety of sources including Shakil Khan, Barry Silbert, Jimmy Furland, Roger Ver and Trace Mayer.In January 2013, the company announced US $510,000 in angel investment, its first external capital after being internally bootstrapped. The investment coincided with the company relocating their headquarters to Atlanta, Georgia. It was stated at the time that the funding would be used to help advance Bitcoin processing.In June 2013, BitPay received an additional US $2 million venture capital investment led by the Founders Fund. A Tech Crunch article stated that the investment would likely be spent on staffing, with a number of coding specialists required around that time. The funding was seen as an attempted push to become more global and was seen by some as a larger VC land grab for Bitcoin companies.In December 2013, Hong Kong business magnate Li Ka-shing invested through his Horizons Ventures firm about $2.7 million into BitPay.In May 2014, BitPay received $30 million in funding from investors including Index Ventures, RRE Ventures, Virgin Group's Richard Branson and Yahoo founder Jerry Yang.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Coinbase
+Xapo
+Blockchain
+Circle (company)
+List of bitcoin companies
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Bitcoin faucet,
+Bitcoin futures,
+Bitcoin Law,"The Bitcoin Law (Spanish: Ley Bitcoin, pronounced [ˈlej biðˈkojn]) was passed by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador on 8 June 2021, giving the cryptocurrency bitcoin the status of legal tender within El Salvador after 7 September 2021. It was proposed by President Nayib Bukele. The text of the law states that ""the purpose of this law is to regulate bitcoin as unrestricted legal tender with liberating power, unlimited in any transaction, and to any title that public or private natural or legal persons require carrying out"".
+
+
+== History ==
+Bitcoin use as a currency in El Salvador had been experimented with since at least 2019, and current President Bukele expressed interest in bitcoin while he was mayor of San Salvador in 2017.  Bloomberg News reported in June 2021 that Bukele and some members of the Nuevas Ideas party had owned Bitcoin for years.The coastal village of El Zonte has had an active experiment underway to use bitcoin in the local economy since 2019, where some workers have received their salary and can pay bills in bitcoin, and others use it to buy food and other goods from local shops.At a conference for bitcoin in Miami in June 2021, President Bukele announced that he would be looking to promulgate a law allowing bitcoin as legal tender, saying that it would ""generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy"". According to Bukele, the law is aimed at the approximately 70% of Salvadorans without bank accounts, and will increase inclusion for them. Bukele argued that the bill would increase investment as well as reducing fees from current services for remittances. In pushing the bill, Bukele cooperated with Strike, a financial service firm which uses the Lightning Network for settlement, and Jack Mallers, its CEO.The law was passed by the Legislative Assembly  on 9 June 2021, with a majority vote of 62 out of 84. Bitcoin became legal tender on 7 September 2021, 90 days after the publication of the law in the official gazette, which makes El Salvador the first country to have bitcoin as legal tender.  Bitcoin joined the United States dollar as the second official currency of El Salvador.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+The law was commented on as something of good ""PR value"" for Bukele, as a ""young president trying to capitalise on a popular image"". It was also criticized due to the volatility of bitcoin when used as an investment, and the high transaction fees when used as a method of payment.Siobhan Morden of Amherst Pierpont commented that the law could bring complications to Bukele's talks with the International Monetary Fund. She noted that the law would ""likely only compound concerns about corruption, money laundering and the independence of regulatory agencies."" Carlos de Sousa of Vontobel Asset Management expressed concerns that the decentralized system would lead to easier money laundering and tax avoidance. According to Ernst & Young, the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender by El Salvador could have consequences for US taxpayers holding the cryptocurrency, because ""If more countries adopt bitcoin as legal tender, the US federal income tax treatment of bitcoin could change. Instead of being treated as an investment that is a capital asset, bitcoin could be treated as generating ordinary income under Section 988.""In an August 2021 poll conducted by Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica, a majority of people polled said they opposed the Bitcoin Law, and almost three quarters of respondents said they would not accept bitcoin as payment.According to a December 2021 survey done by the Central American University 100 days after the Bitcoin Law came into force: 34.8% of the population has no confidence in Bitcoin, 35.3% has little confidence, 13.2% has some confidence, and 14.1% has a lot of confidence. 56.6% of respondents have downloaded the government Bitcoin wallet; among them 62.9% has never used it or only once whereas 36.3% uses Bitcoin at least once a month. 48.5% of respondents think the Bitcoin Law should be abolished.
+
+
+== Implementation ==
+The new law took effect on 7 September 2021. In the early hours after the law took effect and the official launch of new technologies to deal with a major change to the national currency infrastructure, the government had to take its bitcoin e-wallet, Chivo, offline due to excessive load. The Bukele government increased server capacity and brought the e-wallet back online by mid-day. 7 September 2021 also saw a crash in bitcoin to its lowest in almost a month, causing the country to experience a 3 million USD paper loss. The Salvadoran government tried to rectify this by buying bitcoin, allowing the price to rise above 52,000 USD. Due to concerns about bitcoin's volatility, as a result, over 1,000 protestors gathered outside the Supreme Court of El Salvador to protest the law. Chivo was initially rejected by many platforms early on the first day, but became increasingly accepted by them.A month after adoption of the Bitcoin Law, more El Salvadorans have Bitcoin wallets than traditional bank accounts. The most popular bitcoin wallet—the government's officially-sponsored Chivo wallet—had been downloaded by three million people, ""amounting to 46 percent of the population. By contrast, as of 2017, only 29 percent of Salvadorans had bank accounts."" The use of the Chivo wallet has been incentivized by the government with US$30 seed money deposited into every Salvadoran's account. Other Lightning-enabled bitcoin wallets may be used by Salvadorans in lieu of Chivo.  In addition, many of the largest gas stations in the country are offering a 20 cents per gallon discount on gasoline for those who pay through the Chivo app. One month on, 12 percent of Salvadoran consumers have used the cryptocurrency, but 93 percent of companies surveyed reported receiving no payments in bitcoin during the first month.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Legality of cryptocurrencies by country or territory
+Petro, state-issued cryptocurrency of Venezuela
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Press release, on the official website of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador
+Opinion of the Financial Committee of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador
+Full text of the law in English"
+2020 Twitter account hijacking,"On July 15, 2020, between 20:00 and 22:00 UTC, 130 high-profile Twitter accounts were reportedly compromised by outside parties to promote a bitcoin scam. Twitter and other media sources confirmed that the perpetrators had gained access to Twitter's administrative tools so that they could alter the accounts themselves and post the tweets directly. They appeared to have used social engineering to gain access to the tools via Twitter employees. Three individuals were arrested by authorities on July 31, 2020, and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and unauthorized computer access related to the scam.The scam tweets asked individuals to send bitcoin currency to a specific cryptocurrency wallet, promising the Twitter user that money sent would be doubled and returned as a charitable gesture. Within minutes from the initial tweets, more than 320 transactions had already taken place on one of the wallet addresses, and bitcoins to a value of more than US$110,000 had been deposited in one account before the scam messages were removed by Twitter. In addition, full message history data from eight non-verified accounts were also acquired.Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, described the incident as ""the worst hack of a major social media platform yet."" Security researchers expressed concerns that the social engineering used to execute the hack could affect the use of social media in important online discussions, including the lead-up into the 2020 United States presidential election. On July 31, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice announced charges against three individuals in connection with the incident.
+
+
+== Incident ==
+Forensic analysis of the scam showed that the initial scam messages were first posted by accounts with short, one- or two-character distinctive names, such as ""@6"". This was followed by cryptocurrency Twitter accounts at around 20:00 UTC on July 15, 2020, including those of Coinbase, CoinDesk and Binance. The scam then moved to more high-profile accounts with the first such tweet sent from Elon Musk's Twitter account at 20:17 UTC. Other supposedly compromised accounts included those of well-known individuals such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, MrBeast, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Kim Kardashian, and Kanye West; and companies such as Apple, Uber, and Cash App. Twitter believed 130 accounts were affected, though only 45 were actually used to tweet the scam message; most of the accounts that were accessed in the scam had at least a million followers.The tweets involved in the scam hack claimed that the sender, in charity, would repay any user double the value of any bitcoin they sent to given wallets, often as part of a COVID-19 relief effort. The tweets followed the sharing of malicious links by a number of cryptocurrency companies; the website hosting the links was taken down shortly after the tweets were posted. While such ""double your bitcoin"" scams have been common on Twitter before, this was the first major instance of them being sent from breached high-profile accounts. Security experts believe that the perpetrators ran the scam as a ""smash and grab"" operation: Knowing that the intrusion into the accounts would be closed quickly, the perpetrators likely planned that only a small fraction of the millions that follow these accounts needed to fall for the scam in that short time to make quick money from it. Multiple bitcoin wallets had been listed at these websites; the first one observed had received 12 bitcoins from over 320 transactions, valued at more than US$118,000, and had about US$61,000 removed from it, while a second had amounts only in the thousands of dollars as Twitter took steps to halt the postings. It is unclear if these had been funds added by those led on by the scam, as bitcoin scammers are known to add funds to wallets prior to starting schemes to make the scam seem legitimate. Of the funds added, most had originated from wallets with Chinese ownerships, but about 25% came from United States wallets. After it was added, the cryptocurrency was then subsequently transferred through multiple accounts as a means to obscure their identity.Some of the compromised accounts posted scam messages repeatedly, even after having some of the messages deleted. The tweets were labelled as having been sent using the Twitter Web app. One of the phrases involved in the scam was tweeted more than 3,000 times in the space of four hours, with tweets being sent from IP addresses linked to many different countries. The reused phrasing allowed Twitter to remove the offending tweets easily as they took steps to stop the scam.By 21:45 UTC, Twitter released a statement saying they were ""aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter"" and that they were ""taking steps to fix it"". Shortly afterwards, it disabled the ability for some accounts to tweet, or to reset their password; Twitter had not confirmed which accounts were restricted, but many users with accounts Twitter had marked as ""verified"" confirmed that they were unable to tweet. Approximately three hours after the first scam tweets, Twitter reported they believed they had resolved all of the affected accounts to restore credentials to their rightful owners. Later that night, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said it was a ""tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We're diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened."" At least one cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, blacklisted the bitcoin addresses to prevent money from being sent. Coinbase said they stopped over 1,000 transactions totaling over US$280,000 from being sent.In addition to sending out tweets, the account data for eight compromised accounts was downloaded, including all created posts and direct messages, though none of these accounts belonged to verified users. Twitter also suspected that thirty-six other accounts had their direct messages accessed but not downloaded including Dutch Parliament Representative Geert Wilders, but believed no other current or former elected official had their messages accessed.
+
+
+=== Method of attack ===
+Bloomberg News, after investigation with former and current Twitter employees, reported that as many as 1500 Twitter employees and partners had access to the admin tools that would allow for the ability to reset accounts, as had been done during the incident. Former Twitter employees had told Bloomberg that even as late as 2017 and 2018, those with access would make a game of using these tools to track famous celebrities, though the amount of data visible through the tools alone was limited to elements like IP address and geolocation information. A Twitter spokesperson told Bloomberg that they do use ""extensive security training and managerial oversight"" to manage employees and partners with access to the tools, and that there was ""no indication that the partners we work with on customer service and account management played a part here"". Former members of Twitter's security departments stated that since 2015, the company was alerted to the potential of an inside attack and other cybersecurity measures, but these were put aside in favor of more revenue-generating initiatives.As Twitter was working to resolve the situation on July 15, Vice was contacted by at least four individuals claiming to be part of the scam and presented the website with screenshots showing that they had been able to gain access to a Twitter administrative tool, also known as an ""agent tool"", that allowed them to change various account-level settings of some of the compromised accounts, including confirmation emails for the account. This allowed them to set email addresses which any other user, with access to that email account, could initiate a password reset and post the tweets. These hackers told Vice that they had paid insiders at Twitter to get access to the administrative tool to be able to pull this off.Ars Technica obtained a more detailed report from a researcher who worked with FBI on the investigation. According to this report, attackers scraped LinkedIn in search of Twitter employees likely to have administrator privileges account-holder tools. Then attackers obtained these employees' cell phone numbers and other private contact information via paid tools LinkedIn makes available to job recruiters. After choosing victims for the next stage, attackers contacted Twitter employees, most who were remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and, using the information from LinkedIn and other public sources, pretended to be Twitter personnel. Attackers directed victims to log into a fake internal Twitter VPN. To bypass two-factor authentication, attackers entered stolen credentials into the real Twitter VPN portal, and ""within seconds of the employees entering their info into the fake one"", asked victims for the two-factor authentication code.TechCrunch reported similarly, based on a source that stated some of the messages were from a member of the hacking forum OGUsers, who had claimed to have made over US$100,000 from it. According to TechCrunch's source, this member ""Kirk"" had reportedly gained access to the Twitter administrative tool likely through a compromised employee account, and after initially offering to take over any account on request, switched strategies to target cryptocurrency accounts, starting with Binance and then higher-profile ones. The source did not believe Kirk had paid a Twitter employee for access.The ""@6"" Twitter had belonged to Adrian Lamo, and the user maintaining the account on behalf of Lamo's family reported that the group that performed the hack were able to bypass numerous security factors they had set up on the account, including two-factor authentication, further indicating that the administrative tools had been used to bypass the account security. Spokespersons for the White House stated that President Donald Trump's account, which may have been a target, had extra security measures implemented at Twitter after an incident in 2017, and therefore was not affected by the scam.Vice's and TechCrunch's sources were corroborated by The New York Times, who spoke to similar persons involved with the events, and from other security researchers who had been given similar screens, and tweets of these screens had been made, but Twitter removed these since they revealed personal details of the compromised accounts. The New York Times further affirmed that the vector of the attack was related to most of the company's remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. The OGUsers members were able to gain access to the Twitter employees' Slack communications channel where information and authorization processes on accessing the company's servers while remote working had been pinned.Twitter subsequently confirmed that the scam involved social engineering, stating ""We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools."" In addition to taking further steps to lock down the verified accounts affected, Twitter said they have also begun an internal investigation and have limited employee access to their system administrative tools as they evaluate the situation, as well as if any additional data was compromised by the malicious users.By the end of July 17, 2020, Twitter affirmed what had been learned from these media sources, stating that ""The attackers successfully manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter's internal systems, including getting through our two-factor protections. As of now, we know that they accessed tools only available to our internal support teams."" Twitter had been able to further confirm by July 30 that the method used was what they called a ""phone spear phishing attack"": they initially used social engineering to breach the credentials of lower-level Twitter employees who did not have access to the admin tools, and then using those employee accounts, engaged in additional social engineering attacks to get the credentials to the admin tools from employees who did have authorization for their use.
+
+
+=== Perpetrators ===
+The FBI announced on July 16 it was launching an investigation into the scam, as it was used to ""perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud"", a criminal offense. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence also planned to ask Twitter for additional information on the hack, as the committee's vice-chair Mark Warner stated ""The ability of bad actors to take over prominent accounts, even fleetingly, signals a worrisome vulnerability in this media environment, exploitable not just for scams but for more impactful efforts to cause confusion, havoc and political mischief"". The UK's National Cyber Security Centre said its officers had reached out to Twitter regarding the incident.Security researcher Brian Krebs corroborated with TechCrunch's source and with information obtained by Reuters, that the scam appeared to have originated in the ""OGUsers"" group. The OGUsers forum (""OG"" standing for ""original"") was established for selling and buying social media accounts with short or ""rare"" names, and according to its owner, speaking to Reuters, the practice of trafficking in hacked credentials was prohibited. Screenshots from the forum, show various users on the forum offering to hack into Twitter accounts at US$2,000−3,000 each. Krebs stated one of the members might have been tied to the August 2019 takeover of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Twitter account. The OGUsers owner told Reuters that the accounts shown in the screenshots were since banned.The United States Department of Justice announced the arrest and charges of three individuals tied to the scam on July 31, 2020. A 19-year-old from the United Kingdom was charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and the intentional access of a protected computer, and a 22-year-old from Florida was charged with aiding and abetting the international access. Both will be tried in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. 
+A third individual, Graham Ivan Clark, 17 years old, of Hillsborough County, Florida, was also indicted; the charges were originally sealed in juvenile court, but he was eventually charged as an adult on 30 felony counts. The charges included organized fraud, communications fraud, identity theft, and hacking. Florida state law allows for trying minors as adults in financial fraud cases. Clark pleaded not guilty to the charges on August 4, 2020. He accepted a plea bargain in March 2021 and was sentenced to 3 years in prison followed by 3 years of probation; he was sentenced under Florida’s Youthful Offender Act, which limits the penalties on convicted felons under the age of 21. According to the Tampa Bay Times, he would be able to ""to serve some of his time in a military-style boot camp"".A fourth individual, a 16-year-old from Massachusetts, had been identified as a possible suspect in the scam by the FBI. Though federal agents had conducted a warranted search of his possessions in late August 2020, no indictments have been made yet.In April 2023, 23-year-old Joseph James O'Connor, a British citizen with the online handle PlugwalkJoe, was extradited from Spain to New York to face charges after being arrested in July 2020, and reported to have hacked over 100 Twitter accounts including the accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Elon Musk. O'Connor is also accused of extorting close to $800,000 in cryptocurrency. O'Connor entered a guilty plea, and on June 23 was sentenced to five years in federal prison in addition for forfeiting at least $794,000 to the victims of the hijacking.
+
+
+== Reaction and aftermath ==
+As affected users could only retweet content, leading NBC News to set up a temporary non-verified account so that they could continue to tweet, retweeting ""significant updates"" on their main account. Some National Weather Service forecast offices were unable to tweet severe weather warnings, with the National Weather Service in Lincoln, Illinois initially unable to tweet a tornado warning. Joe Biden's campaign stated to CNN that they were ""in touch with Twitter on the matter"", and that his account had been ""locked down"". Google temporarily disabled its Twitter carousel in its search feature as a result of these security issues.During the incident, Twitter, Inc.'s stock price fell by 4% after the markets closed. By the end of the next day, Twitter, Inc.'s stock price ended at $36.40, down 38 cents, or 0.87%.Security experts expressed concern that while the scam may have been relatively small in terms of financial impact, the ability for social media to be taken over through social engineering involving employees of these companies poses a major threat in the use of social media particularly in the lead-up to the 2020 United States presidential election, and could potentially cause an international incident. Alex Stamos of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation said, ""Twitter has become the most important platform when it comes to discussion among political elites, and it has real vulnerabilities.""Twitter chose to delay the rolling out of its new API in the aftermath of the security issues. By September, Twitter stated they had put new protocols in place to prevent similar social engineering attacks, including heightening background checks for employees that would have access to the key user data, implementing day-to-day phishing-resistant security keys, and having all employees involved in customer support participate in training to be aware of future social engineering scams.Though not part of the Twitter incident, Steve Wozniak and seventeen others initiated a lawsuit against Google the following week, asserting that the company did not take sufficient steps to remove similar Bitcoin scam videos posted to YouTube that used his and the other plaintiffs' names, fraudulently claiming to back the scam. Wozniak's complaint identified that Twitter was able to act within the same day, while he and the other plaintiffs' requests to Google had never been acted upon.On September 29, 2020, Twitter hired Rinki Sethi as CISO and VP of the company after the breach.On November 20, 2020, Hulu aired the 5th episode of ""The New York Times Presents"" series entitled ""The Teenager Who Hacked Twitter,"" which details the events of this incident.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Ongoing updates from Twitter on investigation into the intrusion on its systems, what had been accessed, and their steps to correct and prevent similar attacks.
+Overview of the bitcoin address' transactions Archived July 17, 2020, at the Wayback Machine"
+2018 Bitcoin bomb threats,"On December 13, 2018, thousands of businesses, individuals, schools, news agencies, and other places throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia received emailed bomb threats, warning that a ""mercenary"" of the sender of the email had placed a bomb in the receiver's workplace and demanding that a ransom of $20,000 be sent to a Bitcoin address to prevent the bomb from being detonated. Six schools in Australia's capital city Canberra were evacuated after threats. The explosive stated to be used in the bomb, along with the Bitcoin address, varied between emails. Police departments in New York City, Oklahoma City, Massachusetts, and Calgary, among other areas of the United States and Canada, stated that the threats were likely not credible and that no explosive devices had been found in any of the threatened areas.On December 14, Jaeson Schultz of Cisco Talos wrote that the bitcoin addresses associated with the bomb threats received only two transactions, both of which were under $1. He also wrote that the same group was behind an earlier sextortion scheme which was more profitable, and that they started making new threats of throwing acid onto individual recipients.In January 2019, anti-spam researcher Ronald Guilmette found that a GoDaddy security weakness was exploited to help the spam campaign.
+
+
+== See also ==
+2017 Jewish Community Center bomb threats
+October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts
+
+
+== References =="
+Cryptocurrency bubble,"A cryptocurrency bubble is a phenomenon where the market increasingly considers the going price of cryptocurrency assets to be inflated against their hypothetical value. The history of cryptocurrency has been marked by several speculative bubbles.Some economists and prominent investors have expressed the view that the entire cryptocurrency market constitutes a speculative bubble. Adherents of this view include Berkshire Hathaway board member Warren Buffett and several laureates of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, central bankers, and investors.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== 2011 booms and crashes ===
+In February 2011, the price of bitcoin rose to US$1.06, then fell to US$0.67 that April. This spike was encouraged by several Slashdot posts about it. In June 2011, bitcoin's price again rose, to US$29.58. This came after attention from a Gawker article about the dark web market Silk Road. The price then fell to US$2.14 that November.
+
+
+=== 2013 boom and 2014–15 crash ===
+In November 2013, Bitcoin's price rose to US$1,127.45. It then gradually declined, bottoming out at US$172.15 in January 2015.
+
+
+=== 2017 boom and 2018 crash ===
+
+The 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the Bitcoin crash and the Great crypto crash) was the sell-off of most cryptocurrencies starting in January 2018. After an unprecedented boom in 2017, the price of Bitcoin fell by about 65% from 6 January to 6 February 2018. Subsequently, nearly all other cryptocurrencies followed Bitcoin's crash. By September 2018, cryptocurrencies collapsed 80% from their peak in January 2018, making the 2018 cryptocurrency crash worse than the dot-com bubble's 78% collapse. By 26 November, Bitcoin also fell by 80% from its peak, having lost almost one-third of its value in the previous week.A January 2018 article by CBS cautioned about possible fraud, citing the case of BitConnect, a British company which received a cease-and-desist order from the Texas State Securities Board. BitConnect had promised very high monthly returns but had not registered with state securities regulators or given their office address.In November 2018, the total market capitalization for Bitcoin fell below $100 billion for the first time since October 2017, and the price of Bitcoin fell below $4,000, representing an 80 percent decline from its peak the previous January. Bitcoin reached a low of around $3,100 in December 2018.
+
+
+==== Timeline of the crash ====
+17 December 2017: Bitcoin's price briefly reaches a new all-time high of $19,783.06.
+22 December 2017: Bitcoin falls below $11,000, a fall of 45% from its peak.
+12 January 2018: Amidst rumors that South Korea could be preparing to ban trading in cryptocurrency, the price of Bitcoin depreciates by 12 percent.
+26 January 2018: Coincheck, Japan's largest cryptocurrency OTC market, is hacked. US$530 million of the NEM are stolen by the hacker, causing Coincheck to indefinitely suspend trading. The loss is the largest ever so far by an incident of theft.
+7 March 2018: Compromised Binance API keys are used to execute irregular trades.
+Late March 2018: Facebook, Google, and Twitter ban advertisements for initial coin offerings (ICO) and token sales.
+15 November 2018: Bitcoin's market capitalization falls below $100 billion for the first time since October 2017 and the price of Bitcoin falls to $5,500.
+
+
+==== Initial coin offerings ====
+Wired noted in 2017 that the bubble in initial coin offerings (ICOs) was about to burst. Some investors bought ICOs in hopes of participating in the financial gains similar to those enjoyed by early Bitcoin or Ethereum speculators.Binance has been one of the biggest winners in this boom as it surged to become the largest cryptocurrency trading platform by volume. It lists hundreds of digital tokens on its exchange.In June 2018, Ella Zhang of Binance Labs, a division of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, stated that she was hoping to see the bubble in ICOs collapse. She promised to help ""fight scams and shit coins"".
+
+
+=== 2020–2022 cryptocurrency bubble ===
+
+
+==== 2020–2021 bubbles ====
+From 8 to 12 March 2020, the price of Bitcoin fell by 30 percent from $8,901 to $6,206. By October 2020, Bitcoin was worth approximately $13,200.In November 2020, Bitcoin again surpassed its previous all-time high of over $19,000. After another surge on 3 January 2021 with $34,792.47, Bitcoin crashed by 17 percent the next day. Bitcoin traded above $40,000 for the first time on 8 January 2021 and reached $50,000 on 16 February 2021. On Wednesday, 20 October 2021, Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $66,974.In early 2021, Bitcoin's price witnessed another boom, rising over 700% since March 2020, and reaching above $40,000 for the first time on 7 January. On 11 January, the UK Financial Conduct Authority warned investors against lending or investments in cryptoassets, that they should be prepared ""to lose all their money"". On 16 February, Bitcoin reached $50,000 for the first time. On 13 March, Bitcoin surpassed $61,000 for the first time. Following a smaller correction in February, Bitcoin plunged from its peak above $64,000 on 14 April to below $49,000 on 23 April, representing a 23% mini-crash in less than 10 days, dipping below the March bottom trading range and wiping half a trillion dollars from the combined crypto market cap.
+On 14 April, Coinbase, a much hyped crypto exchange went public on the NASDAQ. Their shares grew by over 31% on their first day to $328.28, pushing their market cap to $85.8B.Other cryptocurrencies' prices also sharply rose, then followed by losses of value during this period. In May 2021, the value of Dogecoin, originally created as a joke, increased to 20,000% of value in one year. It then dropped 34% over the weekend.
+By 19 May, Bitcoin had dropped in value by 30% to $31,000, Ethereum by 40%, and Dogecoin by 45%. Nearly all cryptocurrencies were down by double-digit percentages. Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance went down amid a market-wide price crash and traders are now seeking justice for their losses. This was partly in response to Elon Musk's announcement that Tesla would suspend payments using the Bitcoin network due to environmental concerns, along with an announcement from the People's Bank of China reiterating that digital currencies cannot be used for payments.Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies experienced a solid recovery after Elon Musk met with leading Bitcoin mining companies to develop more sustainable and efficient Bitcoin mining. After bottoming out on 19 July, by early September Bitcoin had reached $52,633.54 while Ethereum grew by over 100% to $3,952.13. After a short but significant fall, both crypto's peaked on 7 November 2021 at $67,566.83 and $4,812.09, respectively. The NASDAQ would peak 12 days later on 19 November at 16,057.44. Since bottoming out after the covid crash in 2020, Bitcoin had grown over 1,200% in value while Ethereum had grown over 4,000% in value while the NASDAQ had only grown around 134%.
+In September, Bitcoin officially became a legal tender in El Salvador with many news sources wondering what countries would be next.As of October 2021, China has continued shutting down crypto trading and mining activities, and Tesla has not yet resumed payments with Bitcoin.
+
+
+==== 2021–2023 crash ====
+After their peak, the crypto market began to fall with the rest of the market. By the end of 2021, Bitcoin had fallen nearly 30% from its peak down to $47,686.81, and Ethereum had fallen about 23% to $3,769.70. In December 2022, The Washington Post reported ""the sense that the crypto bubble has definitively popped, taking with it billions of dollars of investments made by regular people, pension funds, venture capitalists, and traditional companies"".
+
+
+===== Collapse of Terra-Luna =====
+
+In May 2022, the stablecoin TerraUSD fell to US$0.10. This was supposed to be pegged to the US dollar via a complex algorithmic relationship with its support coin Luna. The loss of the peg resulted in Luna falling to almost zero, down from its high of $119.51. The collapse wiped out $45 billion of market capitalization in a week. On 25 May, a proposal was approved to reissue a new Luna cryptocurrency and to decouple from and abandon the devalued UST stablecoin. The new Luna coin lost value in the opening days of being listed on exchanges.In the wake of Terra-Luna's collapse, another algorithmic stablecoin, DEI, lost its peg to the dollar and started to collapse.Kwon Do-hyung, the founder of Terra-Luna, is wanted by South Korea and the US for his role as the creator of the cryptocurrency stablecoin which was guaranteed by an algorithm rather than with appropriate funds, after the loss of 40 billion dollars by investors. He has been arrested in Montenegro.
+
+
+===== Private litigation in the United States =====
+
+On 7 January 2022, a class-action lawsuit was filed against EthereumMax alleging it to be a pump and dump scheme with media personality Kim Kardashian, former professional boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., former NBA player Paul Pierce, and other celebrities also being named in the lawsuit for promoting the Ether cryptocurrency on their social media accounts.On 18 February, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in a lawsuit against Bitconnect that the Securities Act of 1933 extends to targeted solicitation using social media.On the same day, a class-action lawsuit was filed against SafeMoon alleging it to also be a pump and dump scheme with professional boxer Jake Paul, musician Nick Carter, rappers Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty, and social media personality Ben Phillips also being named in the lawsuit for promoting the SafeMoon cryptocurrency with misleading information on their social media accounts.On 1 April, a class-action lawsuit was filed in Florida against the LGBcoin cryptocurrency company, NASCAR, professional stock car racing driver Brandon Brown, and political commentator Candace Owens alleging that the defendants made false or misleading statements about the LGBcoin and that the founders of the company had engaged in a pump and dump scheme.On 13 April, Coinbase received a class-action securities fraud lawsuit from its shareholders for including false and misleading statements and omissions in the registration statement and prospectus of its initial public offering.On 13 June, Binance received a class-action lawsuit from more than 2,000 investors accusing the company of false advertising in promoting TerraUSD.On 17 June, TerraForm Labs received a class-action lawsuit in the United States alleging the company misled investors in violation of federal and California securities laws in marketing its cryptocurrencies in a manner that resembled securities.On 7 July, Celsius Network received a lawsuit from a former cryptocurrency investment manager alleging the company failed to implement adequate risk management strategies or accounting practices to hedge the firm against cryptocurrency price fluctuations and protect its ability to repay its depositors, and that the company was operating an effective Ponzi scheme.On 21 July, an ex-Coinbase employee and 2 other men were charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. This marked the first time charges were brought to people involving crypto assets.
+
+
+===== Collapse of FTX =====
+
+In early November, Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, announced it would be dissolving its holdings in FTX Token (FTT) with reports that most of FTX liquidity was based in this coin and was very unstable. This announcement came shortly after article surfaced stating that Alameda Research, a trading firm affiliated with FTX held a significant amount of FTT. This resulted in a run on FTX resulting in 90% of all FTT being withdrawn. The price of FTT fell from $22 on 7 November to under $5.00 on 8 November, an 80% drop. Abracadabra.com's stablecoin ""magic internet money"" (MIM) also briefly lost its peg to the US dollar for the first time since May 2022. This all resulted in a liquidity crisis with the company unable to pay off the withdrawals. On 8 November, rival Binance announced plans to buy the company to save it from collapse. This sent shockwaves through the crypto market and led to a 10% drop in Bitcoin price and a 15% drop in Ether price. The following day, however, Binance immediately withdrew its offer causing Bitcoin and Ether to plummet another 14% and 16%, respectively, to their lowest levels since November 2020. The same day, the SEC and Justice Department launched an investigation into the company. FTX filed for bankruptcy protection on 11 November.
+
+
+== Characterization as 'bubble' ==
+
+Bitcoin has been characterized as a speculative bubble by eight winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences: Paul Krugman, Robert J. Shiller,  Joseph Stiglitz, Richard Thaler, James Heckman, Thomas Sargent, Angus Deaton, and Oliver Hart; and by central bank officials including Alan Greenspan, Agustín Carstens, Vítor Constâncio, and Nout Wellink.The investors Warren Buffett and George Soros have respectively characterized it as a ""mirage"" and a ""bubble"", while the business executives Jack Ma and J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have called it a ""bubble"" and a ""fraud"", respectively. However, Dimon said later he regrets calling Bitcoin a fraud.Other notable skeptics are Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist; Bruce Schneier, cryptographer, computer security expert, and public policy lecturer at Harvard University; and Molly White, author of the Web3 Is Going Just Great website.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Blockchain § History, a broader overview of the history of blockchain technology
+Cryptocurrency § History
+Cryptocurrency and crime
+Crypto Ponzi scheme
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+""Bitcoin Bulls and Bears"". Bloomberg. 8 June 2018."
+BitGo,"BitGo, Inc. is a digital asset trust company and security company, headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 2013 by Mike Belshe and Ben Davenport. Galaxy Digital announced its acquisition of BitGo in 2021 for $1.2 billion, although this acquisition was announced to have been canceled in 2022 after the crypto downturn, with BitGo continuing as an independent company.The company offers a multisignature bitcoin wallet service, where keys are divided among a number of owners to manage risk. Generally, BitGo wallets have three keys: one held by BitGo, and two held by the wallet's owner. Wallets can be configured in both hot and cold configurations, as well as non-custodial and custodial configurations.
+BitGo also serves as the sole custodian for bitcoin that people deposit to receive a tokenized form of that bitcoin known as Wrapped Bitcoin or WBTC that can be exchanged on the Ethereum blockchain.
+
+
+== History ==
+In June 2014 the company received US$12 million in venture capital funding led by Redpoint Ventures.In January 2015 BitGo announced the general availability of their Platform API. The following month the company bought an insurance policy from XL Catlin against theft from its wallets.On August 2, 2016, Bitfinex, a digital currency exchange using BitGo software,  announced it had suffered a security breach. BitGo was not itself hacked, but processed withdrawal requests from the hacker, who had obtained access to Bitfinex's keys.In September 2018, BitGo was approved by the South Dakota Division of Banking to act as a qualified custodian for digital assets and created BitGo Trust Company.In October 2018, the company raised US$15 million in venture capital funding from Goldman Sachs and Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital.In December 2020, the Office of Foreign Assets Control announced that BitGo has paid $98,830 to settle apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs.In March 2021, BitGo Receives NY Trust Charter from the New York State Department of Financial Services.In May 2021, Galaxy Digital announced its acquisition of BitGo for $1.2 billion in a cash and stock deal, marking the first $1 billion deal in the cryptocurrency industry. In August 2022, Galaxy's Board of Directors terminated the deal following BitGo's inability to provide certain financial statements needed by Galaxy for its SEC filing. BitGo claimed that it had provided its audited financials and honored its obligations, and that it would take legal action against Galaxy and seek a $100 million termination fee.In a Delaware Chancery Court complaint dated Sept. 15, 2022, BitGo asserted that while it had filed the required financial reports, Galaxy twice used last-minute criticisms of the accounting methods employed to first delay and then scuttle the acquisition. The suit sought at least $100 million under a termination agreement that was part of the takeover accord between the companies. Galaxy told Forbes that it “completely” disagreed with the allegations. In June 2023, the Delaware Chancery Court dismissed BitGo’s suit, saying Galaxy had a “valid basis” to terminate the deal. BitGo said it would appeal the ruling.In June 2023, BitGo announced that it had signed a letter of intent to acquire Prime Core Technologies, the Nevada-based parent company of digital asset custodian Prime Trust. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. BitGo terminated the acquisition two weeks later, with CEO Belshe saying Prime Trust was “not realistic about the state of their business two weeks ago.”On August 16, 2023, BitGo raised $100 million in Series C funding at a $1.75 billion valuation. Without naming names, BitGo said the funding participants were “new, outside strategic investors.”
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Bitmain,"Bitmain Technologies Ltd., is a privately owned company headquartered in Beijing, China, that designs application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips for bitcoin mining.
+
+
+== History ==
+It was founded by Micree Zhan and Jihan Wu in 2013. Prior to founding Bitmain, Zhan was running DivaIP, a startup that allowed users to stream television to a computer screen via a set-top box, and Wu was a financial analyst and private equity fund manager.By 2018 it had become the world's largest designer of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips for bitcoin mining. The company also operates BTC.com and Antpool, historically two of the largest mining pools for bitcoin. In an effort to boost Bitcoin Cash (BCH) prices, Antpool ""burned"" 12% of the BCH they mined by sending them to irrecoverable addresses. Bitmain was reportedly profitable in early 2018, with a net profit of $742.7 million in the first half of 2018, and negative operating cash flow. TechCrunch reported that unsold inventory ballooned to one billion dollars in the second quarter of 2018. Bitmain's first product was the Antminer S1 which is an ASIC Bitcoin miner making 180 gigahashes per second (GH/s) while using 80–200 watts of power. Bitmain as of 2018 had 11 mining farms operating in China. Bitmain was involved in the 2018 Bitcoin Cash split, siding with Bitcoin Cash ABC alongside Roger Ver. In December 2018 the company laid off about half of its 3000 staff. The company has since closed its offices in Israel and the Netherlands, while significantly downsizing its Texas mining operation. In February 2019, Bitmain had lost ""about $500 million"" in the third quarter of 2018. Bitmain issued a statement saying ""the rumors are not true and we will make announcements in due course.""In June 2021, suspended spot delivery of sales of machines globally aiming to support local prices following Beijing's crackdown.
+
+
+== Bitmain's attempts at initial public offering ==
+In June 2018, Wu told Bloomberg that Bitmain was considering an IPO, to give early investors a chance to cash out. The company completed its $1 billion pre-IPO registration with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August, and filed for IPO in September.Bitmain Technologies filed for IPO on 26 September 2018 with the Hong Kong regulatory agency and released their first public financial statement at a time where Bitcoin prices had dropped 65% from December 2017. The price drop had hurt mining hardware sales that accounted for 96% of the company's revenue. Bitmain will use a dual class share structure. In Bitmain's case, this means the share held by company's founders would count as 10 votes.On 26 March 2019, Bitmain's application for a Hong Kong initial public offering lapsed, six months after it was filed, as investors were reportedly concerned about the fall in Bitcoin's value. The company issued a statement saying it would ""restart the listing application work at an appropriate time in the future."" Bitmain also announced that Haichao Wang would serve as its new CEO, while co-founders Micree Zhan and Jihan Wu will continue as directors.According to a Tencent News Report, after Bitmain's failed IPO attempt in Hong Kong, Bitmain filed an application in the United States seeking to go public again.
+
+
+== Controversies ==
+In 2015, Bitmain was involved in Hong Kong's first cryptocurrency-related litigation in the High Court (High Court Action No. HCA 1980 of 2015) when Bitmain sued one of the world's leading bitcoin trading platform at the time. Bitmain accused the trading platform of ""negligence and/or security issues"". At the commencement of proceedings, Bitmain's claim amount was around RMB 700,000. Bitmain's claim was later contested after it was revealed during the course of the litigation that serious issues of cyber-security neglect may have occurred on Bitmain's side when the transaction had been undertaken by Bitmain's staff (e.g. leaving on the auto-fill function while inputting wallet addresses, use of unsecured private networks, use of PRC banned software while conducting the transaction in PRC). The mining giant's claim ultimately failed and was discontinued after Bitmain suffered a series of interlocutory defeats (where its earlier default judgment was overturned and was even ordered to pay security for costs). As part of the terms of discontinuance, Bitmain was ordered to pay the trading platform's legal fees. The total legal fees that Bitmain had to pay the trading platform totaled over HK$1.3 Million, nearly double that of the initial claim amount.In 2017, Bitmain sued Zuoxing Yang, a former Bitmain chip design director who left Bitmain to launch Bitewei over patent rights infringements. In 2018, Yang's legal team successfully appealed to a court in China to have the patent revoked, after which Bitmain's case was dismissed.In 2018, a class action lawsuit of US$5 million was commenced by Los Angeles County resident Gor Gevorkyan against Bitmain where it was alleged that Bitmain mined cryptocurrency for its own benefit on its customers’ devices. It was alleged by the Plaintiffs in this case that Bitmain is benefiting—without authorization—from the lengthy ""initialization"" period that its ASIC [Application-Specific Integrated Circuit] devices need for set up: ""Until the complicated and time-consuming initialization procedures are completed, Bitmain's ASIC [Application-Specific Integrated Circuit] devices are preconfigured to use its customers’ electricity to generate cryptocurrency for the benefit of Bitmain rather than its customers.""In 2018, Bitmain was involved in another legal dispute against a Labrador mining farm. Bitmain Technologies sued Great North Data alleging problems from the start of the agreement between the two companies. Bitmain develops and produces miners where it operates some of its hardware out of third-party ""mining farms"". Great North Data provides space to companies like Bitmain to install and run their bitcoin mining equipment.In or about November 2019, the ousted co-founder of Bitmain, Micree Zhan, filed multiple lawsuits in the Cayman Islands and China against various entities of Bitmain in a bid to regain control of Bitmain. The lawsuit in China was accompanied by an asset-protection petition during which the PRC Court sided with Zhan to freeze 36 percent of Fujian Zhanhua's 10 million yuan incorporated shares owned by Bitmain, worth 3.6 million yuan, or $500,000. This case highlighted what appears to be an ongoing power struggle between the two founders for control of Bitmain.
+
+
+== References =="
+Canaan Creative,"Canaan Creative, known simply as Canaan, is a China-based computer hardware manufacturer. Established in 2013 by N.G. Zhang, Canaan specializes in Blockchain servers and ASIC microprocessors for use in bitcoin mining.
+
+
+== History ==
+In 2013, during studying for a doctor's degree, N.G. Zhang established Canaan Creative, where he served as the chairman and CEO.In 2016, Canaan attempted a reverse takeover for $466 Millions USD by Shandong Luyitong, a public company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.In January 2019, reports surfaced that Canaan is considering an IPO in the United States. Canaan raised $90 million in their November 2019 IPO.In 2019, Canaan was listed on Nasdaq.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+CoinDesk,"CoinDesk is a news site specializing in bitcoin and digital currencies. Founded by Shakil Khan, the firm also provides guides to bitcoin for those new to digital currencies.Seven years after being acquired by Digital Currency Group, it was purchased in November 2023 by Bullish.
+
+
+== History ==
+CoinDesk was founded by entrepreneur Shakil Khan and began publishing in May 2013. Khan is also an investor in BitPay, a bitcoin payment processor.  
+At the start of 2016, CoinDesk was acquired by Digital Currency Group for an estimated US$500,000–600,000. The next year, in 2017, the company acquired blockchain data and research platform Lawnmower. In 2021 the company acquired cryptocurrency data analytics firm TradeBlock.In December 2017, CoinDesk established CoinDesk Korea in collaboration with the 22nd Century Media Co., subsidiary of Hankyoreh Co., Ltd. to provide blockchain news service in South Korea.In November 2022, CoinDesk reported that FTX's partner firm Alameda Research held a significant portion of its assets in FTX's native token FTT. The news led to a bank run and liquidity crisis at FTX, culminating in FTX filing for bankruptcy protection.In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by Bullish Global, which operates a cryptocurrency exchange.
+
+
+== CoinDesk TV ==
+CoinDesk TV is an online video channel which produce live news program everyday. The channel produces daily and weekly shows including ""First Mover"", ""The Hash"", ""All About Bitcoin"", ""Word On The Block"" and so on. 
+
+
+== Consensus Event ==
+Consensus is CoinDesk's annual crypto summit. It started in 2015. It has been held in New York City from 2017 to 2019, virtually in 2020 and 2021, and in Austin, Texas since 2022.
+
+
+== Bitcoin Price Index ==
+The CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (CoinDesk BPI) was launched in September 2013. The Bitcoin Price Index is an average of bitcoin prices across bitcoin exchanges, and began by using price data from Bitstamp, BTC-e and CampBX. Although Mt. Gox data was not used initially, due to withdrawal concerns for US customers, in November 2013, Mt. Gox was added to the BPI due to ""a reduction in the risk premium and the option of additional deposit/withdrawal methods"". The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange was eventually removed from the index in February 2014 after its ""persistent failure to meet the index's standards for inclusion"".The index was restored to an average of three exchanges in March 2014 with the inclusion of Bitfinex price data, according to CoinDesk: ""Since the decline of Mt. Gox, we have observed that Bitfinex has been able to sustain a dramatic increase in its share of the total volume of U.S. dollar-denominated bitcoins traded"".Publications which have referenced the Bitcoin Price Index data or price include the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, The New York Times, CNBC, and Bloomberg News.
+
+
+== State of Bitcoin report ==
+In February 2014, CoinDesk released its first 'State of Bitcoin' report. The aim of the report is: to provide an overview of key cryptocurrency trends, challenges, and opportunities, while also highlighting the most important developments over the last year. A follow-up report in Q2 2014 highlighted that venture capital investment in bitcoin companies was up 28 percent compared to the previous quarter, and that VC investment was pouring into European Bitcoin startups.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+GHash.io,"GHash.io was a bitcoin mining pool subsidiary of CEX.io that operated from 2013-2016. The pool gained notoriety for briefly controlling more than 51% of bitcoin's computing power in 2014 (notable in that bitcoin was supposedly outside any party's control).
+
+
+== History ==
+GHash.io was founded and owned by CEX.io, a cryptocurrency exchange that continues to operate today. Apart from mining bitcoin, GHash.io hosted a multipool for mining altcoins, as well as separate pools for mining Litecoin, Dogecoin, Auroracoin, and Darkcoin. Altcoin mining options were available for independent miners, while bitcoin mining could also be done in the cloud by purchasing cloud-based mining power on CEX.io.Traders on CEX.io could buy shares of GHash.io mining hardware to operate on the GHash.io mining pool. After GHash.io closed in 2016, CEX.io continued operating as a bitcoin exchange.
+
+
+== 51% attack controversy ==
+The possibility of a 51% attack was feared due to the popularity of GHash.io's mining pool. This kind of attack occurs when a single miner or mining pool is able to mine multiple bitcoin block rewards in a row. This would be a problem for the bitcoin network, because it hypothetically allows the mining pool to double-spend (counterfeit) bitcoins. In July 2014, the GHash.io mining pool briefly exceeded the 51% threshold, which forced the bitcoin community to discuss the possibility of finding a common solution to this threat. The pool developing the majority caused a prominent bitcoin developer Peter Todd to sell half of his holdings. The news reportedly caused bitcoin's price to drop from $633 to $600 at the time.Since no long-term solution to the 51% problem is known, the participants agreed to implement some temporary measures. GHash.io released a voluntary statement promising that it would not exceed 40% of the overall bitcoin hashrate. Moreover, GHash.io representatives asked other mining pools to follow their example for the sake of the entire bitcoin community. It also stated that a new committee should be created to act as a watchdog against the 51% problem. This committee would include representatives of the mining pools, bitcoin businesses and other specialists in the field.
+The 51% discussion received broad coverage in the media, beyond publications which commonly focus on cryptocurrency news ArsTechnica, Bloomberg View, Vice Motherboard, International Business Times.In March 2015, GHash.io was struck by a crippling DDOS attack, possibly in response to the group breaching 51%. By the end of 2015, GHash.io had stopped its mining activity in response to falling bitcoin prices.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Nuri (company),"Nuri (formerly known as Bitwala) is a blockchain banking service, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, that was founded by Jörg von Minckwitz, Jan Goslicki, and Benjamin P. Jones in October 2015.
+Bitwala's concept first emerged in October 2015 when its founders Jörg von Minckwitz, Jan Goslicki, and Benjamin P. Jones launched operations for a global blockchain-based payment service provider headquartered in Berlin, Germany. According to Wired, in contrast to other money transfer services like Western Union, Money Gram, and Transferwise, the German startup utilised digital currency to offer a much faster and cheaper solution.During Bitwala's formerly hosted a product with a global reach. Their services enabled SEPA and SWIFT money transfers by exchanging Bitcoin or Altcoins to over 20 fiat currencies to any bank account in over 200 countries worldwide.In January 2018, Bitwala stopped their services when their prepaid card provider, WaveCrest Holdings LTD, had its VISA license withdrawn due to compliance issues. The company was amongst many cryptocurrency service providers including CryptoPay, TenX and Wirex that could no longer sustain their full product offering.Bitwala joined European Fintech Alliance in August 2018. The company launched their new website in October 2018, which coincided with the announcement of their partnership with solarisBank, a Berlin-based white label bank.In September 2018, Bitwala raised 4 million Euro from venture capital investors Earlybird and Coparion, enabling them to proceed with their re-launch in November 2018. In December 2018 Bitwala launched Europe's first regulated blockchain banking solution that enables users to manage both their Bitcoin and Euro deposits in one place with the safety and convenience of a German bank account. The bank account is hosted by the Berlin-based Solarisbank.Bitwala rebranded in May 2021 and changed their name to Nuri.Nuri filed for insolvency on Tuesday, August 9, 2022. Their press-release states that users funds and investments are safe at their partner bank, Solarisbank.As of December 2023, Nuri is back active under the Bitwala name.
+
+
+== References =="
+Bitcoin Magazine,"Bitcoin Magazine is one of the original news and print magazine publishers covering Bitcoin and digital currencies. Bitcoin Magazine began publishing in 2012. It was co-founded by Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Matthew N. Wright, Vladimir Marchenko, and Vicente S. It is currently owned and operated by BTC Inc in Nashville, Tennessee.
+
+
+== History ==
+Vitalik Buterin became interested in Bitcoin in 2011, and co-founded the periodical Bitcoin Magazine with Mihai Alisie, who asked him to join. Alisie was living in Romania at the time, and Buterin was writing for a blog. Buterin's writing captured the attention of Alisie, and they subsequently decided to start the magazine. Buterin took the role of head writer as a side project while attending university.In 2012, Bitcoin Magazine began publishing a print edition from its base in South Korea and has been referred to as the first serious publication dedicated to cryptocurrencies. Buterin noted he spent 10-20 hours per week writing for the publication.In early 2015, Bitcoin Magazine was sold to its current owners, BTC Inc.A physical copy of a 2014 edition of Bitcoin Magazine was displayed in the Smithsonian Museum as part of the Value of Money exhibit.In September 2021, Bitcoin Magazine announced the launch of their Eastern European bureau based in Kyiv.In December 2021, New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones partnered with Bitcoin Magazine to gift both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Magazine subscriptions to his offensive line.
+
+
+== The Bitcoin Conference ==
+Bitcoin magazine hosts annual bitcoin conferences starting in 2019. In June 2021, Bitcoin Magazine hosted Bitcoin 2021 at the Mana Wynwood in Miami, Florida. There were approximately 12,000 attendees. In a prerecorded speech, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced his plans to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender in the Central American nation.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official Website"
+Gavin Andresen,"Gavin Andresen (formerly Gavin Bell) is a software developer known for his involvement with bitcoin. He is based in Amherst, Massachusetts.
+Originally a developer of 3D graphics and virtual reality software, Andresen became involved in developing products for the bitcoin market in 2010 and was declared by himself as the lead developer of the reference implementation for bitcoin client software after Satoshi Nakamoto departed silently. In 2012, Andresen founded the Bitcoin Foundation to support and nurture the development of the bitcoin currency, and by 2014, left his software development role to concentrate on his work with the Foundation.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Andresen (at the time Bell) graduated from Princeton University in 1988.  He began his career working on 3D graphics software at Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. In 1996, he co-authored the VRML 2.0 specification, and later published a reference manual for VRML 2.0.Since leaving Silicon Valley in 1996, Andresen has tackled a wide variety of software-related ventures, including CTO of an early Voice over IP  startup and co-founder of a company that made multiplayer online games for blind people and their sighted friends.
+
+
+=== Bitcoin ===
+Andresen was the lead developer for a part of the bitcoin digital currency project, working to create a secure, stable ""cash for the Internet."" Andresen discovered bitcoin in 2010, considering its design to be brilliant. Soon after he created a website named The Bitcoin Faucet which gave away bitcoin. In April 2011, Forbes quoted Andresen as saying, ""Bitcoin is designed to bring us back to a decentralized currency of the people,"" and ""this is like better gold than gold."" After joining the developers contributing to Bitcoin along with Satoshi Nakamoto, he went on to become lead developer of the client software for the bitcoin network. In June 2011, he attended an ""emerging technologies conference for the US intelligence community"" held by In-Q-Tel to present on Bitcoin. He stepped back as lead maintainer in 2014.Andresen also created ClearCoin, an escrow-type of service, which was closed on about June 23, 2011. After several years working on the software, Andresen left the role of lead developer of bitcoin to work on the strategic development of its technology. He conceived of the Bitcoin Foundation which became reality in September 2012.In May 2016 Andresen stated that the Australian programmer and entrepreneur Craig Wright was Nakamoto, but later expressed regret getting involved in the ""'who was Satoshi' game"", and stated ""it was a mistake to trust Craig Wright.""Andresen has not contributed to Bitcoin since February 2016. He had become critical of the failure of bitcoin developers to increase network capacity, and helped put together Bitcoin XT as alternative software. His commit access to Bitcoin Core on GitHub was revoked in May 2016 after stating Wright was Satoshi Nakamoto. In November 2017, Andresen expressed support for rival currency Bitcoin Cash, stating ""Bitcoin Cash is what I started working on in 2010"".
+
+
+== References =="
+Andreas Antonopoulos,"Andreas M. Antonopoulos (born 1972 in London) is a British-Greek Bitcoin advocate, tech entrepreneur, and author. He is a host on the Speaking of Bitcoin podcast (formerly called Let's Talk Bitcoin!) and a teaching fellow for the M.Sc. Digital Currencies at the University of Nicosia.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Antonopoulos was born in 1972 in London, UK, and moved to Athens, Greece during the Greek Junta. He spent his childhood there, and at the age of 17 returned to the UK. Antonopoulos obtained his degrees in Computer science and Data Communications, Networks and Distributed Systems from University College London.
+
+
+== Career ==
+
+
+=== Nemertes Research ===
+He was Senior Vice President and a Founding Partner with Nemertes Research, from 2003 until 2011. While there, Antonopoulos researched computer security, stating that the greatest threat to computer security was not experienced hackers, but overly complex systems that resulted from rapid change in business.
+
+
+=== Bitcoin involvement ===
+In 2012, Antonopoulos became enamored with Bitcoin. He eventually abandoned his job as a freelance consultant and started speaking at conferences about bitcoin, consulting for startups, and writing articles free of charge.According to his podcast, Antonopoulos is a consultant on several bitcoin-related startups.In January 2014, Antonopoulos joined Blockchain.info as chief security officer. In September 2014, he left the CSO role.
+In April 2014, Antonopoulos organised a fundraising campaign for Dorian Nakamoto, who was identified in a Newsweek article as the creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. The reporting techniques used in the article were controversial among journalists and Bitcoin community members. The fundraiser, intended to assist Nakamoto after the attention he received as a result of the article, raised 50 bitcoins, worth US$23,000 at the time.On 8 October 2014, Antonopoulos spoke in front of the Banking, Trade and Commerce committee of the Senate of Canada to address the senators' questions on how to regulate bitcoin in Canada.In March 2016, the first edition of Mastering Bitcoin was released by Antonopoulos, in print and online, followed by a second edition in June 2017.In December 2017, unsolicited donations of over 100 bitcoins were sent to Antonopoulos by over a thousand followers of his work, after Roger Ver made a public post to Twitter on 5 December questioning Antonopoulos's investment choices given his ""eloquent"" public speaking about bitcoin since 2012.
+
+
+== Bibliography ==
+
+
+=== Books ===
+Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Currencies (2014, O'Reilly) ISBN 978-1449374044
+Mastering Bitcoin 2nd Edition: Programming the Open Blockchain (2017, O'Reilly) ISBN 978-1491954386
+Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and dApps (2018, O'Reilly) ISBN 978-1491971949
+The Internet of Money (Volume 1) (2016, O'Reilly) ISBN 978-1537000459
+The Internet of Money (Volume 2) (2017, Merkle Bloom, self-published) ISBN 978-1947910065
+The Internet of Money (Volume 3) (2019, Merkle Bloom, self-published) ISBN 978-1947910171
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website"
+Jeremy Allaire,"Jeremy D. Allaire (born 13 May 1971) is an American technologist and Internet entrepreneur. He is CEO and founder of the digital currency company Circle and chairman of the board of Brightcove. With his brother JJ Allaire, he co-founded Allaire Corporation in 1995. Allaire Corp. had a successful IPO in January 1999 and was acquired by Macromedia in 2001. Allaire served as CTO of Macromedia after the acquisition and helped develop the Macromedia MX platform (a suite of software tools and servers aimed at enabling rich applications delivered using Flash Player).
+Allaire left Macromedia in February 2003 to join venture capital firm General Catalyst as a technologist and executive-in-residence. In 2004, Allaire founded Brightcove, an online video platform used by many media and marketing organizations worldwide. After a successful IPO in early 2012, Allaire stepped down as CEO in 2013 and now serves as chairman of the board.
+In October 2013, Allaire announced the launch of Circle, an Internet-based consumer finance company that aims to bring the power and benefits of digital money, such as Bitcoin, to mainstream consumers.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Allaire was educated in the Montessori tradition, which he says ""built into me a belief in self-direction, in independent thought, in peer collaboration, in responsibility"".In 1993, Allaire graduated from Macalester College with a degree in political science and philosophy, with a concentration in economics. At Macalester, his college roommate and high-school friend, who worked for the campus IT group, rigged a high-speed Internet connection to their dorm room, which allowed Allaire to access and experiment with the Internet in its early days.From 1990 until his graduation, Allaire became obsessed with the Internet and how it could be applied to transform systems of communications and media, as well as its impact on fundamental human rights, such as free speech. He was an early follower of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and later recruited EFF founder Mitch Kapor to the board of directors of Allaire Corporation.
+In 1992, Allaire authored a policy proposal for the creation of a National Information Network, based on the National Research & Education Network (NREN, the precursor to the commercial Internet), proposing methods to commercialize access to IP services. The paper was submitted to the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Technology, then chaired by Al Gore.
+In 1992 and 1993, with a college friend, Allaire developed an application called ""World News Report"" that aggregated news feeds and mailing list content from independent media sources on the Internet, and provided a full-text indexed browsable and searchable interface to access independent journalism on the Internet, using Apple Hypercard.Also while in college, Allaire created NativeNet, which created a decentralized communications and collaboration platform for Native American tribal schools in the Midwest, built on top of UUCP, an early internet protocol for distributed communications.At Macalester, Allaire became more politically active, finding a particular interest in U.S. foreign policy and global human rights issues, including the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of authoritarian capitalist regimes in the east, and the Balkan Wars.Upon graduating from Macalester, Allaire found that the Internet was “the central passion” in his life. In the fall of 1993, he launched an Internet-consulting firm, Global Internet Horizons, aimed at helping media publishers and marketers understand and build a presence on the nascent World Wide Web.In 1994-1996, Allaire collaborated with Noam Chomsky and his wife, Carol, to develop the first comprehensive online archive of Chomsky's political works. Chomsky’s libertarian socialist and globalist views resonated with Allaire.
+
+
+=== Allaire Corporation ===
+In early 1994, Allaire became convinced that the architecture of the Web could disrupt how software was built and distributed, transforming the browser from a document browsing system into a full online operating system for any kind of software application.
+In 1995, Jeremy and his brother J.J. Allaire, along with a group of close college friends, founded the Allaire Corporation, using $18,000 of J.J.’s savings. Allaire Corporation aimed to provide easy-to-use web development tools.
+The brothers invented ColdFusion, a rapid web application development platform designed to easily connect simple HTML pages to a database using its associated scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML). ColdFusion was widely used, and companies including Myspace, Target, and Toys R Us (along with millions of other websites) relied on the technology to develop their online properties.
+Allaire Corporation grew rapidly, from just over $1 million in revenue in 1996 to $120 million in revenue in 2000, growing to over 700 employees with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. In addition to its flagship product ColdFusion, Allaire launched HomeSite, which became the world's most popular Windows HTML editor, and JRun, one of the first and most widely adopted Java app servers.Allaire also helped to pioneer foundational ideas in open distributed computing based on lightweight HTTP-based distributed objects. In particular, the company developed the Web Distributed Data Exchange (WDDX) in 1998, an open source format for using HTTP for simple remote procedure calls, a precursor to the adoption of REST and JSON for web software APIs.
+Allaire Corporation had its IPO in January 1999 and was acquired by Macromedia in March 2001 for $360 million in a deal that included cash and stock. As a result of this acquisition, Jeremy Allaire became CTO of Macromedia.
+
+
+=== Macromedia ===
+As CTO of Macromedia, Allaire helped to develop the Macromedia MX platform, a suite of software tools and servers for building and deploying content rich, interactive software applications on the Web.
+After the Allaire/Macromedia merger, Allaire helped to drive platform and product strategy for Macromedia, including adding capabilities into Flash Player (a more advanced language runtime, web services connectivity, a component model) that enabled it to become a widely used platform for interactive software on the Web.
+When Macromedia added video playback features into Flash Player in March 2002, Allaire became enthralled with the idea that the ubiquitous distribution of Flash Player on 98% of PCs in the world, combined with growth in broadband and WiFi adoption, would lead to a video publishing revolution on the Web. He started an internal product project at Macromedia code-named ""Vista"" that enabled easy browser-based capture, upload and publishing of video into any website, blog or instant message. When Macromedia decided not to pursue the project, Allaire left the company.
+
+
+=== General Catalyst ===
+In February 2003, Allaire became technologist and executive-in-residence at the venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners. At General Catalyst Partners, he focused on identifying investment opportunities in broadband media, mobile content, internet identity and security, and other Internet technologies.
+At General Catalyst, Allaire began to incubate Brightcove, which was originally operating under stealth as Video Marketplace, Inc., or Vidmark, and he left General Catalyst in 2004 to launch this new venture.
+
+
+=== Brightcove ===
+In 2004, Allaire founded Brightcove, an online video platform that distributes video content across devices.Brightcove filed for its initial IPO in 2012 with a valuation of around $290 million. Allaire stepped down as Brightcove’s CEO in the second quarter of 2013 to serve as chairman of the board.
+
+
+=== Circle ===
+In October 2013, Allaire launched Circle, a digital currency company that aims to bring digital money like Bitcoin to the mainstream, with $9 million in Series A funding from Jim Breyer, Accel Partners, and General Catalyst Partners.Circle closed an additional $17 million Series B in March 2014 in a round led by Breyer Capital, Accel Partners, General Catalyst, and Oak Investment Partners. The company simultaneously announced the release of its product to a limited audience.Allaire has said of Circle and Bitcoin, ""We want to make this as easy to use as Gmail, Skype, and other consumer services on the Internet today"". The company has received over $135 million in venture capital from four rounds of investments from 2013 to 2016, including $50 million led by Goldman Sachs.
+In July 2021, Allaire announced that Circle would go public in a $4.5 billion SPAC merger. But Allaire and his planned SPAC partner, the CEO of Concord Acquisition Corp Bob Diamond, called off the merger for reasons concerning recent market conditions and current events and agreed to the termination of the July 2021 intended SPACoff.
+
+
+== References =="
+Brian Behlendorf,"Brian Behlendorf (born March 30, 1973) is an American technologist, executive, computer programmer and leading figure in the open-source software movement. He was a primary developer of the Apache Web server, the most popular web server software on the Internet, and a founding member of the Apache Group, which later became the Apache Software Foundation. Behlendorf served as president of the foundation for three years. He has served on the board of the Mozilla Foundation since 2003, Benetech since 2009, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2013. Behlendorf served as the General Manager of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) from 2021-2023 and is currently the Chief Technology Officer of the OpenSSF.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Behlendorf, raised in Southern California, became interested in the development of the Internet while he was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1990s. One of his first projects was an electronic mailing list and online music resource, SFRaves, which a friend persuaded him to start in 1992. This would soon develop into the Hyperreal.org website, an online resource devoted to electronic music and related subcultures.In 1993, Behlendorf, Jonathan Nelson, Matthew Nelson and Cliff Skolnick co-founded Organic, Inc., the first business dedicated to building commercial web sites. While developing the first online, for-profit, media project—the HotWired web site for Wired magazine—in 1994, they realized that the most commonly used web server software at the time (developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) could not handle the user registration system that the company required. So, Behlendorf patched the open-source code to support HotWired's requirements.
+It turned out that Behlendorf wasn't the only one busy patching the NCSA code at the time, so he and Skolnick put together an electronic mailing list to coordinate the work of the other programmers. By the end of February 1995, eight core contributors to the project started Apache as a fork of the NCSA codebase. Working loosely together, they eventually rewrote the entire original program as the Apache HTTP Server. In 1999, the project incorporated as the Apache Software Foundation. Behlendorf served as president of the Foundation for three years.
+Behlendorf was the CTO of the World Economic Forum.  He is also a former director and CTO of CollabNet, a company he co-founded with O'Reilly & Associates (now O'Reilly Media) in 1999 to develop tools for enabling collaborative distributed software development. CollabNet used to be the primary corporate sponsor of the open source version control system Subversion, before it became a project of the Apache Software Foundation. He continues to be involved with electronic music community events such as Chillits, and speaks often at open-source conferences worldwide.
+In 2003, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.Behlendorf has served on the board of the Mozilla Foundation since 2003, Benetech since 2009 and the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2013. He was a managing director at Mithril Capital, a global technology investment firm based in San Francisco, from 2014 until he joined the Linux Foundation. In 2016, he was appointed executive director of the open source Hyperledger project at the Linux Foundation to advance blockchain technology.Behlendorf became the General Manager of the Open Source Security Foundation in October 2021. The appointment was shared publicly at KubeCon, along with the announcement of $10m in investments to secure open source supply chains.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website
+Organic Inc. website"
+Brendan Blumer,"Brendan Blumer (born 1986) is an American-born Hong Kong-based entrepreneur. He is the CEO of the tech company Block.one, which developed the EOS.IO blockchain platform.
+
+
+== Early life ==
+Blumer was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When he was 15 years old, he developed a website to sell virtual assets in the multiplayer online gaming space. His website, known as Gamecliff (stylized as GaMeCliff), displayed different characters, weapons, and houses for MMORPG games including EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
+
+
+== Career ==
+In 2005, Blumer's Gamecliff was acquired by IGE and the company moved to its new headquarters in Hong Kong to head Gamecliff's operations. Blumer founded The Accounts Network in 2007, a company that sold in-game MMORPG avatars and reached $1 million in revenue figures.In 2010, Blumer launched Okay.com, an enterprise data sharing platform for real estate brokers in Asia. The company later merged with the real estate company Asia Pacific Properties. His next business project, ii5, also focused on real estate. Founded in 2013, the startup was dedicated to real estate listings in India.In 2016, Blumer formed Block.One, a blockchain company, based in part on funding from ii5, his Hong Kong real estate firm. Block.one is registered in the Cayman Islands. In May 2017, Blumer announced EOS.IO, a blockchain platform known for its record setting initial coin offering (ICO).In February 2018, he was listed by Forbes as one of the ""richest people in cryptocurrency"".
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+In 2020, Bloomer renounced his US citizenship.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Brendan Blumer on Twitter"
+Adam Back,"Adam Back (born July 1970) is a British cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is the CEO of Blockstream, which he co-founded in 2014. He invented Hashcash, which is used in the Bitcoin mining process.
+
+
+== Life ==
+Back was born in London, England, in July 1970. His first computer was a Sinclair ZX81. He taught himself Basic, and spent his time reverse engineering video games, finding decryption keys in software packages. He completed his A levels in advanced mathematics, physics and economics.
+He has a computer science PhD in distributed systems from the University of Exeter. During his PhD, Back worked with compilers to make use of parallel computers in a semi automated way. He became interested in pgp encryption, electronic cash and remailers. He spent two thirds of his time working with encryption. After graduation, Adam spent his career as a consultant in start ups and larger companies in applied cryptography, writing cryptographic libraries, designing, reviewing and breaking other people's cryptographic protocols.
+
+
+== Cryptography software ==
+Back is a pioneer of early digital asset research similarly as Wei Dai, David Chaum, and Hal Finney. In 1997, Back invented Hashcash. A similar system is used in bitcoin.He also implemented credlib, a library that implements the credential systems of Stefan Brands and David Chaum.
+He was the first to describe the ""non-interactive forward secrecy"" security property for email and to observe that any identity based encryption scheme can be used to provide non-interactive forward secrecy.
+He is also known for promoting the use of ultra-compact code with his 2-line and 3-line RSA in Perl signature file and non-exportable T-shirts to protest cryptography export regulations.Back was one of the first two people to receive an email from Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2016, the Financial Times cited Back as a potential Nakamoto candidate, along with Nick Szabo and Hal Finney. Craig Wright had sued Back for stating that Wright was not Nakamoto, with Wright subsequently dropping the suit.Back has promoted the use of satellites and mesh networks to broadcast and receive bitcoin transactions, as a backup for the traditional internet.
+
+
+== Business career ==
+On 3 October 2016, Back was appointed as CEO of Blockstream. Since then he has introduced products such as the Liquid sidechain, Blockstream Mining Notes, mining colocation services, the Jade hardware wallet, and the Core Lightning implementation.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Wences Casares,"Wenceslao Casares, also known as Wences Casares (born 26 February 1974) is an Argentinian entrepreneur and businessman in Silicon Valley-based fintech. He is the CEO of Xapo Bank, and founded Internet Argentina, Wanako Games, Patagon, Lemon Wallet, and Banco Lemon. Casares sits on the boards of PayPal, Diem, and Endeavor.
+
+
+== Early life ==
+Casares is the eldest of four from a family of sheep ranchers in Patagonia, Argentina. In high school, Casares earned a Rotary Club scholarship as an exchange student in Washington, Pennsylvania. He returned to Buenos Aires to study business administration for three years at the University of San Andrés and dropped out to launch Argentina's first Internet Service Provider, Internet Argentina S.A. in 1994.He exited the company and then founded Argentine online brokerage, Patagon, in 1997. Patagon established itself as Latin America's leading comprehensive Internet financial services portal and expanded its online banking services to the United States, Spain, and Germany. Patagon was acquired by the Spanish bank, Banco Santander for $750 million and became Santander Online worldwide. Investors in Patagon included George Soros, Intel, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, and entrepreneur Fred Wilson.
+
+
+== Career ==
+In 2002, Casares founded Wanako Games, (later Behaviour Santiago), a videogame developer headquartered in New York City. Wanako Games was best known for the blockbuster game Assault Heroes and was acquired by Activision in 2007. In 2002, Casares founded Banco Lemon, a bank based in Brazil, which was acquired by Banco do Brasil in 2009.Casares was the founder and CEO of Lemon Wallet, a digital wallet platform. In 2013 the American firm LifeLock bought Lemon for about $43 million (US).
+
+
+=== Xapo ===
+Casares is the CEO of Xapo, a bitcoin wallet startup based in Palo Alto, California. Xapo is said to be the largest custodian of bitcoin in the world and is believed to hold as much as $10 billion of the cryptocurrency in underground vaults on five continents, including in a former Swiss military bunker. Xapo has raised $40 million from leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms. Widely known as, ""Patient Zero"", Quartz reported that Casares was the entrepreneur to convince Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, and other tech veterans in Silicon Valley to invest in bitcoin.
+
+
+== Philanthropy ==
+In 2011, Casares was on the jury of the Cartier Women’s Initiative awards. He is a member of the 2017 Class of Henry Crown Fellows in the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute. He is an elected member of the World Economic Forum's “Young Global Leaders” Class of 2011 and regularly attends the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. He is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization. In 2010 Casares partnered with Pablo Bosch to found Las Majadas de Pirque, a social capital and innovation facility owned by Casares in Santiago, Chile. He was formerly a board member at Kiva and Endeavor.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+""Son of Sheep Ranchers, Lemon Wallet Co-Founder Wences Casares is a Serial Entrepreneur"", by Melissa Aparicio ""Fox News Latino""
+""The Difference between $1 Billion-Plus in Exits and 'Success'"", by Sarah Lacy Techcrunch"
+David Chaum,"David Lee Chaum (born 1955) is an American computer scientist, cryptographer, and inventor. He is known as a pioneer in cryptography and privacy-preserving technologies, and widely recognized as the inventor of digital cash. His 1982 dissertation ""Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups""  is the first known proposal for a blockchain protocol. Complete with the code to implement the protocol, Chaum's dissertation proposed all but one element of the blockchain later detailed in the Bitcoin whitepaper. He has been referred to as ""the father of online anonymity"", and ""the godfather of cryptocurrency"".He is also known for developing ecash, an electronic cash application that aims to preserve a user's anonymity, and inventing many cryptographic protocols like the blind signature, mix networks and the Dining cryptographers protocol. In 1995 his company DigiCash  created the first digital currency with eCash.: 65–70   His 1981 paper, ""Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms"", laid the groundwork for the field of anonymous communications research.
+
+
+== Life and career ==
+Chaum is Jewish and was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles. He gained a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982. Also that year, he founded the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), which currently organizes academic conferences in cryptography research.: 47  Subsequently, he taught at the New York University Graduate School of Business Administration and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He also formed a cryptography research group at CWI, the Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam. He founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in 1990.: 119 Chaum received the Information Technology European Award for 1995. In 2004, he was named an IACR Fellow. In 2010, at the RSA Conference, he was honored with the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics. In 2019, he was awarded the honorary title of Dijkstra Fellow by CWI. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lugano in 2021.Chaum resides in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles.
+
+
+== Notable research contributions ==
+
+
+=== Vault systems ===
+Recently credited by Alan Sherman's ""On the Origins and Variations of Blockchain Technologies"", Chaum's 1982 Berkeley dissertation proposed every element of the blockchain found in Bitcoin except proof of work. The proposed vault system lays out a plan for achieving consensus state between nodes, chaining the history of consensus in blocks, and immutably time-stamping the chained data. The paper also lays out the specific code to implement such a protocol.
+
+
+=== Digital cash ===
+Chaum is credited as the inventor of secure digital cash for his 1983 paper, which also introduced the cryptographic primitive of a blind signature. These ideas have been described as the technical roots of the vision of the Cypherpunk movement that began in the late 1980s. Chaum's proposal allowed users to obtain digital currency from a bank and spend it in a manner that is untraceable by the bank or any other party. In 1988, he extended this idea (with Amos Fiat and Moni Naor) to allow offline transactions that enable detection of double-spending.In 1990, he founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in Amsterdam to commercialize the ideas in his research.: 119  The first electronic payment was sent in 1994. In 1998, DigiCash filed for bankruptcy, and in 1999 Chaum sold off DigiCash and ended his involvement with the company.
+
+
+=== New types of digital signatures ===
+In the same 1982 paper that proposed digital cash, Chaum introduced blind signatures. This form of digital signature blinds the content of a message before it is signed, so that the signer cannot determine the content. The resulting blind signature can be publicly verified against the original, unblinded message in the manner of a regular digital signature.In 1989, he (with Hans van Antwerpen) introduced undeniable signatures. This form of digital signature uses a verification process that is interactive, so that the signatory can limit who can verify the signature. Since signers may refuse to participate in the verification process, signatures are considered valid unless a signer specifically uses a disavowal protocol to prove that a given signature was not authentic.In 1991, he (with Eugene van Heyst) introduced group signatures, which allow a member of a group to anonymously sign a message on behalf of the entire group. However an appointed group manager holds the power to revoke the anonymity of any signer in the case of disputes.
+
+
+=== Anonymous communication ===
+In 1981, Chaum proposed the idea of an anonymous communication network in a paper. His proposal, called mix networks, allows a group of senders to submit an encryption of a message and its recipient to a server. Once the server has a batch of messages, it will reorder and obfuscate the messages so that only this server knows which message came from which sender. The batch is then forwarded to another server who does the same process. Eventually, the messages reach the final server where they are fully decrypted and delivered to the recipient. A mechanism to allow return messages is also proposed. Mix networks are the basis of some remailers and are the conceptual ancestor to modern anonymous web browsing tools like Tor (based on onion routing). Chaum has advocated that every router be made, effectively, a Tor node.In 1988, Chaum introduced a different type of anonymous communication system called a DC-Net, which is a solution to his proposed Dining Cryptographers Problem. DC-Nets is the basis of the software tool Dissent.In 2017, Chaum published a description of a new variety of mix network. A real-world implementation of this network, called cMix, later became the data transmission layer for the instant messaging platform xx messenger.
+
+
+=== Trustworthy voting systems ===
+Chaum has made numerous contributions to secure voting systems, including the first proposal of a system that is end-to-end verifiable. This proposal, made in 1981, was given as an application of mix networks. In this system, the individual ballots of voters were kept private which anyone could verify that the tally was counted correctly. This, and other early cryptographic voting systems, assumed that voters could reliably compute values with their personal computers. In 1991, Chaum introduced SureVote which allowed voters to cast a ballot from an untrustworthy voting system, proposing a process now called ""code voting"" and used in remote voting systems like Remotegrity and DEMOS.In 1994, Chaum introduced the first in-person voting system in which voters cast ballots electronically at a polling station and cryptographically verify that the DRE did not modify their vote (or even learn what it was). In the following years, Chaum proposed (often with others) a series a cryptographically verifiable voting systems that use conventional paper ballots: Prêt à Voter, Punchscan, and Scantegrity. The city of Takoma Park, Maryland used Scantegrity for its November, 2009 election. This was the first time a public sector election was run using any cryptographically verifiable voting system.In 2011, Chaum proposed Random Sample Elections. This electoral system allows a verifiably random selection of voters, who can maintain their anonymity, to cast votes on behalf the entire electorate.
+
+
+=== Other contributions ===
+In 1979, Chaum proposed a mechanism for splitting a key into partial keys, a predecessor to secret sharing.In 1985, Chaum proposed the original anonymous credential system, which is sometimes also referred to as a pseudonym system. This stems from the fact that the credentials of such a system are obtained from and shown to organizations using different pseudonyms which cannot be linked.
+In 1988,  Chaum with Gilles Brassard and Claude Crépeau published a paper that introduced zero-knowledge arguments, as well as a security model using information-theoretic private-channels, and also first formalized the concept of a commitment scheme.
+1991, with Torben Pedersen, he demonstrated a well-cited zero-knowledge proof of a DDH tuple. This proof is particularly useful as it can prove proper reencryption of an ElGamal ciphertext.
+Chaum contributed to an important commitment scheme which is often attributed to Pedersen. In fact, Pedersen, in his 1991 paper, cites a rump session talk on an unpublished paper by Jurjen Bos and Chaum for the scheme. It appeared even earlier in a paper by Chaum, Damgard, and Jeroen van de Graaf.In 1993 with Stefan Brands, Chaum introduced the concept of a distance-bounding protocol.In 2019, he was one of the speakers at the fifth Ethereum developer conference, which was held in Japan.
+
+
+== Bibliography ==
+Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms, 1981
+Advances in Cryptology – Proceedings of Crypto 82, 1983
+Advances in Cryptology – Proceedings of Crypto 83, 1984
+David Chaum, Amos Fiat and Moni Naor, Untraceable Electronic Cash
+David Lee Chaum, Computer Systems Established, Maintained and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups, University of California, Berkeley, 1982
+David Chaum, Towards Trustworthy Elections, Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. K, 2010
+How to issue a central bank digital currency (working paper), 2021
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Chaum, D. (1984). ""A New Paradigm for Individuals in the Information Age"". 1984 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (PDF). IEEE. p. 99. doi:10.1109/SP.1984.10025. ISBN 978-0-8186-0532-1. S2CID 1717835.
+Chaum, D. (1985). ""Security without identification: Transaction systems to make big brother obsolete"". Communications of the ACM. 28 (10): 1030–1044. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.319.3690. doi:10.1145/4372.4373. S2CID 15340054. Archived from the original on 2023-05-19. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
+Chaum, D. (1992). ""Achieving Electronic Privacy,"" Scientific American, August 1992, p. 96-101.
+Chaum, D. (1997). ""David Chaum on Electronic Commerce How much do you trust Big Brother?"". IEEE Internet Computing. 1 (6): 8–16. doi:10.1109/MIC.1997.643931. S2CID 8072432.
+
+
+== External links ==
+Home page
+David Chaum patents
+Punchscan Homepage
+David Chaum research papers"
+Wei Dai,"Wei Dai (Chinese: 戴伟) is a computer engineer known for contributions to cryptography and cryptocurrencies.  He developed the Crypto++ cryptographic library, created the b-money cryptocurrency system, and co-proposed the VMAC message authentication algorithm.
+
+
+== Education and career ==
+Dai graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in computer science and is described as an ""intensely private computer engineer"". Wei Dai was member of the Cypherpunks, Extropians, and SL4 mailing lists in the 1990s. On SL4 he exchanged with people such as Eliezer Yudkowsky, Robin Hanson, Nick Bostrom, Aubrey de Grey, Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, David Pearce, Hal Finney, and others in the nascent ""rationalist"" community.
+
+
+== Cryptography ==
+Dai has made several contributions to the field of cryptography and has identified critical Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) vulnerabilities affecting SSH2 and the browser exploit against SSL/TLS known as BEAST (Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS).
+
+
+=== Crypto++ ===
+In June 2015 Dai stepped away from the Crypto++ project to work on other projects. Crypto++ is now maintained by the Crypto++ community.
+
+
+=== VMAC ===
+VMAC is a block cipher-based message authentication code (MAC) algorithm using a universal hash proposed by Ted Krovetz and Wei Dai in April 2007. The algorithm was designed for high performance backed by a formal analysis.
+
+
+=== b-money ===
+In 1998, Dai helped to spark interest in cryptocurrencies with the publication of ""b-money, an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system"".  In the paper, Dai outlines the basic properties of all modern day cryptocurrency systems: ""...a scheme for a group of untraceable digital pseudonyms to pay each other with money and to enforce contracts amongst themselves without outside help"".
+
+
+== Influence on the development of Bitcoin ==
+Described as ""money which is impossible to regulate"", Dai's b-money described the core concepts later implemented in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies:
+
+Requires a specified amount of computational work (aka Proof of work).
+The work done is verified by the community who update a collective ledger book.
+The worker is awarded funds for their effort.
+Exchange of funds is accomplished by collective bookkeeping and authenticated with cryptographic hashes.
+Contracts are enforced through the broadcast and signing of transactions with digital signatures (i.e., public key cryptography).
+
+
+=== Relationship with Satoshi Nakamoto ===
+Wei Dai and Adam Back were the first two people contacted by Satoshi Nakamoto as he was developing Bitcoin in 2008 and the b-money paper was referenced in the subsequent Bitcoin whitepaper.
+In a May 2011 article, noted cryptographer Nick Szabo stated:Myself, Wei Dai, and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai's case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai).However, Dai questions b-money's influence on Bitcoin:...my understanding is that the creator of Bitcoin, who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, didn't even read my article before reinventing the idea himself. He learned about it afterward and credited me in his paper. So my connection with the project is quite limited. 
+There has been much speculation as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, with suspects including Wei Dai himself, Nick Szabo, and Hal Finney, all of whom have denied the putative identification.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+As of this edit, this article uses content from ""Wei Dai at the Bitcoin wiki"", which is licensed in a way that permits reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, but not under the GFDL. All relevant terms must be followed.
+ This article incorporates text by Taras and JonathanCross available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official Website
+LessWrong profile
+Effective Altruism Forum profile
+SourceForge profile
+Google Scholar profile"
+Hal Finney,"Hal Finney may refer to:
+
+Hal Finney (baseball) (1905–1991), Major League Baseball catcher
+Hal Finney (computer scientist) (1956–2014), game developer and cryptographer"
+David Gerard,"David Gerard may refer to:
+
+Dave Gerard (cartoonist) (1909–2003), American cartoonist
+Dave Gerard (baseball) (1936–2001), baseball player
+David Gérard (born 1977), French rugby union player
+David Gerard (author) (born 1966/67), Australian-British author
+
+
+== See also ==
+Dave Gerrard (born 1945), New Zealand swimmer
+David Gerrard (priest) (born 1939), Anglican priest
+David Garrard (born 1978), American football quarterback
+David Garrard (property developer) (born 1939), British property developer
+Gerard David (c. 1460–1523), Dutch painter
+Gérard David (born 1944), Belgian cyclist"
+Tony Gallippi,
+Ruja Ignatova,"Ruja Plamenova Ignatova (Bulgarian: Ружа Пламенова Игнатова, romanized: Ruža Plamenova Ignatova, occasionally transliterated as ""Ruga Ignatova""; born 30 May 1980) is a Bulgarian former entrepreneur who in 2019 was convicted of fraud. She is best known as the founder of a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme known as OneCoin, which The Times has described as ""one of the biggest scams in history"". She is the subject of the 2019 BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen and the 2022 book of the same name.Since 2017, Ignatova has been on the run from various international law enforcement agencies. In early 2019, she was charged in absentia by U.S. authorities for wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. She was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted in June 2022. Ignatova is the subject of an international Interpol warrant by German authorities.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Born in Ruse, Bulgaria, in 1980, to a Romani family. Ignatova emigrated to Germany with her family when she was ten years old, and spent part of her childhood in Schramberg in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Claims that she may have studied at University of Oxford in England give no details of college, course, or date of matriculation. In 2005, she earned a PhD in private international law from the University of Constance in Germany with the dissertation Art. 5 Nr. 1 EuGVO – Chancen und Perspektiven der Reform des Gerichtsstands am Erfüllungsort, which discusses lex causae in conflict of laws. She reportedly has also worked for McKinsey & Company.
+
+
+== Criminal activities ==
+In 2012, she was convicted of fraud in Germany in connection with her father Plamen Ignatov's acquisition of a company that shortly afterwards was declared bankrupt in dubious circumstances; she was given a suspended sentence of 14 months' imprisonment.In 2013, she was involved with a multi-level marketing scam called BigCoin. In 2014, she founded a pyramid scheme called OneCoin.
+
+
+== Investigation and disappearance ==
+On 25 October 2017 Ignatova disappeared after being tipped off about increasing police investigations about OneCoin. In 2019, her brother Konstantin Ignatov pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering in connection with the scheme.In 2022, prosecutors in Darmstadt, Germany confirmed an investigation of ""a lawyer from Neu-Isenburg"" for possible money laundering: the transfer of 7.69 million euros by Ignatova into one of her private accounts in 2016. In January 2022, police searched apartments and offices in Weilburg, Baden-Baden, Frankfurt am Main, Bad Homburg, Neu-Isenburg and Vaihingen.Afterwards, the North Rhine-Westphalia Police and German Federal Criminal Police Office announced that Ignatova is sought for fraud charges. The Federal Criminal Police Office announced a €5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. An Interpol Red Notice followed. This listing was reciprocated by Europol adding Ignatova to its 'most wanted' list; however, Deutsche Welle notes that the Europol listing was removed under unknown circumstances.The US Federal Bureau of Investigation added Ignatova to its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and announced at a joint press conference with IRS Criminal Investigation and United States Attorney's Office Southern District of New York. The FBI followed up with an episode of its podcast and YouTube series Inside the FBI devoted to Ignatova and the OneCoin case. There is currently a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to her arrest.According to a report published by Bulgarian investigative reporting site Bird, Ignatova was murdered in November 2018 on the orders of a Bulgarian drug lord, Hristoforos Amanatidis, also known as ""Taki"". The alleged murderer, Hristo Hristov, who is also Bulgarian, is currently serving a sentence in a Dutch prison for drug trafficking. According to the report, Ignatova was murdered aboard a yacht in the Ionian Sea, and her body was dismembered and thrown overboard. The alleged motive for the murder was to conceal the drug lord's involvement in the OneCoin scam. The narco-boss is said currently to reside in Dubai, having evaded Bulgarian authorities.However, a 2022 interview with FBI Special Agent Paul Roberts notes that the agency's investigation into Ignatova is ""operating under the assumption that she is still alive"", with “no information” to counter that belief.Ignatova was the subject of a book, The Missing Cryptoqueen, in 2022.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+Ignatova was married to the German lawyer Björn Strehl, with whom she had a daughter in 2016.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of fugitives from justice who disappeared
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+ Media related to Ruja Ignatova at Wikimedia Commons
+The Missing Crypto Queen at BBC Sounds
+Barlett, Jamie. ""How the Cryptoqueen Stole Billions"". Vice News. Retrieved October 16, 2023."
+Dave Kleiman,"Dave Kleiman (22 January 1967 – 26 April 2013) was an American computer forensics expert, an author or co-author of multiple books and a frequent speaker at security related events.Craig Steven Wright claims Kleiman was involved in the invention of Bitcoin, and that Wright himself was Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's main inventor. Wright's claims are currently subject to litigation in London.
+
+
+== Background ==
+At the age of 21 in 1988, Kleiman was named United States Army Soldier of the Year. He received the Army Achievement Medal and a commendation signed by the Secretary of the Army. The commendation said in part, ""Appearance, knowledge of general military subjects, current events and other subjects covered coupled with your strong dedication to duty, never failed to produce anything but outstanding results."" 
+After distinguished service in the Army, Kleiman 
+returned to his hometown and became a sworn law enforcement officer for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office (PBSO).  In 1995, a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed, requiring the use of a wheelchair. After his recovery, he continued working at PBSO and attained the rank of detective. He also worked as a System Security Analyst in the Computer Crimes Division and helped configure the Computer Forensics Lab.  Kleiman went on to work at a number of high tech companies before becoming a partner in a computer forensics business. Kleiman died in his home in late April 2013, seemingly of natural causes related to complications from a MRSA infection.
+
+
+== Computer security & cryptography ==
+Some of Kleiman's most notable work took place at S-doc (Securit-e-doc, ) where his role was Chief Information Security Officer.  While there he developed a Windows encryption tool that surpassed NSA, NIST, and Microsoft Common Criteria Guidelines. This technology was used at NASA, U.S. Dept. of Treasury, Office of the Inspector General, and the US Post Office. Cryptography was routinely used at S-doc to develop several products, broadly aimed at the reliable and verifiable transmission of data and messages, centered around the idea of an ""unalterable, encrypted audit log system"". 
+Kleiman was also a regular contributor to cryptography and security mailing lists where discussions included technical aspects of cryptosystems and the politics of cryptography.  Kleiman was a long-time member of the same Metzdowd Cryptography mailing list where Satoshi Nakamoto first announced Bitcoin on Oct. 31, 2008. 
+Kleiman held the following certifications: 
+Information Systems Security Management Professional (ISSMP), Information Systems Security Architecture Professional (ISSAP), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Forensics Investigator (CIFI), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Anti-Terrorism Specialist (CAS), Certified Computer Examiner (CCE), a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE).
+For multiple years, Kleiman was awarded Microsoft MVP for Windows – Security.
+
+
+== Alleged Bitcoin involvement ==
+In December 2015 Gizmodo reported that Dave Kleiman may have been involved in the invention of the digital currency Bitcoin, based on documents sent to the press concerning Craig Steven Wright's claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of bitcoin. Wright repeated the claim to The Economist in May 2016. Wright's claims are currently subject to litigation in London.In February 2018, Dave Kleiman's brother Ira, the executor of his estate, initiated a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on behalf of the Kleiman estate against Wright over the rights to between 550,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoins, claiming Wright defrauded the estate of bitcoins and intellectual property rights. The estate alleged that Kleiman was one of the early bitcoin pioneers and worked with Craig Steven Wright on its establishment as a cryptocurrency.Following a three-week trial in late 2021, a jury entered a verdict in favor of Kleiman's estate but awarded him only $100 million in damages, far less than the more than $25 billion that Kleiman's estate had sought at trial.
+
+
+== Publications ==
+Co-author: Microsoft Log Parser Toolkit; Syngress Publishing; ISBN 1-932266-52-6
+Co-author: Security Log Management: Identifying Patterns in the Chaos; Syngress Publishing; ISBN 1-59749-042-3
+Technical editor: Perfect Passwords: Selection, Protection and Authentication; Syngress Publishing; ISBN 1-59749-041-5
+Technical editor: Winternals Defragmentation, Recovery, and Administration Field Guide; Syngress Publishing; ISBN 1-59749-079-2
+CD and DVD Forensics: Technical Editor, ISBN 1-59749-128-4
+How to Cheat at Windows System Administration: Contributing Author, ISBN 1-59749-105-5
+Enemy at the Water Cooler: Real Life Stories of Insider Threats, Technical Reviewer, ISBN 1-59749-129-2
+Rootkits for Dummies: Technical editor, ISBN 978-0-471-91710-6
+Windows Forensic Analysis Including DVD Toolkit: Technical Editor, ISBN 1-59749-156-X
+The Official CHFI Study Guide (Exam 312-49): Main author, ISBN 1-59749-197-7
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+- Dave Kleiman personal website
+CastleCops"
+Kofi Genfi,"Kofi Genfi  (born 1993 or 1994) is a Ghanaian entrepreneur and business executive. He is the co-founder of both Mazzuma and Utopia Technologies: two companies in the digital commerce space for emerging markets. He is the Director of Business Strategy for Mazzuma.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Genfi was born in Ghana and had his secondary education at the Presbyterian Boys Senior High School, Legon. He further studied Business Administration at the Ashesi University.
+
+
+== Career ==
+In 2013, Kofi Genfi co-founded CYST, a software innovation company specializing in Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and mobile payment systems to improve financial inclusion in emerging markets through its flagship product called Mazzuma and processes transactional volumes.Genfi is an alumnus of the Thiel Fellowship Network established by the technology billionaire Peter Thiel and  in 2015, he competed at the International Public Speaking Competition in London. He also provided consulting, engineering services, project management, and technical support for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)  in the field of Effective Plastic Waste Management and is a stakeholder of the Global Plastic Action Partnership.
+
+
+== Recognition ==
+Genfi was recognised in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Technology category. He was the winner for the 2019 Discovery of the Year category of the Exclusive Men of the Year Africa Awards (EMY Awards) in 2019
+
+
+== References =="
+Chris Larsen,"Chris Larsen (born 1960) is an American business executive and angel investor best known for co-founding several Silicon Valley technology startups, including one based on peer to peer lending. In 1996, he co-founded the online mortgage lender E-Loan, and during his tenure as CEO E-Loan became the first company to freely provide consumers' FICO credit scores. By 2000, E-Loan's market value was estimated at $1 billion In 2005, Larsen left the company when it was sold to Banco Popular.  In 2006, he co-founded Prosper Marketplace and he served as CEO until 2012. Later in 2012, he co-founded the company Ripple Labs, Inc., which developed Ripple, software that enables the instant and direct transfer of money between two parties.Self-described as ""radically pro-consumer,"" Larsen has been a vocal advocate of financial privacy in California, and in 2001 he co-founded the coalition Californians for Privacy Now. He has appeared as a speaker at industry events such as Sibos, SWIFT's flagship conference, and written articles for publications such as American Banker. He is also a board-member or advisor for organizations such as Credit Karma, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Qifang, and Betable.On January 4, 2018, Forbes estimated Larsen's worth at $59 billion, briefly putting him ahead of Mark Zuckerberg and into fifth place in their list of world's richest people. In 2020, he ranked No. 319 in the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America.In 2020, Larsen and Ripple each donated US$1 million to five San Francisco food banks for COVID-19 relief efforts.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Chris Larsen was born in San Francisco, California, in 1960. His mother worked as a freelance illustrator, while his father worked as an aircraft mechanic for United Airlines at San Francisco International Airport. After high school, Larsen attended San Francisco State University, where he earned a B.S. in international business and accounting in 1984. He began working for Chevron after college, doing financial audits in Brazil, Ecuador, and Indonesia. He graduated with an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991.
+
+
+== Business career ==
+
+
+=== Development of E-Loan (1992-1998) ===
+
+In the early 1990s, Larsen began working at a mortgage lender in Palo Alto, California. Becoming friends with his colleague Janina Pawlowski, they quit their jobs together in 1992 to found a mortgage business, By 1996, they had switched their focus from loans to the development of a mortgage lending website. Both Larsen and Pawlowski had been frustrated with aspects of the mortgage lending industry, and saw the internet as a way to circumvent agent commissions and other fees. Initially raising $450,000 in funding from friends and family, Larsen and Pawlowski moved from their small Palo Alto office to a larger ""low-rent site"" in nearby Dublin to work on the project.The E-Loan website became accessible to the public in 1997, and having success as one of the first online mortgage lenders in the United States. The website allows borrowers to search and shop for loans directly, without the fees charged by brokers and sales agents. The website would later begin offering direct home equity and car loans as well. By 1998, E-Loan was running into difficulty funding their operations. Pawlowski had served as chief executive officer for the first two years, and in 1998 she offered to switch jobs with Larsen, taking Larsen's previous role of President.
+
+
+=== E-Loan funding and public offering (1998-2000) ===
+Pawlowski and Larsen were in talks with Intuit over a $130 million buyout in the fall of 1998. Forbes wrote that ""Pawlowski and Larsen, who together held a 40% stake and had placed 20% more in an employee stock plan, would each walk away with $10 million in cash and $16 million in Intuit stock."" Days before the deal closed in August, however, Yahoo CEO Timothy Koogle pitched a deal to buy a 23% stake of E-Loan's outstanding shares for $25 million. Both Larsen's and Pawlowski's payouts would be less, but they would retain control of the company and the E-Loan brand would survive. Choosing to work with Yahoo, E-Loan also raised venture capital from Softbank and Sequoia Capital. In 1998 E-Loan had total annual revenues of $6.8 million, and the following year Larsen offered the role of CEO back to Pawlowski, though she elected to remain President.In late March 1999, E-Loan filed for an initial public offering, and it went public in June 1999. The company processed $470 million of mortgage loans in the first quarter of 1999, and by the second financial quarter, revenues for the year had reached $4.6 million. E-Loan lost $13 million  in the third quarter of 1999, though revenues overall had grown from the year before by 200%. As of October 1999 the company employed around 350 people.  That year overall E-Loan processed 5000 loans, which at 25% of the online mortgage loan market was the highest percent of any online company. By February 2000, E-Loan's market value was estimated at around $1 billion, with Larsen serving as both CEO and chairman. During his tenure E-Loan became the first company to freely provide consumers' FICO credit scores.
+
+
+=== Privacy activism and E-Loan sale (2001-2005) ===
+Larsen has described himself as ""radically pro-consumer,"" and in the early 2000s he became a vocal advocate of financial privacy in California. In 2001, a bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Jackie Speier proposed a requirement for consumers to opt in before financial services companies could share or sell personal information such as bank balances, phone numbers, and social security numbers. While the bill had public support, it was initially defeated by pro-business legislators. In response, Larsen co-founded the coalition Californians for Privacy Now, helping fund the project with $1 million of his own money. Larsen spearheaded the collection of 600,000 signatures in support of Speier's bill, which was almost double the required amount to issue a ballot to state voters. The signatures, combined with a lobbying campaign by Consumer Watchdog throughout 2002, led to major financial firms and legislators withdrawing their opposition, and the bill passed in August 2003. Speier acknowledged Larsen's influence on the ruling, stating ""without Chris Larsen, California's financial privacy law, which sets the standard for the rest of the nation, would never have become a reality.""As of May 2004, E-Loan had sold over $18.9 billion in consumer loans since its inception, and the company had remained profitable for eight quarters in a row. Larsen stepped down as CEO in early 2005 to start Prosper Marketplace and remained chairman until E-Loan was sold to Banco Popular in 2005.
+
+
+=== Prosper Marketplace (2005-2011) ===
+
+In 2005, Larsen and John Witchel co-founded Prosper Marketplace Larsen served as CEO. From 2006 to 2009, Prosper operated a variable rate model, acting as an eBay-style online auction marketplace with lenders and borrowers ultimately determining loan rates using a Dutch auction-like system. Through the website, borrowers can request personal loans, while Prosper handles the servicing of the loan and distributes borrower payments and interest back to the loan investors. Prosper also makes borrowers' ""credit grades"" public, and verifies identities and select personal data. Larsen himself had funded 450 loans through the website as of 2008, with borrowers as diverse as homeowners, college students, credit-card users, and entrepreneurs. By 2008, Prosper had facilitated the funding of over $120 million in loans, with an average loan amount of $7,000. In 2008 Fast Company named Prosper to its Fast 50 List of the ""most innovative companies of the year.""
+The company soon ran into regulatory opposition from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as current loan regulations were focused on traditional banks, not technology startups. In 2008, Prosper filed its first prospectus with the SEC, changing its business model to use pre-set rates based on a formula evaluating each prospective borrower's credit risk. In 2011, Larsen was outwardly supportive of the Occupy Wall Street movement, raising money to help feed protesters at the nearby OWS encampment in San Francisco. By the end of the year, Prosper had facilitated $271 million in peer-to-peer loans, and the company had received a total of $74.5 million in funding from investors such as Jim Breyer, Tim Draper, Omidyar Network, Nigel Morris, and Court Coursey. On March 15, 2012, Larsen announced that he would be resigning from his role as CEO, though he remained chairman of the company.
+
+
+=== OpenCoin and Ripple Labs (2012-2020) ===
+
+In September 2012, Larsen co-founded the company OpenCoin, which began developing a new payment protocol called Ripple, based on a concept developed by Ryan Fugger. The Ripple protocol enables the instant and direct transfer of money between two parties. As such the protocol can circumnavigate the fees and wait times of the traditional correspondent banking system, and any type of currency can be exchanged including gold, airline miles, and rupees.To maintain security OpenCoin programmed Ripple to rely on a common ledger that is ""managed by a network of independent validating servers that constantly compare their transaction records."" Servers can belong to anyone including banks or market makers. The company also created its own form of digital currency in a manner similar to Bitcoin, using the currency to allow financial institutions to transfer money with negligible fees and wait-time. On May 14, 2013, OpenCoin announced that it had closed a second round of angel funding, and among their earliest investors were Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and IDG Capital Partners.In September 2013, OpenCoin changed its name to Ripple Labs, Inc., with Larsen remaining CEO. Ripple Labs then announced that the source code for the peer-to-peer node behind the Ripple payment network was open source. Ripple Labs continued as the primary contributors of code to the consensus verification system behind Ripple, which it said could integrate with banks' IT systems.  In 2014 Ripple was the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, after Bitcoin. Also that month, Ripple Labs was named one of the 50 Smartest Companies by MIT Technology Review. Ripple Labs was then ranked No. 4 on a list by Fast Company of the World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies Of 2015 In Money.
+
+
+== Media presence and memberships ==
+Larsen has appeared as a speaker or panelist at number of industry events, including the IIF Annual Memberships Meeting in 2014. Larsen has also written articles on banking systems and other technical topics for publications such as American Banker.In the early 2000s, Larsen established the Chris Larsen Scholarship Fund at San Francisco State University, and the school named him Alum of the Year in 2004. As of 2014, he is a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and he serves as a board-member or adviser for organizations such as  Credit Karma and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). He served as an advisor to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation's policy committee against payday lending. He is also on the board of Oportun.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Peer-to-peer lending
+List of San Francisco State University people
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Chris Larsen at LinkedIn"
+Blythe Masters,"Blythe Masters (born 22 March 1969) is a British Private Equity executive and former financial services and fintech executive. She is a former executive at JPMorgan Chase, where she was widely credited for developing the credit default swap as a financial instrument. She is founding partner of FinTech private equity firm, Motive Partners, CEO of Motive Capital Corp, an Advisory Board Member of the US Chamber of Digital Commerce, a Board Member of GCM Grosvenor, Forge Global, CAIS Group, and Credit Suisse Group.
+
+
+== Biography ==
+
+
+=== Education ===
+Born in Oxford, Masters was raised in the south-east of England. She attended The King's School in Canterbury. She graduated in 1991 from Trinity College, Cambridge with a B.A. in economics.
+
+
+=== Professional career ===
+
+
+==== JP Morgan Chase ====
+Masters joined the bank JP Morgan Chase in 1991, after completing a number of internships there while still a student dating back to 1987. Responsible for credit derivative products at J.P. Morgan, Masters became a managing director at 28, the youngest woman to achieve that status in the firm's history. She is widely credited with creating the modern credit default swap, a derivative used to manage credit exposure to underlying reference entities. In 1994, J.P. Morgan had extended a $4.8 billion credit line to Exxon, which faced the threat of $5 billion in punitive damages for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. A team of J.P. Morgan bankers led by Masters then purchased credit protection against the credit line to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development to cut the capital which J.P. Morgan was required to hold against Exxon's default, thus reducing its own risk. J.P. Morgan later bundled together packages of such exposures and offered them to market as BISTRO, for Broad Index Secured Trust Offering, and these new financial instruments were quickly adopted by other banking institutions.When derivatives played a role in the 2008 financial crisis, having been applied by other firms to sub-prime mortgages, Gillian Tett's book, Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dreams of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe, documented how the original intent and features of credit derivatives had been distorted. Nonetheless, Masters was described by the UK newspaper The Guardian as ""the woman who invented financial weapons of mass destruction"". The paper later apologised for failing to give Masters an adequate opportunity to respond to their characterisation. She had told the newspaper: ""I do believe CDS [credit default swaps] have been miscast, much as poor workmen tend to blame their tools."" Masters explained to The Economist, ""Tools that transfer risk can also increase systemic risk if major counterparties fail to manage their exposures properly."" In April 2010 she told the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament that ""there are definitely lessons that have to be learnt. I for one feel that I have learnt from that experience and there are things I may like to have seen done differently"". She stated support for reforms which increase transparency and reduce the risk of contagion among financial firms.From 2001 to 2004, Masters served as the bank's head of Global Credit Portfolio and Credit Policy and Strategy. From 2004 to 2007, she was Chief Financial Officer of J.P. Morgan's Investment Bank. In 2007, she was named head of Global Commodities. By 2014, J.P. Morgan had the largest revenues of any investment bank in commodities, according to United Kingdom analytics firm Coalition. That same year, J.P. Morgan announced the sale of its physical commodities business for $3.5bn in the face of increased regulatory scrutiny brought on by a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission investigation into the bank’s alleged manipulation of energy markets in California and Michigan.  J.P. Morgan paid $410 million to settle the investigation without admitting wrongdoing. J.P. Morgan defended Masters, stating that ""We strongly dispute that Blythe Masters or any employee lied or acted inappropriately in this matter"". Masters left J.P. Morgan once she had completed the sale for the bank.Masters was the Chair of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association from 2008 to 2010 and also of the Global Financial Markets Association from 2012 to 2014, trade associations whose missions include promoting public trust and confidence in financial markets. She has frequently represented the industry in Washington, D.C., on matters including the design of carbon markets to contain global warming,  curbs on large commodities trading positions and the financial regulatory overhaul.
+
+
+==== 2015–2019 ====
+Masters was named the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings in March 2015, a company that builds secure and distributed processing tools to speed up settlement, reduce costs and enhance security and transparency in regulated industries. The startup raised more than $100 million in multiple rounds of funding from fifteen technology and financial firms, such as Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Deutsche Boerse, DTCC, CME, IBM and Accenture. The company distributed ledger systems for the ASX, DTCC and others. In December 2017, ASX officially announced it would upgrade its post-trade settlement system to a blockchain platform designed by Digital Asset Holdings. In November 2022, ASX officially announced it would stop using the blockchain platform completely.In December 2018, Masters announced that she was stepping down as CEO, but would remain a board member, strategic advisor and a shareholder.In December 2015, it was posited in the media that the new Barclays CEO Jes Staley had approached Masters about running the bank’s investment banking division, however Masters indicated she was fully committed to her current role at Digital Asset Holdings. From 2015 to 2016 she was the Chair of the Board of Santander Consumer Holdings Inc. (NYSE: SC), a full-service, technology-driven consumer finance company.
+
+
+==== Private Equity ====
+In late 2019 Masters joined Motive Capital Partners, a private equity firm. In September, 2021 Motive announced that she was leading Motive's acquisition of Forge Global, a pre-IPO stock marketplace, in a SPAC transaction valued at approximately $2 billion.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+Masters is Co-Chair of the Board of the Global Fund for Women, a board member of both The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and ID2020, and the former Chair of the Board of the Greater NY Affiliate of the breast cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure. She is an amateur equestrian.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Blythe Masters on LinkedIn
+Crains New York 40 Under 40 Profile
+The Daily Pennsylvanian"
+Nii Osae Osae Dade,"Nii Osae Osae Dade (born December 29, 1993) is a Ghanaian entrepreneur and a computer scientist. He is the co-founder and director of both Mazzuma and Utopia Technologies: two companies in the digital commerce space for emerging markets. He is the Director of Software engineering for  Mazzuma.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Nii Osae was born in Ghana and had his secondary education at the Presbyterian Boys Senior High School,Legon. He further studied BSc Computer Science at the University of Ghana
+
+
+== Career ==
+Nii Osae is also the board chairman of the Artificial Intelligence Association Ghana and a member of the Astronomical Society of Ghana and he was a speaker at the Tech in Ghana Conference, NVIDIA GTC 21, Global Webinar Series on AI in Finance.In 2013, Nii Osae  co-founded CYST, a software innovation company specializing in Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and mobile payment systems to improve financial inclusion in emerging markets through its flagship product called Mazzuma and processes transactional volumes.
+
+
+== Recognition ==
+Nii Osae was recognized in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Technology category. He was part of the IBM/Airtel Mini Mobile Innovations Competition to develop smart innovations using telecommunications.
+
+
+== References =="
+Jorge Stolfi,"Jorge Stolfi (born 1950 in São Paulo) is a full professor of computer science at the State University of Campinas, working in computer vision, image processing, splines and other function approximation methods, graph theory, computational geometry and several other fields.  According to the ISI Web Of Science, as of 2010 he was the most highly cited computer scientist in Brazil. Outside of academia, Stolfi has accrued an online following due to his skepticism and comments on Bitcoin.
+
+
+== Early life and career ==
+Jorge Stolfi was born in Vila Carrão, a suburb of São Paulo.  His parents had immigrated to Brazil from the Veneto region of Italy only two years earlier, and so he spoke Venetian as his first language. He obtained an engineering degree in electronics (1973) and M.Sc. in applied mathematics (1979) from the University of São Paulo. From 1979 to 1988 he was a student of Leo Guibas at Stanford University, where he got a Ph.D in computer science. He had a CNPq grant from 1979 to 1983, then a research internship at Xerox PARC until 1985, and also at the DEC Systems Research Center (SRC) until 1988. After obtaining his Ph.D. he became a research engineer at SRC.
+In 1992 he returned to Brazil to take a position at the Computer Science Department of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), which later became the university's Institute of Computing. He was the institute's chairman from 2004 to 2008.
+
+
+== Research ==
+While at Stanford, Leo Guibas and Jorge worked on the then-new field of computational geometry. Among other results they developed the quad-edge data structure for two-dimensional maps, the kinetic framework for computational geometry. Jorge's Ph.D. dissertation on oriented projective geometry was later published as a book. He also drew dozens of cartoons for the DEC SRC technical reports.In 1992 Jorge collected and widely disseminated (through the historic DEC gatekeeper ftp archives and Prime Time Freeware) a set of wordlists that later formed the basis of the ispell resources (later myspell, currently part of OpenOffice.org and Mozilla as hunspell).
+After moving to UNICAMP, Jorge developed affine arithmetic, a model for self-validated computation (which he had conceived in 1991), in collaboration with Marcus Andrade, João Comba, and Luiz Figueiredo.At UNICAMP Jorge also worked with C. Lucchesi and T.Kowaltowski on finite state transducer technology for spell checking and other natural language processing tasks. With his student H. Leitão he developed an efficient algorithm for pottery fragment reassembly by multiscale outline matching, and analyzed the density of useful information contained in those outlines. He has also contributed to the study of the Voynich manuscript.
+Since 2001 Jorge has been involved in efforts to raise public and government awareness about the insecurity of Brazilian electronic voting machines, which are of the direct recording electronic (DRE) type and therefore vulnerable to massive and undetectable software-based vote-stealing.
+
+
+== Bitcoin skepticism ==
+Starting late 2013, Jorge took an active interest in the economics of cryptocurrencies. He became skeptical about its underlying soundness and chances of success and has been advising the Brazilian public against investment in bitcoin. In 2016 he submitted a letter to the SEC outlining what he perceives as similarities between Bitcoin and penny stocks or Ponzi schemes. In response, another person by the name of Colin Baird wrote the SEC to cast doubt on Stolfi's letters, without addressing any of Stolfi's arguments.In 2021, Stolfi wrote a paper titled ""Bitcoin is a Ponzi"", in which he summarized the main characteristics of a Ponzi scheme, and its similarities with Bitcoin. The paper went viral after it was posted on HackerNews, a website frequented by computer programmers, where it received over 500 upvotes.In 2022, after posting to Twitter that ""blockchain technology is a fraud"", he inspired 1500 experts to write a letter to US Congress about the risks of cryptocurrencies.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Jorge Stolfi's personal webpage"
+Alex Tapscott,"Alex Tapscott (born 1986) is a Canadian business author, and advisory board member. His work revolves around the applications of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.He was the CEO and founder of NextBlock Global, a cryptocurrency investment company, and is the co-founder, with his father Don Tapscott, of the Blockchain Research Institute.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Tapscott was born in Toronto and attended Upper Canada College. He holds a BA in Law, Jurisprudence and Social thought from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts where he graduated in 2008.Tapscott represented Canada as a member (and captain) of the Canadian Men's Rugby Under-21 Team in numerous tournaments in 2006 and 2007.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Tapscott co-authored, with his father Don Tapscott, the 2016 book Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World. The book became a The Globe and Mail as well as Toronto Star bestseller. Financial Times reviewed the book and wrote ""The Tapscotts provide a thorough, balanced and enlightening guide to the next big thing"",.In October 2016, Tapscott gave his first TEDx Talk at TEDxSanFrancisco. He currently sits on the Advisory Board to Elections Canada, the independent, non-partisan agency responsible for conducting federal elections and referendums. He also serves as an advisory board member at early-stage start-ups, including Paycase and nuco.In the summer of 2016, Tapscott co-convened a meeting of blockchain stakeholders in Muskoka, Ontario to discuss governance of the whole blockchain ecosystem.On November 5, 2017, he announced that NextBlock was forced to scrap IPO plans due to being dropped by their underwriter, CIBC, after the company is reported to have made false and misleading statements in its marketing materials.
+
+
+== Bibliography ==
+Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World, PenguinRandomHouse, 2016. ISBN 978-0670069972.
+To the Breaking Point: Law and Political Emergency, UD-ALO Publishing, 2010. ISBN 978-0994042002
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Don Tapscott,"Don Tapscott  (born June 1, 1947) is a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, who specializes in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. He is the CEO of the Tapscott Group and the co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Blockchain Research Institute.
+
+
+== Career ==
+Tapscott has authored or co-authored sixteen books on the application of technology in business and society. His 2006 book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006), co-authored by Anthony D. Williams, was an international bestseller, was number one on the 2007 management book charts and has been translated into 20 different languages.
+Tapscott lives in Toronto. He is the former Chancellor of his alma mater Trent University, and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Tapscott was born in Toronto and lived as a teen in Orillia, Ontario, where he was a part of the first graduating class of Park Street Collegiate Institute.Tapscott holds a B.Sc. in psychology and statistics and an M. Ed. specializing in research methodology. While earning this degree at the University of Alberta, he ran for mayor of Edmonton in the 1977 municipal election on behalf of the Revolutionary Workers' League.
+
+
+== Awards and recognition ==
+Tapscott holds three honorary degrees—Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)—granted by the University of Alberta in 2001, Trent University in 2006, and McMaster University in 2010.He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015.
+
+
+== Bibliography ==
+Don Tapscott, Del Henderson, Morley Greenberg, Planning for Integrated Office Systems: A Strategic Approach, Carswell Legal Pubns, 1984. ISBN 0-87094-653-6.
+Don Tapscott, Del Henderson, Morley Greenberg, Office Automation: A User-Driven Method, Springer, 1985. ISBN 0-306-41973-4.
+Don Tapscott, Art Caston, Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology, McGraw-Hill Companies, 1992. ISBN 0-07-062857-2.
+Don Tapscott, Ann Cavoukian, Who Knows: Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World, McGraw-Hill, 1997. ISBN 0-07-063320-7.
+Don Tapscott, The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril In The Age of Networked Intelligence, McGraw-Hill, 1997. ISBN 0-07-063342-8.
+Don Tapscott, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, McGraw-Hill, 1999. ISBN 978-0-07-134798-3.
+Don Tapscott, David Ticoll, Alex Lowy, Blueprint to the Digital Economy: Creating Wealth in the Era of E-Business, McGraw-Hill, 1999. ISBN 0-07-135213-9.
+Don Tapscott, Creating Value in the Network Economy, Harvard Business Press, 1999. ISBN 0-87584-911-3.
+Don Tapscott, David Ticoll, Alex Lowy, Digital Capital: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs, Harvard Business Press, 2000. ISBN 978-1-57851-193-8.
+Don Tapscott, David Ticoll, The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business, Free Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7432-4650-0.
+Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Portfolio Trade, 2006. ISBN 1-59184-367-7.
+Don Tapscott, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World, McGraw-Hill, 2008. ISBN 0-07-150863-5.
+Don Tapscott, The Net Generation Takes The Lead; in: Willms Buhse/Ulrike Reinhard: Wenn Anzugträger auf Kapuzenpullis treffen (When Suits meet Hoodies), whois-Verlag 2009. ISBN 978-3-934013-98-8.
+Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, Portfolio Hardcover, 2010. ISBN 978-1-59184-356-6.
+Don Tapscott, The Digital Economy Anniversary Edition: Rethinking Promise and Peril In the Age of Networked Intelligence, McGraw-Hill, 2014. ISBN 0-07-183555-5.
+Don Tapscott, Alex Tapscott, The Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World, Penguin Books, Released May 2016 ISBN 978-0670069972
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website 
+Don Tapscott at IMDb 
+Don Tapscott at TED"
+Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn,"Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn (born Bryce Wilcox; 13 May 1974 in Phoenix, Arizona), is an American Colorado-based computer security specialist, self-proclaimed cypherpunk, and CEO of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), a for-profit company leading the development of Zcash.
+
+
+== Biography ==
+He is known for the Tahoe Least-Authority File Store (or Tahoe-LAFS), a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant filesystem released under GPL and the TGPPL licenses. He is the creator of the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence (TGPPL).Wilcox-O'Hearn is the designer of multiple network protocols that incorporate concepts such as self-contained economies and secure reputation systems. He is a member of the development team of ZRTP and the BLAKE2 cryptographic hash function.Zooko's triangle is named after Wilcox-O'Hearn, who described the schema that relates three desirable properties of identifiers in 2001.Wilcox-O'Hearn was founder and CEO of Least Authority Enterprises in Boulder, Colorado where he is now an advisor.Zooko was a developer of the MojoNation P2P system and lead developer of the follow-on Mnet network, and a developer at SimpleGeo.Wilcox-O'Hearn worked on the first cryptocurrency, DigiCash, with David Chaum in 1996. He is a member of the founding team of the anonymous cryptocurrency Zcash, which launched in 2016. He currently serves as the CEO of the affiliated Electric Coin Company. Wilcox later commissioned the Rand Corporation to study whether anonymous coins were disproportionately represented in criminal transactions; the study found they were not.Additionally Wilcox-O'Hearn was one of the co-creators of Blake3.
+
+
+== References =="
+Jihan Wu,"Jihan Wu (Chinese: 吳忌寒; born 1986) is a Chinese billionaire cryptocurrency entrepreneur. Together with Micree Zhan, he co-founded Bitmain in 2013, which has become the world's largest computer chip company for bitcoin mining, with US$2.5 billion in revenue in 2017. He is a leading supporter of Bitcoin Cash, a hard fork of bitcoin created in 2017 with increased transaction capacity. He topped Forbes' 2020 World’s Billionaires List as one of the five youngest billionaires in Asia.
+
+
+== Early life and career ==
+Wu was born in 1986 in Chongqing, China. After graduating from Chongqing Nankai Secondary School, he entered Peking University, where he earned dual degrees in economics and psychology in 2009.After graduating from university, Wu worked as a financial analyst for a private equity firm. In May 2011, he discovered Bitcoin and raised 100,000 yuan (US$15,373 as of 2011) from family and friends to purchase 900 bitcoins. He and fellow Bitcoin enthusiast Chang Jia (长铗) founded Babite (巴比特), China's first Bitcoin community site. In late 2011, he was the first to translate Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper into Chinese.In 2012, Wu invested in the bitcoin mining company ASICMINER, one of the first company produced ASIC that is used to mine Bitcoin worldwide which was co-founded by Friedcat (烤猫). Although initially successful with more than a thousand times of investment return given to its investors, Friedcat later ran into technical difficulties and exited the business. Wu also lost his investment purchasing hardware from another mining hardware company, Canaan Creative.
+
+
+== Bitmain, Bitdeer and Matrixport ==
+Having realized the importance of technical expertise, in 2013 Wu reached out to the microelectronics engineer Micree Zhan, whom he had met a few years before, and convinced Zhan to co-found Bitmain with him. In November 2013, Zhan developed Antminer S1, the company's first mining rig. Sales soon took off, but hit a downturn in 2014 when fraud was discovered at the Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, leading to its collapse. In 2015, Bitmain developed Antminer S5, which became the best-selling mining equipment as bitcoin prices recovered. Bitmain grew into the world's largest computer chip company for bitcoin mining, reporting US$2.5 billion in revenue in 2017. In 2018, Wu owned 20% of Bitmain shares, and Zhan 36%.Wu has been a vocal proponent for increasing Bitcoin's transaction capacity, which is limited to only seven per second due to the 1-megabyte size limit of bitcoin blocks, but the proposal was opposed by traditionalists. After two years of debate between the two camps, a Shenzhen-based mining company called ViaBTC, which Bitmain had invested in, orchestrated a hard fork of bitcoin, creating Bitcoin Cash in August 2017. Wu's critics accuse him of being the mastermind behind the fork, calling him ""Jihad"", a play on his given name, but Wu denied that he or Bitmain had so much influence in the matter.In 2019, Wu stepped down as co-CEO of Bitmain and founded Matrixport, a financial services company for cryptocurrencies. To circumvent China's ban on cryptocurrency trading, the company is based in Singapore.In 2021, Wu officially left Bitmain saying the disagreement between himself and Micree Zhan has finally been settled amicably. As a result, the cryptocurrency mining pool BTC.com and mining cloud service Bitdeer have spun off from Bitmain and Wu will be the chairman. Later, BTC.com was sold to a public company BTCM.
+
+
+== Wealth ==
+In Hurun Report's inaugural Blockchain Rich List 2018, Wu was named the second richest cryptocurrency entrepreneur in China, with an estimated net worth of 16.5 billion yuan (US$2.39 billion), behind only Micree Zhan. Hurun also ranked him as the 204th richest person in China. In the same year, he was ranked No. 3 in Fortune's The Ledger 40 under 40, for transforming business at the leading edge of finance and technology.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+As of 2019, Wu is single and lives in Beijing.
+
+
+== References =="
+Micree Zhan,"Micree Zhan or Zhan Ketuan (Chinese: 詹克团; born 29 January 1979) is a Chinese electronics engineer and businessman. He is the co-founder and CEO  (with Wu Jihan) of Bitmain, the world's largest computer chip company for cryptocurrency mining. In 2018, Hurun Report named him the richest cryptocurrency billionaire in the world. In 2019, Bloomberg ranked Zhan as the world's 9th richest self-made billionaire aged 40 or younger, with a net worth of US$5.2 billion.
+
+
+== Early life and education ==
+Zhan Ketuan was born on 29 January 1979 in Minhou County, Fujian, China.After graduating from Minhou No. 1 High School, he entered Shandong University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering in 2001. He then earned his master's degree in microelectronics engineering from the Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2004.
+
+
+== Career ==
+After earning his master's degree, Zhan worked as an engineer at the Information Technology Research Institute at Tsinghua University. He later started his own business making set-top boxes for television.In 2013, Zhan met up with Wu Jihan, an enthusiast for cryptocurrency. After hours of discussion and research, Zhan agreed to start Bitmain with Wu. The company quickly grew into the world's largest computer chip company for bitcoin mining, reporting US$2.5 billion in revenue in 2017. As of 2018, Zhan owns 36% of Bitmain, and Wu 20%.In Hurun Report's inaugural Blockchain Rich List 2018, Zhan was named the richest cryptocurrency entrepreneur in the world, with an estimated net worth of 29.5 billion yuan (US$4.3 billion), while Wu was ranked second. In February 2019, Bloomberg ranked Zhan as the world's 9th richest self-made billionaire aged 40 or younger, with a net worth of US$5.2 billion. As of June 2019, he is listed as the world's 311th richest person in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with $5.42 billion.
+
+
+== Personal life ==
+As of 2019, Zhan is single and has no children. He lives in Beijing.
+
+
+== References =="
+Pineapple Fund,"The Pineapple Fund was a philanthropic project by an anonymous individual which gave away 5,057 bitcoins to 60 charities. The amount was valued at $86 million in December 2017. Some of the themes supported were medical research, environmental conservation, human rights and psychedelic therapy.
+
+
+== History ==
+The Pineapple Fund was announced with a post on Reddit on December 14, 2017. The individual used the pseudonym ""Pine"", and explained that ""My aims, goals, and motivations in life have nothing to do with ... being the mega rich. So I'm doing something else: donating the majority of my bitcoins to charitable causes"". The individual behind the fund has remained pseudonymous.An application form was made available on the website, open to all charities around the world. Speaking to the magazine Philanthropy, the founder said that more than 10,000 applications were received.After five months, a total of 5,104 bitcoins had been donated and liquidated for a value of $55 million after exchange rate volatility.
+
+
+== Donations ==
+The fund's first donation was $1 million to Watsi, a charity for crowdfunding healthcare.The fund donated a total of $3 million to SENS Research Foundation and Methuselah Foundation for development of rejuvenation therapies based on periodic repair of the cell and tissue damage that causes aging.The fund made its three largest donations of $5 million each to GiveDirectly, The Open Medicine Foundation, and to MAPS.The fund donated $2 million to the Organ Preservation Alliance.The fund has also donated $1 million or more to organizations such as BitGive Foundation, Internet Archive, and the Sustainable Ocean Alliance.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of bitcoin organizations
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website at the Wayback Machine (archived 2020-01-08)"
+BitGive Foundation,"The BitGive Foundation is an American nonprofit organization that solicits bitcoin donations for use in charitable causes.
+
+
+== Background ==
+BitGive was established by Connie Gallippi in 2013. The organization was the first Bitcoin and Blockchain technology nonprofit. The organization has received 501(c)(3) tax exempt status from the United States Internal Revenue Service.BitGive was founded with the goal of strengthening philanthropic impact globally by using cryptocurrency to make the process faster and more secure. On GiveTrack, nonprofits can post projects and donors can contribute funds. Contributions can be made in bitcoin or in dollars. The platform gives donors financial reporting and project results in real time.In 2017–2018, BitGive received $1 million from the Pineapple Fund, a philanthropic endeavor by an anonymous donor known as “Pine,” who sought to donate “the majority of [their] bitcoins to charitable causes.”
+
+
+== Partnerships ==
+BitGive has worked with nonprofits globally, including Save the Children and The Water Project.
+
+
+== Leadership ==
+Connie Gallippi is a founder in the cryptocurrency space. In recognition of her work, Gallippi has been recognized on lists of notable women in cryptocurrency from publications, including Glamour, HuffPost, and the FinTech Times, among others. She serves on the board of directors for the Sierra Business Council. Gallippi holds a BS in Natural Resource Management from Virginia Tech.BitGive's board of directors is composed of figures from the blockchain and cryptocurrency space: Rumi Morales (Board President), Sandra Ro (Board Treasurer), Matthew Roszak, Dawn Newton, Paul Lamb, and Justin Steffen. Emeritus board members include: Patrick Murck, Stephen Pair, and Alyse Killeen.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Bitcoin Unlimited,"Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) is a full node implementation for the bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash networks. The Bitcoin Core client, from which Bitcoin Unlimited is forked, has a hard coded one megabyte block limit; Bitcoin Unlimited differs by allowing users to signal which block size limit they prefer, find the limit having a majority consensus and automatically track the largest proof-of-work, regardless of block size. However, if a block greater than one megabyte in size is accepted by Bitcoin Unlimited and rejected by nodes with a block size limit, a fork of the network will occur, resulting in two separate blockchains with Bitcoin Unlimited nodes following the chain with the largest proof-of-work.The release of Bitcoin Unlimited follows the release of Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic, alternative proposals which aimed to increase bitcoin's transaction capacity of around 2.5-3 transactions per second by increasing the hard-coded block size limit.As of version 1.1.0.0, Bitcoin Unlimited releases are compatible with Bitcoin Cash, a cryptocurrency that split from bitcoin and allows larger blocks.
+
+
+== Scalability ==
+
+Bitcoin Unlimited is an attempt to upgrade Bitcoin Core into a client that processes bitcoin transactions into blocks with a potential maximum size greater than the Core's hard-coded limit of one megabyte. The one megabyte block size limit was added in 2010 by Satoshi Nakamoto as a temporary anti-DoS measure. This limited the maximum network capacity to about three transactions per second. Per the advocates of the change, a block size increase is needed in order to avoid a workflow bottleneck due to the number of transactions made as bitcoin adoption increases.
+With Bitcoin Unlimited, miners are independently able to configure the size of the blocks they will validate.Miners using Bitcoin Unlimited continue to process regular-sized blocks but as soon as a block larger than one megabyte is mined, they will follow the chain containing the most work.Per the Bitcoin Unlimited website, the scalability solution will be found at a focal point.
+
+
+=== Support ===
+Bitcoin Unlimited follows the release of Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic, alternative proposals on how to increase bitcoin's transaction capacity.  Mining pools including Antpool.
+
+
+=== Opposition ===
+Developers of Bitcoin Core have been reluctant to increase the block size limit. BU nodes were attacked after developers brought a bug to light on 14 March 2017. The numbers of nodes hosting Unlimited fell from 780 to about 370 following the attacks, the lowest level since October, and returned to about 780 within 24 hours according to website coin.dance which tracks network data.As of July 2022, there are only three BU nodes online according to Coin Dance data, a decrease from seven in May 2021.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of bitcoin forks
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Bitcoin Unlimited
+Bitcoin Transaction Accelerator"
+Bitcoin Gold,"Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a cryptocurrency. It is a hard fork of Bitcoin, the open source cryptocurrency. It is an open source, decentralized digital currency without a central bank or intermediary that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer Bitcoin Gold network.
+The stated purpose of the hard fork is to change the proof of work algorithm so that ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) which are used to mine  Bitcoin cannot be used to mine the Bitcoin Gold blockchain in the hopes that enabling mining on commonly available graphics cards will democratize and decentralize the mining and distribution of the cryptocurrency.
+The project began as a community-driven effort with six co-founders, half of whom continue to serve on the project's Board (including Lead Developer, Hang Yin.)
+
+
+== History ==
+Bitcoin Gold hard forked from the Bitcoin blockchain on October 24, 2017, at block height 491407.In July 2018, Bitcoin Gold implemented a new mining algorithm. The actual algorithm that was developed by Zcash (now, Electric Coin Company) was based on parameter set <200,9>. Bitcoin Gold has modified this algorithm and is now adopting parameter set <144,5>. This new algorithm is called Equihash-BTG. The new algorithm requires more memory than the one that was originally developed by Zcash.
+
+
+== Network attacks ==
+Soon after the launch, the website came under a distributed denial of service attack, and received criticism from Coinbase and Bittrex for being hastily put together, as well as including a developer pre-mine.In May 2018, Bitcoin Gold was hit by a 51% hashing attack by an unknown actor. This type of attack makes it possible to manipulate the blockchain ledger on which transactions are recorded, and to spend the same digital coins more than once. During the attack, 388,000 BTG (worth approximately US$18 million) was stolen from several cryptocurrency exchanges. Bitcoin Gold was later delisted from Bittrex, after the team refused to help pay some damages.Bitcoin Gold suffered from 51% attacks again in January 2020. In July 2020, the version 0.17.2 was released as an “emergency update” in order to elude a long attack chain originated a few days before.
+
+
+== References =="
+Bitcoin.com,"Bitcoin.com is a bitcoin and cryptocurrency wallet developer and news & education portal.
+
+
+== Products and services ==
+As a cryptocurrency company, Bitcoin.com provides products, services, and information related to the purchasing, selling, storing, and using of cryptocurrencies.Bitcoin.com's flagship product is the Bitcoin.com Wallet, a platform for buying, selling, trading, holding, using, and managing cryptocurrencies. The Bitcoin.com Wallet was launched in June 2017 as a mobile app.
+
+
+== History ==
+The Bitcoin.com domain name was first registered in 2000 to the Swedish company Hurricane Communication AB. The company let it lapse, and, in 2003, it was picked up by Korean-based IVN Technology, which held the domain until 2005. The domain lay fallow until January 2008, when Jesse Heitler registered the name again. Heitler held on until July 2010, when he got an offer from David Lowy, who offered $2,000.Roger Ver, gained control of the Bitcoin.com domain name in April 2014, where he leased it to Blockchain.info and then later to OKCoin. In May 2015, the 5-year agreement was terminated by OKCoin who issued a statement claiming the agreement regarding the domain was invalid due to the entity named in the documents not being representative of the actual company. Ver sued OKCoin’s Hong Kong entity over contract breaches and was awarded a $570,000 judgement by a Hong Kong court in November 2017.In May 2020, former Apple and Rakuten senior manager Dennis Jarvis was appointed CEO of Bitcoin.com. Jarvis redefined Bitcoin.com's vision to more broadly support the concept of ‘economic freedom’ rather than promote a specific cryptocurrency.In April 2021, the Bitcoin.com domain was erroneously listed for sale on Godaddy. This prompted site owner Roger Ver to demand the domain registrar and web hosting company remove the $100 million listing, which it did without providing further explanation.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of bitcoin companies
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website Best Bitcoin Earning Site 2023"
+BTC-e,"BTC-e was a cryptocurrency trading platform primarily serving the Russian market, with servers located in the United States. The U.S. government seized their website and funds in 2017. It was founded in July 2011 by Alexander Vinnik and Aleksandr Bilyuchenko, and as of February 2015 handled around 3% of all Bitcoin exchange volume. The platform was eventually taken over by Russian Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, and funds from BTC-e were used for the war in Donbass, under the control of the FSB.It was a component of the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index since the index's September 2013 formation.BTC-e was operated by ALWAYS EFFICIENT LLP, which was registered in London and was listed as having two officers (Sandra Gina Esparon and Evaline Sophie Joubert) and two people with significant control: Alexander Buyanov and Andrii Shvets.The US Justice Department attempted to close down BTC-e on 26 July 2017, when they charged Vinnik and BTC-e in a 21-count indictment for operating an alleged international money laundering scheme and allegedly laundering funds from the hack of Mt. Gox.
+
+
+== History ==
+BTC-e was established in July 2011, handling a few coin pairs, including Bitcoin/U.S. dollar and I0Coin to Bitcoin. By October 2011, they supported many different currency pairs, including Litecoin to dollars, Bitcoin to rubles and RuCoin to rubles.The BTC-e website went offline on 25 July 2017, following the arrest of BTC-e staff members and the seizure of server equipment at one of their data centres. These events led to the closure of the BTC-e service.To repay its customers, BTC-e created WEX tokens, which were used to represent customers' seized equity until its funds were also seized by US Government. The WEX tokens represented $1 and were issued to account for the value of customers cryptocurrencies at the time of the seizure. Alexander Vinnik was convicted and sentenced to 5 years in prison in France while refusing to testify during his trial. He was acquitted on involvement with the Locky ransomware charges. WEX exchange is ultimately controlled by FSB and managed by Konstantin Malofeev.
+
+
+== References =="
+Blockstream,"Blockstream is a blockchain technology company led by co-founder Adam Back, headquartered in Victoria, Canada, with offices and staff worldwide. The company develops a range of products and services for the storage and transfer of Bitcoin and other digital assets.The company has raised $210M to date from investors, including venture capital firms Horizons Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, and AXA Strategic Ventures.
+
+
+== Products ==
+
+
+=== The Liquid Network ===
+On October 12, 2015, Blockstream announced the release of its Liquid sidechain prototype which could allow for the transfer of assets between the Liquid sidechain and the bitcoin main blockchain. On October 11, 2018, a production-ready implementation of the Liquid sidechain was officially launched, called the Liquid Network, which is designed to facilitate interoperability between the Bitcoin main chain and the Liquid sidechain to extend Bitcoin’s capabilities.Liquid is built using Elements Core, a sidechain protocol also designed by Blockstream and built on the Bitcoin Core codebase, which introduces several features including Confidential Transactions, Segregated Witnesses (or SegWit), native asset issuance, and new opcodes. Elements Core version 0.18.1.6 was released in March 2020.Blockstream claims that Liquid reduces the delays and friction involved in a normal transfer of bitcoin. Blockstream asserts participating exchanges–including Bitfinex, BitMEX and OKCoin–can reduce counterparty risk for traders and enable near-instant financial transactions between their platform and other exchanges or a trader’s wallet(s). New blocks are added to the Liquid sidechain every minute, as opposed to Bitcoin's 10-minute block interval.
+
+
+=== Blockstream Satellite ===
+In 2017 Blockstream announced the availability of one-way satellite broadcasting of the full Bitcoin blockchain to enable the propagation of valid bitcoin transactions to people without Internet access or during a disruption event like an Internet blackout. In 2018 Blockstream extended the Bitcoin satellite network to four satellites across six coverage zones, adding Asia and Pacific region coverage. It also released API specifications to allow users to send data over its network. The network as of 2019 is only a one-way network and the user still needs a connection to the Bitcoin network to send transactions, which can include SMS gateways or higher cost internet.
+
+
+=== Cryptocurrency data feed ===
+In early 2018 Blockstream announced a partnership with Intercontinental Exchange Inc., or ICE, to launch a cryptocurrency market data feed.
+
+
+== Industry partnerships ==
+
+
+=== Digital Garage ===
+Blockstream partnered with Digital Garage, an Internet technology company based in Tokyo, in January 2019 to create Crypto Garage, a joint venture dedicated to building Bitcoin and blockchain technology for the Japanese institutional market. The initiative's first product, called SETTLENET, is a protocol designed to enable institutional use of atomic swaps.
+
+
+=== Bitcoin ===
+
+Blockstream employs Bitcoin Core developers. Blockstream engineers developed a simplified Bitcoin smart contract development language called Miniscript, which currently has implementations in C++ and Rust. In 2023, Blockstream researcher Christian Lewe proposed a new update for Bitcoin smart contracts.
+
+
+=== Lightning Network ===
+
+Blockstream developer Rusty Russell was the first Bitcoin developer to try implementing the Lightning Network during the summer of 2015. Blockstream released version 0.8.1 of c-lightning, its own implementation of the Lightning Network, in February 2020.
+
+
+=== Cryptographic privacy and security research ===
+Blockstream has published work on Confidential Assets, Confidential Transactions, secure multi- and aggregate signatures, and Simplicity, a blockchain programming language.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Bitwala,
+BitMEX,"BitMEX is a cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform. It is owned and operated by HDR Global Trading Limited, which is registered in the Seychelles.BitMEX offers a variety of cryptocurrency-based financial products, including perpetual contracts, futures contracts, and options contracts. These products allow traders to bet on the price movements of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others, without actually owning the underlying assets.
+
+
+== History ==
+BitMEX was founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed, with financing from family and friends.
+Bitmex completed a SAFE round of investment in July 2015 then shortly after was inducted into SOSV batch 8 china accelerator program where it sold equity in exchange for labour and financing.
+In 2016, the exchange introduced perpetual futures, which became its most popular derivative product. In 2018, Delo became the United Kingdom's first billionaire from bitcoin, and its youngest self-made billionaire.In July 2019, Nouriel Roubini, a critic of cryptocurrencies, suggested that the exchange is involved in illegal activities, allowing traders to take on too much risk and by trading against clients. Two days later, it was reported by Bloomberg that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was investigating BitMEX as to whether they broke rules by allowing Americans to trade on the platform.On October 1, 2020, Hayes, Reed, Delo, and Gregory Dwyer were indicted on charges of violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and conspiracy to violate that law, arising from allegations that the four failed to implement anti-money laundering measures. The case name is ""U.S. v. Hayes et al"", case number of 20-cr-00500, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.On April 6, 2021, former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes turned himself in to face U.S. charges for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. He was released on $10 million bond pending future court proceedings in New York.On February 24, 2022, Delo and Hayes pled guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering program at BitMEX. The pair agreed to separately pay a $10 million criminal fine representing pecuniary gain derived from the offense.On March 9, 2022, Reed pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine. Reed was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge John George Koeltl in New York to probation along with the other co-founders. Gregory Dwyer’s trial was initially scheduled for October 2022, and subsequently pled guilty and received a 12 month probation and $150,000 fine as punishment.On May 20, 2022, Hayes was sentenced to two years' probation, with home confinement for six months.On June 15, 2022, Delo was sentenced to 30 months' probation and as a UK citizen returned to Hong Kong subsequently to serve his probation.
+
+
+== References =="
+BitMain,
+Bundle Africa,"Bundle Africa, or simply Bundle is a social payment software that allows users to trade cryptocurrencies, send and receive fiat, and save in dollars and other currencies.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Founding and early years ===
+Bundle was launched in August 2019 by Yele Bademosi and Emmanuel Babalola. It was developed within the Binance ecosystem. Bundle Africa was a remote-first company that began as a startup inside Binance.
+Bademosi made his debut as the Director of Binance Labs, the crypto platform's venture arm, where he was responsible for creating Africa's blockchain ecosystem, a position he held until April 2020. He financed some of the most well-known tech businesses in the crypto industry, including Xend, Yellowcard, Bitsika, and Raise, to mention a few, all of which have gone on to achieve great success.Bundle is a cash and a cryptocurrency social payments' app aimed at driving crypto development on the continent by making it more engaging, convenient to use, and inclusive for Africans. The app had over 50 thousand downloads in the first four months following its release, with a 4.4 rating on Google Play and over $4.5 million in transaction volumes. Bundle had a monthly transaction volume of $56 million with over 350,000 customers in its early years.
+Bundle Africa grew to 650,000 users in 16 months, mostly through networking, community marketing, as well as a little marketing budget.
+
+
+=== 2021: Bademosi resigns ===
+Yele Bademosi stepped down as CEO of Bundle Africa on July 31, 2021, with the intention of exploring other areas in the African crypto community that require more support outside of traditional purchase currency trading, while continuing to drive the adoption of digital currency across Africa and the many economic opportunities that come with it. Emmanuel Babalola, the director of Binance Africa, was appointed to take over Yele's role, as the incumbent CEO of the company.Yele parted ways with Bundle Africa on friendly terms. He was pleased that Emmanuel would be taking over the position and went on to say that the director of Binance Labs has made significant contributions to the blockchain ecosystem and that he believes Babalola is the perfect successor he could wish for.
+
+
+== Services ==
+Bundle Africa teamed together with the Feminist Coalition and The Female Media Network (TEFEM) to offer educational and vocational awards to their respective communities in March 2022. This project was created to recognize International Women's Day. Bundle also sponsored women to pursue free Udemy courses on art, technology, and entertainment. Bundle Africa has now announced the launch of a webpage in celebration of her second anniversary.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of bitcoin companies
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official Website"
+Circle,"A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any point of the circle and the centre is called the radius. 
+The circle has been known since before the beginning of recorded history. Natural circles are common, such as the full moon or a slice of round fruit. The circle is the basis for the wheel, which, with related inventions such as gears, makes much of modern machinery possible. In mathematics, the study of the circle has helped inspire the development of geometry, astronomy and calculus.
+
+
+== Terminology ==
+Annulus: a ring-shaped object, the region bounded by two concentric circles.
+Arc: any connected part of a circle. Specifying two end points of an arc and a centre allows for two arcs that together make up a full circle.
+Centre: the point equidistant from all points on the circle.
+Chord: a line segment whose endpoints lie on the circle, thus dividing a circle into two segments.
+Circumference: the length of one circuit along the circle, or the distance around the circle.
+Diameter: a line segment whose endpoints lie on the circle and that passes through the centre; or the length of such a line segment. This is the largest distance between any two points on the circle. It is a special case of a chord, namely the longest chord for a given circle, and its length is twice the length of a radius.
+Disc: the region of the plane bounded by a circle. In strict mathematical usage, a circle is only the boundary of the disc, while in everyday the terms ""circle"" and ""disc"" may be used interchangeably.
+Lens: the region common to (the intersection of) two overlapping discs.
+Radius: a line segment joining the centre of a circle with any single point on the circle itself; or the length of such a segment, which is half (the length of) a diameter. Usually, the radius is denoted 
+  
+    
+      
+        r
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle r}
+   and required to be a positive number. A circle with 
+  
+    
+      
+        r
+        =
+        0
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle r=0}
+   is a degenerate case consisting of a single point.
+Sector: a region bounded by two radii of equal length with a common centre and either of the two possible arcs, determined by this centre and the endpoints of the radii.
+Segment: a region bounded by a chord and one of the arcs connecting the chord's endpoints. The length of the chord imposes a lower boundary on the diameter of possible arcs. Sometimes the term segment is used only for regions not containing the centre of the circle to which their arc belongs to.
+Secant: an extended chord, a coplanar straight line, intersecting a circle in two points.
+Semicircle: one of the two possible arcs determined by the endpoints of a diameter, taking its midpoint as centre. In non-technical common usage it may mean the interior of the two-dimensional region bounded by a diameter and one of its arcs, that is technically called a half-disc. A half-disc is a special case of a segment, namely the largest one.
+Tangent: a coplanar straight line that has one single point in common with a circle (""touches the circle at this point"").All of the specified regions may be considered as open, that is, not containing their boundaries, or as closed, including their respective boundaries.
+
+
+== Etymology ==
+The word circle derives from the Greek κίρκος/κύκλος (kirkos/kuklos), itself a metathesis of the Homeric Greek κρίκος (krikos), meaning ""hoop"" or ""ring"". The origins of the words circus and circuit are closely related.
+
+
+== History ==
+Prehistoric people made stone circles and timber circles, and circular elements are common in petroglyphs and cave paintings. Disc-shaped prehistoric artifacts include the Nebra sky disc and jade discs called Bi.
+The Egyptian Rhind papyrus, dated to 1700 BCE, gives a method to find the area of a circle. The result corresponds to 256/81 (3.16049...) as an approximate value of π.Book 3 of Euclid's Elements deals with the properties of circles. Euclid's definition of a circle is:
+
+A circle is a plane figure bounded by one curved line, and such that all straight lines drawn from a certain point within it to the bounding line, are equal. The bounding line is called its circumference and the point, its centre.
+In Plato's Seventh Letter there is a detailed definition and explanation of the circle. Plato explains the perfect circle, and how it is different from any drawing, words, definition or explanation. Early science, particularly geometry and astrology and astronomy, was connected to the divine for most medieval scholars, and many believed that there was something intrinsically ""divine"" or ""perfect"" that could be found in circles.In 1880 CE, Ferdinand von Lindemann proved that π is transcendental, proving that the millennia-old problem of squaring the circle cannot be performed with straightedge and compass.With the advent of abstract art in the early 20th century, geometric objects became an artistic subject in their own right. Wassily Kandinsky in particular often used circles as an element of his compositions.
+
+
+=== Symbolism and religious use ===
+From the time of the earliest known civilisations – such as the Assyrians and ancient Egyptians, those in the Indus Valley and along the Yellow River in China, and the Western civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome during classical Antiquity – the circle has been used directly or indirectly in visual art to convey the artist's message and to express certain ideas.
+However, differences in worldview (beliefs and culture) had a great impact on artists' perceptions. While some emphasised the circle's perimeter to demonstrate their democratic manifestation, others focused on its centre to symbolise the concept of cosmic unity. In mystical doctrines, the circle mainly symbolises the infinite and cyclical nature of existence, but in religious traditions it represents heavenly bodies and divine spirits.
+The circle signifies many sacred and spiritual concepts, including unity, infinity, wholeness, the universe, divinity, balance, stability and perfection, among others. Such concepts have been conveyed in cultures worldwide through the use of symbols, for example, a compass, a halo, the vesica piscis and its derivatives (fish, eye, aureole, mandorla, etc.), the ouroboros, the Dharma wheel, a rainbow, mandalas, rose windows and so forth. Magic circles are part of some traditions of Western esotericism.
+
+
+== Analytic results ==
+
+
+=== Circumference ===
+
+The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is π (pi), an irrational constant approximately equal to 3.141592654. Thus the circumference C is related to the radius r and diameter d by:
+
+
+=== Area enclosed ===
+
+As proved by Archimedes, in his Measurement of a Circle, the area enclosed by a circle is equal to that of a triangle whose base has the length of the circle's circumference and whose height equals the circle's radius, which comes to π multiplied by the radius squared:
+
+Equivalently, denoting diameter by d,
+
+that is, approximately 79% of the circumscribing square (whose side is of length d).
+The circle is the plane curve enclosing the maximum area for a given arc length. This relates the circle to a problem in the calculus of variations, namely the isoperimetric inequality.
+
+
+=== Equations ===
+
+
+==== Cartesian coordinates ====
+
+
+===== Equation of a circle =====
+In an x–y Cartesian coordinate system, the circle with centre coordinates (a, b) and radius r is the set of all points (x, y) such that
+
+This equation, known as the equation of the circle, follows from the Pythagorean theorem applied to any point on the circle: as shown in the adjacent diagram, the radius is the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle whose other sides are of length |x − a| and |y − b|. If the circle is centred at the origin (0, 0), then the equation simplifies to
+
+
+===== Parametric form =====
+The equation can be written in parametric form using the trigonometric functions sine and cosine as
+
+where t is a parametric variable in the range 0 to 2π, interpreted geometrically as the angle that the ray from (a, b) to (x, y) makes with the positive x axis.
+An alternative parametrisation of the circle is
+
+In this parameterisation, the ratio of t to r can be interpreted geometrically as the stereographic projection of the line passing through the centre parallel to the x axis (see Tangent half-angle substitution). However, this parameterisation works only if t is made to range not only through all reals but also to a point at infinity; otherwise, the leftmost point of the circle would be omitted.
+
+
+===== 3-point form =====
+The equation of the circle determined by three points 
+  
+    
+      
+        (
+        
+          x
+          
+            1
+          
+        
+        ,
+        
+          y
+          
+            1
+          
+        
+        )
+        ,
+        (
+        
+          x
+          
+            2
+          
+        
+        ,
+        
+          y
+          
+            2
+          
+        
+        )
+        ,
+        (
+        
+          x
+          
+            3
+          
+        
+        ,
+        
+          y
+          
+            3
+          
+        
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle (x_{1},y_{1}),(x_{2},y_{2}),(x_{3},y_{3})}
+   not on a line is obtained by a conversion of the 3-point form of a circle equation:
+
+
+===== Homogeneous form =====
+In homogeneous coordinates, each conic section with the equation of a circle has the form
+
+It can be proven that a conic section is a circle exactly when it contains (when extended to the complex projective plane) the points I(1: i: 0) and J(1: −i: 0). These points are called the circular points at infinity.
+
+
+==== Polar coordinates ====
+In polar coordinates, the equation of a circle is
+where a is the radius of the circle, 
+  
+    
+      
+        (
+        r
+        ,
+        θ
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle (r,\theta )}
+   are the polar coordinates of a generic point on the circle, and 
+  
+    
+      
+        (
+        
+          r
+          
+            0
+          
+        
+        ,
+        ϕ
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle (r_{0},\phi )}
+   are the polar coordinates of the centre of the circle (i.e., r0 is the distance from the origin to the centre of the circle, and φ is the anticlockwise angle from the positive x axis to the line connecting the origin to the centre of the circle). For a circle centred on the origin, i.e. r0 = 0, this reduces to r = a. When r0 = a, or when the origin lies on the circle, the equation becomes
+
+In the general case, the equation can be solved for r, giving
+
+Without the ± sign, the equation would in some cases describe only half a circle.
+
+
+==== Complex plane ====
+In the complex plane, a circle with a centre at c and radius r has the equation
+
+In parametric form, this can be written as
+
+The slightly generalised equation
+
+for real p, q and complex g is sometimes called a generalised circle. This becomes the above equation for a circle with 
+  
+    
+      
+        p
+        =
+        1
+        ,
+         
+        g
+        =
+        −
+        
+          
+            c
+            ¯
+          
+        
+        ,
+         
+        q
+        =
+        
+          r
+          
+            2
+          
+        
+        −
+        
+          |
+        
+        c
+        
+          
+            |
+          
+          
+            2
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle p=1,\ g=-{\overline {c}},\ q=r^{2}-|c|^{2}}
+  , since 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          |
+        
+        z
+        −
+        c
+        
+          
+            |
+          
+          
+            2
+          
+        
+        =
+        z
+        
+          
+            z
+            ¯
+          
+        
+        −
+        
+          
+            c
+            ¯
+          
+        
+        z
+        −
+        c
+        
+          
+            z
+            ¯
+          
+        
+        +
+        c
+        
+          
+            c
+            ¯
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle |z-c|^{2}=z{\overline {z}}-{\overline {c}}z-c{\overline {z}}+c{\overline {c}}}
+  . Not all generalised circles are actually circles: a generalised circle is either a (true) circle or a line.
+
+
+=== Tangent lines ===
+
+The tangent line through a point P on the circle is perpendicular to the diameter passing through P. If P = (x1, y1) and the circle has centre (a, b) and radius r, then the tangent line is perpendicular to the line from (a, b) to (x1, y1), so it has the form (x1 − a)x + (y1 – b)y = c. Evaluating at (x1, y1) determines the value of c, and the result is that the equation of the tangent is
+
+or
+
+If y1 ≠ b, then the slope of this line is
+
+This can also be found using implicit differentiation.
+When the centre of the circle is at the origin, then the equation of the tangent line becomes
+
+and its slope is
+
+
+== Properties ==
+The circle is the shape with the largest area for a given length of perimeter (see Isoperimetric inequality).
+The circle is a highly symmetric shape: every line through the centre forms a line of reflection symmetry, and it has rotational symmetry around the centre for every angle. Its symmetry group is the orthogonal group O(2,R). The group of rotations alone is the circle group T.
+All circles are similar.A circle circumference and radius are proportional.
+The area enclosed and the square of its radius are proportional.
+The constants of proportionality are 2π and π respectively.
+The circle that is centred at the origin with radius 1 is called the unit circle.
+Thought of as a great circle of the unit sphere, it becomes the Riemannian circle.
+Through any three points, not all on the same line, there lies a unique circle. In Cartesian coordinates, it is possible to give explicit formulae for the coordinates of the centre of the circle and the radius in terms of the coordinates of the three given points. See circumcircle.
+
+
+=== Chord ===
+Chords are equidistant from the centre of a circle if and only if they are equal in length.
+The perpendicular bisector of a chord passes through the centre of a circle; equivalent statements stemming from the uniqueness of the perpendicular bisector are:
+A perpendicular line from the centre of a circle bisects the chord.
+The line segment through the centre bisecting a chord is perpendicular to the chord.
+If a central angle and an inscribed angle of a circle are subtended by the same chord and on the same side of the chord, then the central angle is twice the inscribed angle.
+If two angles are inscribed on the same chord and on the same side of the chord, then they are equal.
+If two angles are inscribed on the same chord and on opposite sides of the chord, then they are supplementary.
+For a cyclic quadrilateral, the exterior angle is equal to the interior opposite angle.
+An inscribed angle subtended by a diameter is a right angle (see Thales' theorem).
+The diameter is the longest chord of the circle.
+Among all the circles with a chord AB in common, the circle with minimal radius is the one with diameter AB.
+If the intersection of any two chords divides one chord into lengths a and b and divides the other chord into lengths c and d, then ab = cd.
+If the intersection of any two perpendicular chords divides one chord into lengths a and b and divides the other chord into lengths c and d, then a2 + b2 + c2 + d2 equals the square of the diameter.
+The sum of the squared lengths of any two chords intersecting at right angles at a given point is the same as that of any other two perpendicular chords intersecting at the same point and is given by 8r2 − 4p2, where r is the circle radius, and p is the distance from the centre point to the point of intersection.
+The distance from a point on the circle to a given chord times the diameter of the circle equals the product of the distances from the point to the ends of the chord.: p.71 
+
+
+=== Tangent ===
+A line drawn perpendicular to a radius through the end point of the radius lying on the circle is a tangent to the circle.
+A line drawn perpendicular to a tangent through the point of contact with a circle passes through the centre of the circle.
+Two tangents can always be drawn to a circle from any point outside the circle, and these tangents are equal in length.
+If a tangent at A and a tangent at B intersect at the exterior point P, then denoting the centre as O, the angles ∠BOA and ∠BPA are supplementary.
+If AD is tangent to the circle at A and if AQ is a chord of the circle, then ∠DAQ = 1/2arc(AQ).
+
+
+=== Theorems ===
+
+The chord theorem states that if two chords, CD and EB, intersect at A, then AC × AD = AB × AE.
+If two secants, AE and AD, also cut the circle at B and C respectively, then AC × AD = AB × AE (corollary of the chord theorem).
+A tangent can be considered a limiting case of a secant whose ends are coincident. If a tangent from an external point A meets the circle at F and a secant from the external point A meets the circle at C and D respectively, then AF2 = AC × AD (tangent–secant theorem).
+The angle between a chord and the tangent at one of its endpoints is equal to one half the angle subtended at the centre of the circle, on the opposite side of the chord (tangent chord angle).
+If the angle subtended by the chord at the centre is 90°, then ℓ = r √2, where ℓ is the length of the chord, and r is the radius of the circle.
+If two secants are inscribed in the circle as shown at right, then the measurement of angle A is equal to one half the difference of the measurements of the enclosed arcs (
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          
+            
+              D
+              E
+            
+            ⌢
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle {\overset {\frown }{DE}}}
+   and 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          
+            
+              B
+              C
+            
+            ⌢
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle {\overset {\frown }{BC}}}
+  ). That is, 
+  
+    
+      
+        2
+        ∠
+        
+          C
+          A
+          B
+        
+        =
+        ∠
+        
+          D
+          O
+          E
+        
+        −
+        ∠
+        
+          B
+          O
+          C
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 2\angle {CAB}=\angle {DOE}-\angle {BOC}}
+  , where O is the centre of the circle (secant–secant theorem).
+
+
+=== Inscribed angles ===
+
+An inscribed angle (examples are the blue and green angles in the figure) is exactly half the corresponding central angle (red). Hence, all inscribed angles that subtend the same arc (pink) are equal. Angles inscribed on the arc (brown) are supplementary. In particular, every inscribed angle that subtends a diameter is a right angle (since the central angle is 180°).
+
+
+=== Sagitta ===
+The sagitta (also known as the versine) is a line segment drawn perpendicular to a chord, between the midpoint of that chord and the arc of the circle.
+Given the length y of a chord and the length x of the sagitta, the Pythagorean theorem can be used to calculate the radius of the unique circle that will fit around the two lines:
+
+Another proof of this result, which relies only on two chord properties given above, is as follows. Given a chord of length y and with sagitta of length x, since the sagitta intersects the midpoint of the chord, we know that it is a part of a diameter of the circle. Since the diameter is twice the radius, the ""missing"" part of the diameter is (2r − x) in length. Using the fact that one part of one chord times the other part is equal to the same product taken along a chord intersecting the first chord, we find that (2r − x)x = (y / 2)2. Solving for r, we find the required result.
+
+
+== Compass and straightedge constructions ==
+There are many compass-and-straightedge constructions resulting in circles.
+The simplest and most basic is the construction given the centre of the circle and a point on the circle. Place the fixed leg of the compass on the centre point, the movable leg on the point on the circle and rotate the compass.
+
+
+=== Construction with given diameter ===
+Construct the midpoint M of the diameter.
+Construct the circle with centre M passing through one of the endpoints of the diameter (it will also pass through the other endpoint).
+
+
+=== Construction through three noncollinear points ===
+Name the points P, Q and R,
+Construct the perpendicular bisector of the segment PQ.
+Construct the perpendicular bisector of the segment PR.
+Label the point of intersection of these two perpendicular bisectors M. (They meet because the points are not collinear).
+Construct the circle with centre M passing through one of the points P, Q or R (it will also pass through the other two points).
+
+
+== Circle of Apollonius ==
+
+Apollonius of Perga showed that a circle may also be defined as the set of points in a plane having a constant ratio (other than 1) of distances to two fixed foci, A and B. (The set of points where the distances are equal is the perpendicular bisector of segment AB, a line.) That circle is sometimes said to be drawn about two points.
+The proof is in two parts. First, one must prove that, given two foci A and B and a ratio of distances, any point P satisfying the ratio of distances must fall on a particular circle. Let C be another point, also satisfying the ratio and lying on segment AB. By the angle bisector theorem the line segment PC will bisect the interior angle APB, since the segments are similar:
+
+Analogously, a line segment PD through some point D on AB extended bisects the corresponding exterior angle BPQ where Q is on AP extended. Since the interior and exterior angles sum to 180 degrees, the angle CPD is exactly 90 degrees; that is, a right angle. The set of points P such that angle CPD is a right angle forms a circle, of which CD is a diameter.
+Second, see: 15  for a proof that every point on the indicated circle satisfies the given ratio.
+
+
+=== Cross-ratios ===
+A closely related property of circles involves the geometry of the cross-ratio of points in the complex plane. If A, B, and C are as above, then the circle of Apollonius for these three points is the collection of points P for which the absolute value of the cross-ratio is equal to one:
+
+Stated another way, P is a point on the circle of Apollonius if and only if the cross-ratio [A, B; C, P] is on the unit circle in the complex plane.
+
+
+=== Generalised circles ===
+
+If C is the midpoint of the segment AB, then the collection of points P satisfying the Apollonius condition
+
+is not a circle, but rather a line.
+Thus, if A, B, and C are given distinct points in the plane, then the locus of points P satisfying the above equation is called a ""generalised circle."" It may either be a true circle or a line. In this sense a line is a generalised circle of infinite radius.
+
+
+== Inscription in or circumscription about other figures ==
+In every triangle a unique circle, called the incircle, can be inscribed such that it is tangent to each of the three sides of the triangle.About every triangle a unique circle, called the circumcircle, can be circumscribed such that it goes through each of the triangle's three vertices.A tangential polygon, such as a tangential quadrilateral, is any convex polygon within which a circle can be inscribed that is tangent to each side of the polygon. Every regular polygon and every triangle is a tangential polygon.
+A cyclic polygon is any convex polygon about which a circle can be circumscribed, passing through each vertex. A well-studied example is the cyclic quadrilateral. Every regular polygon and every triangle is a cyclic polygon. A polygon that is both cyclic and tangential is called a bicentric polygon.
+A hypocycloid is a curve that is inscribed in a given circle by tracing a fixed point on a smaller circle that rolls within and tangent to the given circle.
+
+
+== Limiting case of other figures ==
+The circle can be viewed as a limiting case of various other figures:
+
+The series of regular polygons with n sides has the circle as its limit as n approaches infinity. This fact was applied by Archimedes to approximate π.
+A Cartesian oval is a set of points such that a weighted sum of the distances from any of its points to two fixed points (foci) is a constant. An ellipse is the case in which the weights are equal. A circle is an ellipse with an eccentricity of zero, meaning that the two foci coincide with each other as the centre of the circle. A circle is also a different special case of a Cartesian oval in which one of the weights is zero.
+A superellipse has an equation of the form 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          
+            |
+            
+              
+                x
+                a
+              
+            
+            |
+          
+          
+            n
+          
+        
+        
+        +
+        
+          
+            |
+            
+              
+                y
+                b
+              
+            
+            |
+          
+          
+            n
+          
+        
+        
+        =
+        1
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \left|{\frac {x}{a}}\right|^{n}\!+\left|{\frac {y}{b}}\right|^{n}\!=1}
+   for positive a, b, and n. A supercircle has b =a. A circle is the special case of a supercircle in which n = 2.
+A Cassini oval is a set of points such that the product of the distances from any of its points to two fixed points is a constant. When the two fixed points coincide, a circle results.
+A curve of constant width is a figure whose width, defined as the perpendicular distance between two distinct parallel lines each intersecting its boundary in a single point, is the same regardless of the direction of those two parallel lines. The circle is the simplest example of this type of figure.
+
+
+== Locus of constant sum ==
+Consider a finite set of 
+  
+    
+      
+        n
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle n}
+   points in the plane. The locus of points such that the sum of the squares of the distances to the given points is constant is a circle, whose centre is at the centroid of the given points.
+A generalization for higher powers of distances is obtained if under 
+  
+    
+      
+        n
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle n}
+   points the vertices of the regular polygon 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          P
+          
+            n
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle P_{n}}
+   are taken. The locus of points such that the sum of the 
+  
+    
+      
+        2
+        m
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 2m}
+  -th power of distances 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          d
+          
+            i
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle d_{i}}
+   to the vertices of a given regular polygon with circumradius 
+  
+    
+      
+        R
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle R}
+   is constant is a circle, if
+
+whose centre is the centroid of the 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          P
+          
+            n
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle P_{n}}
+  .
+In the case of the equilateral triangle, the loci of the constant sums of the second and fourth powers are circles, whereas for the square, the loci are circles for the constant sums of the second, fourth, and sixth powers. For the regular pentagon the constant sum of the eighth powers of the distances will be added and so forth.
+
+
+== Squaring the circle ==
+
+Squaring the circle is the problem, proposed by ancient geometers, of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with compass and straightedge.
+In 1882, the task was proven to be impossible, as a consequence of the Lindemann–Weierstrass theorem, which proves that pi (π) is a transcendental number, rather than an algebraic irrational number; that is, it is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients. Despite the impossibility, this topic continues to be of interest for pseudomath enthusiasts.
+
+
+== Generalizations ==
+
+
+=== In other p-norms ===
+Defining a circle as the set of points with a fixed distance from a point, different shapes can be considered circles under different definitions of distance. In p-norm, distance is determined by
+
+In Euclidean geometry, p = 2, giving the familiar
+
+In taxicab geometry, p = 1. Taxicab circles are squares with sides oriented at a 45° angle to the coordinate axes. While each side would have length 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          
+            2
+          
+        
+        r
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle {\sqrt {2}}r}
+   using a Euclidean metric, where r is the circle's radius, its length in taxicab geometry is 2r. Thus, a circle's circumference is 8r. Thus, the value of a geometric analog to 
+  
+    
+      
+        π
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle \pi }
+   is 4 in this geometry. The formula for the unit circle in taxicab geometry is 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          |
+        
+        x
+        
+          |
+        
+        +
+        
+          |
+        
+        y
+        
+          |
+        
+        =
+        1
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle |x|+|y|=1}
+   in Cartesian coordinates and
+
+in polar coordinates.
+A circle of radius 1 (using this distance) is the von Neumann neighborhood of its centre.
+A circle of radius r for the Chebyshev distance (L∞ metric) on a plane is also a square with side length 2r parallel to the coordinate axes, so planar Chebyshev distance can be viewed as equivalent by rotation and scaling to planar taxicab distance. However, this equivalence between L1 and L∞ metrics does not generalize to higher dimensions.
+
+
+=== Topological definition ===
+The circle is the one-dimensional hypersphere (the 1-sphere).
+In topology, a circle is not limited to the geometric concept, but to all of its homeomorphisms. Two topological circles are equivalent if one can be transformed into the other via a deformation of R3 upon itself (known as an ambient isotopy).
+
+
+== Specially named circles ==
+
+
+== See also ==
+Affine sphere
+Apeirogon
+Circle fitting
+Gauss circle problem
+Inversion in a circle
+Line–circle intersection
+List of circle topics
+Sphere
+Three points determine a circle
+Translation of axes
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Pedoe, Dan (1988). Geometry: a comprehensive course. Dover. ISBN 9780486658124.
+""Circle"" in The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+""Circle"", Encyclopedia of Mathematics, EMS Press, 2001 [1994]
+Circle at PlanetMath.
+Weisstein, Eric W. ""Circle"". MathWorld.
+""Interactive Java applets"". for the properties of and elementary constructions involving circles
+""Interactive Standard Form Equation of Circle"". Click and drag points to see standard form equation in action
+""Munching on Circles"". cut-the-knot"
+Coincheck,"Coincheck is a Japanese bitcoin wallet and exchange service headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, founded by Koichiro Wada and Yusuke Otsuka. It operates exchanges between bitcoin, ether and fiat currencies in Japan, and bitcoin transactions and storage in some countries.In April 2018, Coincheck was acquired by Monex Group for 3.6 billion yen. (US33.4 million)
+Coincheck  since 2016 has been the trademark name of a numismatic supply company located and trademark registered in the United States since 2016.
+
+
+== History ==
+Coincheck started in August 2014 and is operated by Coincheck, inc. (previously ResuPress, inc) (founded in 2012). There were then more than 2,200 merchants using their bitcoin payment solution, just in Japan. Coincheck is a member of JBA (Japan Blockchain Association) and is actively helping to build the Japanese bitcoin community's usage standards with the government.
+Coincheck partnered with SEKAI to support Chinese, Hong Kong, and Taiwan investors to buy Japanese real estate with bitcoin.
+
+
+=== 2018 hacking incident ===
+In January 2018, Coincheck was hacked and approximately 500 million NEM tokens ($530 million) were stolen. The currency was transferred through a total of nineteen accounts, one of which was found to have no connection with the hacker.The hack led two of Japan's crypto-currency trade groups to merge into a new self-regulatory organization. The Financial Services Agency took administrative action by ordering Coincheck to improve its security practices, but did not order the exchange to shut down out of a concern for the protection of its users. Coincheck initially announced that it may not be able to compensate all users affected by the hack, but then announced that it would repay all 260,000 users affected in Japanese yen using its own capital. As of February 2021, the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office has charged 31 individuals for their involvement in transactions of stolen NEM tokens. In total, these individuals converted around 18.8 billion yen of stolen coins into other cryptocurrencies.After the hack, Coincheck suspended trading temporarily and reimbursed its customers for their losses. The company also implemented new security measures, including enhanced KYC (know your customer) procedures, a review of its management system, and the strengthening of its internal control framework.
+
+
+== References =="
+Crypto.com,"Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency exchange company based in Singapore. As of June 2023, the company reportedly had 80 million customers and 4,000 employees. The exchange issues its own exchange token named Cronos (CRO).
+
+
+== History ==
+The company was initially founded in Hong Kong by Bobby Bao, Gary Or, Kris Marszalek, and Rafael Melo in 2016 as ""Monaco"". In 2018, the company was renamed as Crypto.com following a purchase of a domain owned by cryptography researcher and professor Matt Blaze. Domain sellers valued the domain at US$5–10 million.Crypto.com is operated by Foris DAX Asia, a Singapore-based company that's a subsidiary of Foris DAX MT (Malta) Limited.The company which had 10 million users in February 2021, reported more than 50 million active users as of May 2022 and 80 million users as of June 2023.In January 2022, Crypto.com was the victim of a hack totaling US$15 million in stolen Ether. After some users reported suspicious activity on their accounts, the company paused withdrawals. Withdrawal services were later restored alongside a statement from the company that no customer funds were lost.On August 18, 2022, it was reported that Crypto.com had been quietly letting go of hundreds of employees, beyond its initial 5% layoff in June, due to the downturn in the cryptocurrency market.By October 10, 2022, it was reported that Crypto.com had laid off over 2,000 employees (reportedly 30% to 40% of their staff) since May, due to the cryptocurrency market downturn.In November 2022, the exchange's token, Cronos, lost approximately $1 billion in value. The decline was caused in part due to concerns after the collapse of FTX, whose executive team was revealed to have used its native token, FTT, to prop up the balance sheet of a sister company and to have allegedly engaged in other fraudulent behaviors. On 14 November, Marszalek, the firm's CEO, assured users that the exchange was functioning as normal.On June 9, 2023, Crypto.com announced plans to shut down its institutional exchange in the United States by June 21, citing low demand from large financial institutions. The company's main retail trading service was unaffected. The change caused speculation that the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles would be renamed, but the company denied this.
+
+
+== Products ==
+Crypto.com offers a range of cryptocurrency-based financial services, including the Crypto.com App for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, the Crypto.com Exchange for advanced traders, a non-custodial Crypto.com DeFi Wallet for holding and earning interest on crypto assets, the Crypto.com NFT marketplace for trading nonfungible tokens, Crypto.com Pay for direct cryptocurrency transactions, and the Crypto.com Visa Card, launched in 2017, which converts cryptocurrencies into fiat for retail purchases through Visa.In May 2022, they partnered with Shopify to allow businesses which use the e-commerce platform to accept payments in cryptocurrency.
+
+
+== Promotional activities ==
+Crypto.com signed actor Matt Damon to serve as the company's brand ambassador in October 2021.In September 2021, the company became soccer club Paris Saint-Germain F.C.'s official cryptocurrency platform. The partnership included the release of exclusive Non-Fungible Tokens on Crypto.com's NFT platform.In September 2021, Philadelphia 76ers announced Crypto.com as their official jersey patch partner.
+In November 2021, the company acquired the naming rights to Los Angeles's Staples Center, renaming it Crypto.com Arena in a 20-year deal reported to be valued at US$700 million.In early 2022, the company announced a partnership with the LeBron James Family Foundation to provide educational resources focused on blockchain-related topics to students of the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio. It also signed a sponsor deal for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
+
+
+== Regulations ==
+
+
+=== Asia ===
+The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced that it had given in-principle approval to the company for a Major Payment Institution License, allowing it to provide digital payment token services in the country. In August 2022, Crypto.com acquired two South Korean startups - the payment service provider PnLink Co., Ltd and the virtual asset service provider OK-BIT Co., Ltd. With these acquisitions, the company secured registration licenses to provide financial services under South Korea's electronic financial transaction act and as a virtual asset service provider.
+
+
+=== Europe ===
+The company received approval from the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority to be registered as a crypto asset service provider in August 2022. In July 2022, it received regulatory approval to operate in Cyprus from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission. In September 2022, Crypto.com received the approval of the French authorities, and a month later announced plans to establish a European headquarters in Paris and invest 150 million euros in the French division.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Binance
+Kraken
+Coinbase
+BTCC (company)
+
+
+== References =="
+Digital Asset Holdings,"Digital Asset (or Digital Asset Holdings, LLC) is a financial technology company founded in 2014 by Sunil Hirani, Don R. Wilson, Yuval Rooz, Shaul Kfir and Eric Saraniecki. It builds products based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) for banks and other financial institutions.
+
+
+== History ==
+Blythe Masters was CEO from 2015 to 2018, and was succeeded by Yuval Rooz.On June 25, 2015 the Moneybeat column from The Wall Street Journal wrote that the ""acquisition of HyperLedger might raise eyebrows in the bitcoin community, where there is aversion to the idea that Wall Street might co-opt blockchain technology and strip it of its decentralized nature.""In November 2021, Goldman Sachs announced that it will use Digital Asset's Daml technology for its tokenized asset platform.In May 2022, SBI Holdings made a strategic investment in Digital Asset to build a programmable Japanese yen.
+
+
+== Daml ==
+Daml is an open-source smart contract language inspired by Haskell. It aids in modeling agreements and runs on blockchain platforms.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+Official Daml product website
+Official Daml Forum"
+Genesis (cryptocurrency company),"Genesis is a cryptocurrency brokerage for institutional investors. It is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG).Genesis operates several businesses, including Genesis Global Trading, Inc. (“GGT”), Genesis Global Capital, LLC (“GGC”), Genesis Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. (“GAP”), GGC International Limited (“GGCI”), and Genesis Custody Limited (“Genesis Custody”). Genesis Trading provides over-the-counter (OTC) trading services for large-volume digital assets transactions. Genesis' lending business offers institutional lending services to clients who want to borrow or lend digital assets.Genesis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 19, 2023, to request court protection to reorganize its digital assets lending and borrowing business.
+
+
+== History ==
+Genesis Global Trading, Inc. was founded in 2013. It is a subsidiary of the Digital Currency Group, a venture capital company founded by Barry Silbert.Genesis' business consists of entities that provide trading, lending, and custody digital assets, targeting institutional clients and high-net-worth individuals. They claim to have been the first OTC Bitcoin trading desk, launched in 2013.Genesis acquired the London-based crypto asset custodian company Volt in early 2020. Grayscale Investments' crypto assets were held by Xapo, which Coinbase bought in 2019. After the Volt acquisition, Genesis moved its crypto custody from Coinbase to Grayscale.In early July 2022, Genesis' parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) took on some of Genesis' debts to keep the company afloat after it was left exposed to losses from loans made to Singapore-based crypto lender Babel Finance and the bankrupt crypto hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital (3AC).Former CEO Michael Moro stepped down from his post on August 17, 2022. Genesis COO Derar Islim assumed the role of Interim CEO.In November 2022, the company said that it had $2.8 billion in outstanding loans. The company hired investment bank Moelis & Company to assist in restructuring. The options the company was considering at the time included declaring bankruptcy. In the same month, Barron's reported that Genesis was under investigation by state securities regulators.On January 12, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Genesis Global Capital, LLC with the unregistered offer and sale of securities to retail investors through Gemini Trust Company’s Gemini Earn crypto asset lending program. The SEC is seeking permanent injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest, and civil penalties against both Gemini and Genesis.On January 19, 2023, Genesis Global Holdco, LLC and two of its lending business subsidiaries, Genesis Global Capital, LLC and Genesis Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., filed voluntarily petitions under Chapter 11  of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the Southern District of New York. Genesis listed over 100,000 creditors with aggregate liabilities in the range of US$1.2–11 billion dollars.
+The company stated that its derivatives and spot trading business were not a part of the bankruptcy filing and continue operating.On February 6, 2023, Genesis Global Holdco announced an agreement in principle with DCG and creditors of Genesis Global Capital. The agreement was filed with the court on February 10, 2023 describes that DCG will give its equity interest in Genesis Global Trading, Inc. (GGT) to Genesis Global Holdco, LLC.. DCG will also refinance its loans from Genesis and exchange its existing $1.1 billion promissory note for convertible preferred stock issued by DCG.After Genesis paused the withdrawals for Gemini customers claiming there was a liquidity mismatch, some of the customers formed what is now known as the Ad Hoc Group (AHG), who support the filing and confirmation of a ""No Deal"" Plan, seeking to deny approval of the Disclosure Statement and Motion. The AHG said that the Plan does not provide adequate information, that it does not identify the Released Parties and permits the Special Committee to designate any current and former officers and directors of the Debtors as Released Parties at any time and for any reason.  Also the Plan does not provide information regarding any impact on Recoveries that legislation against Gemini including NYAG Action could cause.
+
+
+== References =="
+FTX,"FTX Trading Ltd., commonly known as FTX (short for ""Futures Exchange""), is a bankrupt company that formerly operated a fraud-ridden cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund. The exchange was founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang. At its peak in July 2021, the company had over one million users and was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. FTX is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda and headquartered in the Bahamas. FTX is closely associated with FTX.US, a separate exchange available to US residents.Since November 11, 2022, FTX has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the US court system. Public concern began with rumors of unethical and fraudulent inter-company transfers of client funds. In November 2022 CoinDesk also raised concerns stating that FTX's partner firm Alameda Research held a significant portion of its assets in FTX's native token (FTT). Following this revelation, rival exchange Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that Binance would sell its holdings of the token, which was quickly followed by a spike in customer withdrawals from FTX. FTX was unable to meet the demand for customer withdrawals. Binance signed a letter of intent to acquire the firm, with due diligence to follow, to ensure that customers could recover their assets from FTX in a timely manner, but Binance withdrew its offer the next day, citing reports of mishandled customer funds and U.S. agency investigations. On December 12, 2022, founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by the Bahamian authorities for financial offences, at the request of the US government.The current CEO of FTX is John J. Ray III, who specializes in recovering funds from failed corporations. Ray stated: ""this situation is unprecedented."" and ""Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.""
+
+
+== History ==
+Sam Bankman-Fried and Zixiao ""Gary"" Wang founded FTX in May 2019. FTX began within Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, and other former employees of Jane Street in 2017, in Berkeley, California. FTX is an abbreviation of ""Futures Exchange"". Changpeng Zhao of Binance purchased a 20% stake in FTX for approximately $100 million, six months after Bankman-Fried and Wang started the firm.In August 2020, FTX acquired Blockfolio, a cryptocurrency portfolio tracking app, for $150 million. In July 2021, the venture raised $900 million at an $18 billion valuation from over 60 investors, including Softbank, Sequoia Capital, and other firms. Bankman-Fried bought out Zhao's stake for approximately $2 billion. In September of that year, FTX moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to The Bahamas.On January 14, 2022, FTX announced a $2 billion venture fund named FTX Ventures, raising $400 million in Series C funding at a $32 billion valuation that month. The FTX Ventures website went offline in November 2022. On February 11, 2022, FTX.US announced that the company would soon begin offering stock trading to its US customers.In February 2022, it was reported that FTX was creating a gaming division that would help developers add cryptocurrency, NFTs, and other blockchain-related assets into video games.In July 2022, FTX finalized a deal giving it the option to buy BlockFi for about $240 million. The deal included a $400 million credit facility for BlockFi.In August 2022, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a cease-and-desist order to FTX for making ""false and misleading representations"" about deposits being covered by FDIC insurance following FTX president Brett Harrison's tweet implying otherwise. Following the regulatory action, Harrison deleted the tweet and Bankman-Fried clarified in another tweet that FTX deposits are not insured by the FDIC.On September 26, 2022, FTX.US won its bid at auction for the digital assets of bankrupt crypto brokerage Voyager Digital. The value of the deal was approximately $1.42 billion, including $1.31 billion in Voyager-held cryptocurrency and $111 million in additional consideration. The deal was subject to approval by bankruptcy courts and Voyager's creditors. Following the FTX bankruptcy, in December 2022, the US subsidiary of Binance won the bid to buy the assets of Voyager for approximately $1 billion.On September 27, 2022, FTX.US President Brett Harrison announced he would be stepping down from an active role at the exchange but would stay on in an advisory capacity. The company did not immediately announce a replacement for Harrison, who had been FTX.US president since May 2021.In October 2022, it was reported that FTX was under investigation in Texas for allegedly selling unregistered securities.In August 2023, it was reported that the company plans to restart offering cryptocurrency trading services after a restructuring of the bankrupt company is completed.
+
+
+== November 2022 crisis and bankruptcy ==
+
+
+=== Background: FTX and Alameda, Binance, and CoinDesk report ===
+In September 2022, Bloomberg reported on the close relationship between Alameda Research and FTX. Bloomberg noted that Alameda had functioned as a market maker for FTX early in the exchange's history, and that the trading firm remained, in June and July 2022, the biggest known depositor of stable coins on FTX. Bloomberg further stated that the regulatory oversight which applies to companies operating in traditional equities markets would have prohibited the relationship between the two firms were it applicable. Alameda's trading on FTX meant the trading firm was potentially in a position to gain financially when others lost money on the exchange. Bankman-Fried, at points, defended FTX's use of Alameda as a liquidity provider.According to John J. Ray III, Alameda had a ""secret exemption"" from FTX's auto-liquidation protocol.  Later, the existence of such an undisclosed beneficial relationship was described by Ray, the new CEO of FTX, as a ""complete failure of corporate controls"" and indicated gross mismanagement. Between early 2021 and March 2022, Alameda Research amassed crypto tokens ahead of FTX announcing the decision to list them for trading.According to anonymous sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, FTX had lent $10 billion of its customers' assets to Alameda Research in 2022. Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison disclosed to other Alameda employees that she, Sam Bankman-Fried, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh knew about that decision. An anonymous source cited by the New York Times said the same. According to the sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, Ellison said the funds were used in part to pay back loans Alameda had taken to make investments. Ray said that FTX used software to conceal the misuse of customer funds.Several months after Bloomberg's initial report on the relationship between the two firms, on November 2, 2022, CoinDesk reported that a significant portion of Alameda Research's assets were held in FTT, the exchange token issued by FTX. It said that there were $5.1 billion worth of FTT tokens in circulation, and that Alameda's balance sheet held $3.66 billion of ""unlocked FTT"", $2.16 billion of ""FTT collateral"", and $292 million of ""locked FTT"". In the weeks immediately preceding the publication of the story by CoinDesk, Bankman-Fried was characterized by anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg as ""desperately"" attempting to raise money for FTX. Additionally, Bankman-Fried had been publicly ""dueling"" with Changpeng Zhao on Twitter in the months preceding the CoinDesk article, in part due to disagreements stemming from their differing views on the regulation of cryptocurrency.
+
+
+=== Crisis begins: Binance FTT sale, sell-off, and withdrawn rescue bid ===
+Several days after the publication of the CoinDesk article, on November 6, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said on Twitter that his firm intended to sell all its holdings of FTT. Binance had received FTT from FTX in 2021 during a transaction in which FTX bought back Binance's equity stake in FTX. Zhao cited ""recent revelations that came to light"" as the motivation for selling FTT. Bloomberg and TechCrunch reported that any sale by Binance would likely have an outsized impact on FTT's price, given the token's low trading volume. The announcement by Zhao of the pending sale and disputes between Zhao and Bankman-Fried on Twitter led to a decline in the price of FTT and other cryptocurrencies, resulting in a three-day depositor sell-off, like a bank run, of an estimated $6 billion that sent FTX into crisis. On November 8, Zhao announced that Binance had entered into a non-binding agreement to purchase FTX due to what he referred to as a ""liquidity crisis"" at FTX. The deal did not include the sale of FTX.US. Zhao announced on Twitter that the company would complete due diligence soon, adding that all cryptocurrency exchanges should avoid using FTT tokens as collateral. He also wrote that he expected FTT to be ""highly volatile in the coming days as things develop"". On the day of that announcement, FTT price dropped by 80 percent, erasing $2 billion in value.On November 9, Bloomberg called the acquisition of FTX by Binance ""unlikely"" due to the poor state of FTX's finances. Bloomberg also reported that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating the nature of FTX's connections to Bankman-Fried's other holdings and its handling of client funds. Later that day, the Wall Street Journal reported that Binance would not move forward with the deal to acquire FTX. Binance cited FTX's reported mishandling of customer funds and pending investigations of FTX as the reasons for not pursuing the deal. Bankman-Fried said in a Slack message that FTX had learned through the press about Binance's concern and decision.On November 9, FTX's website said that it was not processing withdrawals at that time. Bankman-Fried said that although the firm's assets were worth more than its clients' deposits, it would need funds from outside to meet demand for withdrawals due to a lack of liquidity. Bankman-Fried stated on November 9 that FTX.US, as a separate company, was ""not currently impacted"" by the crisis.
+
+
+=== Bankruptcy and unauthorized transactions ===
+
+On November 10, Axios cited anonymous sources who said that FTX approached Kraken for a potential rescue deal. Bankman-Fried made several statements on November 10, taking responsibility for FTX's failure and indicating that FTX was still seeking capital to remain solvent. Bankman-Fried also announced that Alameda Research would cease trading and end operations. FTX's in-house legal and compliance teams had, for the most part, resigned by November 10. Anonymous sources cited by the Wall Street Journal on November 10 said that Alameda Research owed FTX some $10 billion, as FTX had lent funds placed on the exchange for trading to Alameda so that Alameda could make investments with the money. On November 12, anonymous sources cited by the Wall Street Journal said Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison disclosed to other Alameda employees that she, Sam Bankman-Fried, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh knew that client deposits were transferred from FTX to Alameda. An anonymous source cited by the New York Times on November 14 said the same. According to the sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, Ellison said the funds were used in part to pay back loans Alameda had taken to make investments.Though Bankman-Fried, on November 10, wrote on Twitter that FTX's US customers did not have reason to worry, employees began attempting to sell assets belonging to the firm on the same day. These assets include stock-clearing company Embed Financial Technologies and the naming rights to FTX Arena.On November 10, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas froze the assets of one of FTX's subsidiaries, FTX Digital Markets Ltd, ""and related parties"", and provisionally appointed an attorney as liquidator. Japan's Financial Services Agency ordered FTX Japan to suspend some operations. The company's Australian subsidiary was placed under administration.On November 10, the team running the FTX Future Fund, an ostensibly charitable group bankrolled by Bankman-Fried, announced that they had resigned earlier that day. Future Fund had committed $160 million in charitable grants and investments by September 1 of that year. Crypto lender BlockFi, which was affiliated with FTX, announced on November 10 that it was suspending operations as a result of FTX's collapse.On November 11, FTX, FTX.US, Alameda Research, and more than 100 affiliates filed for bankruptcy in Delaware. Anonymous sources cited by the New York Times said that the exchange owed as much as $8 billion. Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO and was replaced by John J. Ray III, a corporate restructuring specialist who'd previously overseen the liquidation of Enron.Late on November 11, over $473 million in funds were siphoned from FTX through what Ryne Miller, FTX US's general counsel, characterized as ""unauthorized transactions"". Miller announced that FTX and FTX US intended to move remaining funds denominated in cryptocurrency to offline ""cold storage"" for security. The funds taken from FTX were mostly stablecoins such as Tether, and were quickly exchanged for Ether, a method used by cryptocurrency thieves to thwart attempts to retrieve stolen funds. A person speaking on behalf of FTX referred to the ""unauthorized transactions"" as a ""hack"" and encouraged users to delete FTX mobile apps as they were compromised. Kraken has since offered to assist in identifying the perpetrator.As of November 12, Bankman-Fried told Reuters that he was still in the Bahamas, though other high-ranking FTX employees had begun leaving for Hong Kong, the location of the company's former headquarters, or other locations. Authorities in the Bahamas, including the Royal Bahamas Police Force, questioned Bankman-Fried on November 12. Despite FTX's bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried continued to attempt to raise money for the firm during the weekend of November 12 and 13.On November 14, Kraken's chief security officer said on Twitter that the firm knew ""the identity"" of a user who paid transaction fees associated with moving the stolen money through their Kraken account. In an interview with Kelsey Piper published November 16 by Vox, Bankman-Fried blamed an ""ex-employee"" or malware on a device owned by an ex-employee for the theft.According to anonymous sources cited by Reuters, between $1 billion and $2 billion in customer funds could not be accounted for as of November 12. The Financial Times reported that FTX's balance sheet shortly before the bankruptcy showed $9 billion in liabilities, with $900 million in liquid assets, $5 billion in ""less liquid"" assets, and $3.2 billion in illiquid private equity investments.Bankman-Fried began publishing ""cryptic"" messages in sequence on Twitter on November 14. As of November 15, the messages all read ""What HAPPENED"".On November 15, FTX sought to raise $10 billion in liquidity from investors.On November 16, the Bahamas unit of FTX, FTX Digital Markets, officially filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in the United States.On November 17, John J. Ray III, the CEO brought in as a liquidator, stated in a sworn declaration submitted in bankruptcy court that, according to FTX's records, its subsidiary Alameda Research had on September 30 lent $1 billion to Bankman-Fried and more than $500 million to FTX co-founder Nishad Singh. Ray, having been involved in the bankruptcies of Enron, Residential Capital, Nortel and Overseas Shipholding, stated, ""Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented."" Speaking to the House Committee on Financial Services, he testified that ""literally, there's no record-keeping whatsoever"" and that the company used for its accounting needs QuickBooks, a small-business accounting tool, despite handling ""billions of dollars.""
+
+
+=== Widening impact and contagion fears ===
+The exchange token of Crypto.com, Cronos, lost approximately $1 billion in value in November, a decline attributed in part due to the collapse of FTX and in part due to reporting that Crypto.com had accidentally sent $400 million of Ether to another exchange. On November 14, Crypto.com's CEO assured users that the exchange was functioning as normal. Commenters and customers remained fearful that Crypto.com could experience a collapse similar to FTX.BlockFi, a  cryptocurrency lender, was reportedly taking steps to file for bankruptcy as of November 15. The firm had earlier begun preventing withdrawals. The company disclosed ""significant exposure"" to FTX on November 14. Another cryptocurrency lender, Genesis, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, halted withdrawals on November 16. This halt caused Gemini, an exchange owned by the Winklevoss twins, to cease allowing redemptions for clients using a service provided through a partnership with Genesis. Another Digital Currency Group subsidiary, Grayscale, saw the value of its flagship offering, the publicly traded Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, decline by 20% over the two weeks preceding November 17. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was trading at a discounted price, 42% below the value of its Bitcoin, as of November 14.Concerns have also been raised about Silvergate Bank, as FTX was a depositor and could have also been a source of credit exposure. Silvergate has said that it has ample liquidity and no loan exposure to FTX. These concerns have been magnified due to Silvergate's key role as a gateway between its cryptocurrency clients and the wider financial world.
+
+
+=== Responses and effects ===
+
+
+==== Effects on investors ====
+Institutional investors that stand to lose money due to their stakes in FTX include Tiger Global Management, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, SoftBank Group, BlackRock, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Temasek, and Sequoia Capital. Sequoia Capital wrote down its equity in FTX to $0 on November 9, losing some $214 million. Sequoia released a notice to investors, also published on Twitter, assuring them the firm's stake in FTX represented a small amount of its overall portfolio, and replaced a profile of Bankman-Fried published on the firm's website with a link to the same notice. The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan released a similar statement. Temasek later wrote down its investment on November 16. Several public figures also invested in FTX or received compensation for promoting the company. These include football player Tom Brady, basketball players Shaquille O'Neal and Stephen Curry, model Gisele Bündchen, and businessman Kevin O'Leary.Gisele Bündchen was also appointed the ESG advisor for the cryptocurrency platform. After its bankruptcy, investors sued her for her involvement and accused her of participating in FTX's alleged scheme to take advantage of unsophisticated investors.Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, announced the firm was attempting to buy back a 30% stake in the business owned by FTX.
+
+
+==== Effects on other cryptocurrency firms and cryptocurrency markets ====
+Cryptocurrency investment firms with assets still held on FTX after its bankruptcy include Galois Capital and Galaxy Digital.Cryptocurrencies experienced swings and declines in value as news of FTX's collapse first emerged in early November: Tether dropped below its peg price of $1.00 to $0.97 and Bitcoin sank to its lowest price in two years. Share prices for publicly traded cryptocurrency companies declined. The price of Solana, which was affiliated with Bankman-Fried, declined as well. The crisis at FTX has inspired an increase in withdrawals from other exchanges. A decline in the value of Cronos, the token of exchange Crypto.com, triggered fears of the potential for a collapse similar to that of FTX and spurred withdrawals from the platform. CEO Kris Marszalek provided assurances that the firm was liquid and that it did not use Cronos in a manner similar to the way FTX used FTT. Bloomberg reported that the collapse of FTX exacerbated institutional skepticism of cryptocurrencies as an asset class.In December, it emerged that FTX had secretly invested in The Block, a cryptocurrency news firm, and to fund an LLC its CEO Michael McCaffrey used to buy an apartment. Its staff said they had no knowledge of the investments. McCaffrey then resigned.
+
+
+==== Responses and commentary ====
+Investment manager and short selling specialist Jim Chanos predicted in November 2022 the collapse of FTX would lead to ""increased scrutiny and regulation"" over cryptocurrencies. Chanos criticized the cryptocurrency sector as ""designed to extract fees from really unsuspecting investors"".Richard Handler, CEO of American financial firm Jefferies Group, tweeted on November 10 that he had attempted to meet with Bankman-Fried in July and again in September, as he perceived the FTX CEO was ""in over his head"". Handler stated that Bankman-Fried did not respond to the emails sent from Jefferies staff on Handler's behalf.The sudden collapse of FTX has been compared to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in publications such as The New York Times and the Financial Times. Lawrence Summers acknowledged the comparisons to Lehman and further compared the collapse to the Enron scandal, caused by fraud perpetrated by Enron executives. Rostin Behnam, the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, called for Congress to grant the organization more power to regulate cryptocurrencies. The financial impact of the collapse having reached beyond the immediate FTX customer base, financial industry executives said at a Reuters conference that ""regulators must step in to protect crypto investors."" Technology analyst Avivah Litan commented on the cryptocurrency ecosystem that ""everything...needs to improve dramatically in terms of user experience, controls, safety, [and] customer service."" Risk management firm Titan Grey published a primer on the commencement and early motions practice of the FTX chapter 11 case, analyzing issues such as creditor privacy, relief from the automatic stay, proposed differential treatment of customers from other creditors, and others.
+
+
+== Legal process ==
+Following the collapse of FTX, the Royal Bahamas Police Force launched a criminal investigation into the company.Anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg said that the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York had begun an investigation into FTX's collapse as of November 14, 2022.The United States House Committee on Financial Services announced it plans to conduct hearings in December on the collapse of FTX, and committee leaders said they would seek testimony from Bankman-Fried. According to anonymous sources cited by The Information, some venture capital firms are considering suing Bankman-Fried.On December 13, 2022, FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was charged by the US attorney's office for the southern district of New York with fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the US and violate campaign finance laws. After being extradited from the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond and ordered to remain under house arrest at his parents' home in Palo Alto, California. He was arraigned in federal court in Manhattan on January 3, 2023, and entered a plea of not guilty to all counts. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan set the trial date for United States v. Bankman-Fried for October 2, 2023, saying he might move it ""forward or backward a day or two."" Meanwhile, Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, who had served as Alameda's CEO, pleaded guilty to multiple charges and began cooperating with federal prosecutors.FTX's former engineering director, Nishad Singh, has pleaded guilty to six different charges, including three counts of conspiracy to commit fraud. Singh is a childhood friend of Bankman-Fried's brother and worked at Alameda Research before being brought into FTX. Singh is now said to be cooperating with prosecutors' investigations against Bankman-Freid.
+Former FTX executive Ryan Salame has pleaded guilty to both a campaign finance law violation and a charge of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, but is reportedly not cooperating with prosecutors as of September 2023.
+
+
+== Sponsorships ==
+FTX sponsored a number of sports teams and organizations. Deals included the naming rights to the Miami Heat's basketball stadium, renaming it FTX Arena, a partnership with Major League Baseball to place the FTX logo on the uniforms of umpires, and a deal with Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team to add the FTX logo to their cars and merchandise. The professional esports organization TSM also had a naming rights deal with FTX, thus the organization became TSM FTX.Other sponsorships included the title sponsorships of the first season of MLB Home Run Derby X, and the title sponsorship of the tournaments FTX Road to Miami and FTX Crypto Cup as part of the Champions Chess Tour 2022.Following the bankruptcy of FTX in November 2022, Mercedes-AMG F1, TSM and the Miami Heat cut ties with the company, with the latter also announcing that they would be seeking a new naming rights partner for the FTX Arena. FTX held talks with American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift starting in the fall of 2021 regarding a $100 million sponsorship deal but negotiations were broken off the following spring without a deal being reached.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+Official website of FTX.US
+FTXFoundation.com website Archived September 9, 2022, at the Wayback Machine"
+OKEx,
+Paxos Trust Company,"Paxos Trust Company is a New York–based financial institution and technology company specializing in blockchain. The company's product offerings include a cryptocurrency brokerage service, asset tokenization services, and settlement services. ItBit, a bitcoin exchange run by Paxos, was the first bitcoin exchange to be licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services, granting the company the ability to be the custodian and exchange for customers in the United States.Paxos was founded in 2012 and is based in New York City, with offices in London and Singapore. As of April 2021, the company has received $540 million in funding.
+
+
+== History ==
+Charles Cascarilla and Rich Teo founded Paxos in 2012 as the itBit Bitcoin exchange. In 2015, the company changed its legal name from itBit to Paxos Trust Company. At the same time, the New York State Department of Financial Services granted Paxos a limited-purpose trust charter,  making it the first company in the U.S. approved and regulated to offer crypto products and services.The company received $65 million in a funding round in May 2018. In September 2018, Paxos launched the Paxos Standard stablecoin as one of the industry’s first regulated stablecoins. Paxos introduced PAX Gold, the first regulated gold-backed digital token, in September 2019.In October 2019, Paxos received a no-action letter from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to test a new settlement service for U.S.-listed equities on a private blockchain. The service went live in February 2020. In July 2020, Paxos launched its crypto brokerage with Revolut as the first client.In October 2020, PayPal announced that it would offer cryptocurrency buy, hold and sell services to its users through a partnership with Paxos.In September 2022, Canada-based multi-asset retail financial trading services provider OANDA Global Corporation (OANDA) collaborated with Paxos to develop a crypto trading ecosystem. On 20 October 2022, OANDA launched crypto trading function to its forex trading platform in partnership with Paxos. The partnership will allow the U.S.-based clients of OANDA to trade cryptocurrencies on Paxos’ itBit exchange from the OANDA mobile app.
+
+
+== Products ==
+
+
+=== Crypto brokerage ===
+Paxos provides a crypto brokerage so clients can give their customers access to the cryptocurrency market. The company manages the regulatory and technology components of cryptocurrency trading on behalf of its clients.
+
+
+=== Pax Dollar ===
+Paxos Standard (PAX) that was renamed Pax Dollar (USDP), launched in September 2018, is one of the industry's first regulated stablecoins, tied to the U.S. dollar such that 1 PAX = 1 USD.
+
+
+=== PAX Gold ===
+PAX Gold (PAXG) is a digital asset backed by physical gold. Paxos Trust Company is the custodian for PAX Gold tokens and their associated physical gold bars.
+
+
+=== itBit ===
+ItBit is a digital asset exchange approved by the New York State Department of Finance to trade five digital assets: bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin (LTC), and PAX Gold (PAXG).
+
+
+=== Post-trade services ===
+Paxos provides post-trade automation services for precious metals and other trades. Services include automation of trade confirmations and settlement among multiple parties.
+
+
+=== Securities settlement service ===
+In October 2019, the SEC gave Paxos permission to establish a settlement service for stock trading. Credit Suisse and Société Générale were the first banks to sign on to use the service. Paxos announced it had settled a securities trade on a blockchain for the first time in February 2020.
+
+
+== References =="
+ShapeShift,"ShapeShift is a cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Switzerland. As of 2018, the company was run out of Denver, Colorado.
+
+
+== History ==
+The company was founded July 1, 2014 in Switzerland by Erik Voorhees. He cites the collapse of the Mt. Gox exchange as an impetus for creation of Shapeshift, as it demonstrated the need to create a method of exchange where customer funds were not held in custody by a third-party. In March 2015, the company received a US$525,000 seed-stage investment by Roger Ver and Barry Silbert.
+Additional funding totaling US$1.6 million were raised by September 2015, from investors in a second funding round including Digital Currency Group, Bitfinex, Bitcoin Capital and Mardal Investments.ShapeShift released initially on the iOS platform in June 2015, allowing users to swap 25 digital currencies and value tokens. As of September 2015, there were over 40 different digital currencies available for trade, providing 940 trading pairs, greater than any single exchange on the market.
+On 11 June 2015, ShapeShift ""cut off service to New York in response to the state’s new regulatory policy for digital currency businesses, ... BitLicense,"" which was released in June with the final regulations approved in August.
+The company stated that if they had complied with the New York BitLicense regulations, then significant personal and private data would also have been in the hands of the hacker.
+Between March and April 2016, Shapeshift experienced a total of 3 attacks which resulted in 469 BTC, 1900 LTC and 5800 ETH stolen from their hot wallets. As a result, the Shapeshift team put Shapeshift.io offline through April 20 to rebuild Shapeshift's infrastructure with enhanced security protocols.
+In March 2017, ShapeShift raised $10.4 million in series A funding from both US and international venture capital firms. Berlin-based Earlybird Venture Capital was the lead investor, with additional funding from Lakestar, Access Venture Partners, Pantera Capital and Blockchain Capital.In August 2017 ShapeShift announced it would stop functioning in the state of Washington because of BitLicense-style regulations imposed by the passage of Senate Bill 5031.
+A 2018 investigation by the Wall Street Journal found that ShapeShift had processed $9 million in funds from criminal activities over a two-year period.The company first began requiring personal identification information from its customers on October 1, 2018.
+
+
+== References =="
+Upbit,"Upbit is a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2017. It is operated by Dunamu, which is one of the highest-valued startups in South Korea.
+
+
+== History ==
+Upbit launched in South Korea on October 24, 2017, with the help of their partnership with American cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex.Sirgoo Lee was named CEO of Dunamu, Upbit's parent company, on December 21, 2017, with Dunamu founder and CEO Chi-hyung Song assuming the role of chairman. Lee previously served as Co-CEO of Kakao Corp. and JOINS, Inc.Approximately two months after its launch, Upbit became the top global cryptocurrency exchange in terms of 24-hour trading volume.On May 10, 2018, its main office was raided as part of a fraud probe.The exchange began expanding into Southeast Asia in late 2018, first by launching in Singapore on October 30, and then beginning services in Indonesia starting January 2019, and Thailand starting January 2021.On December 21, 2018, three Upbit officials were indicted for allegedly making fake orders. The exchange has denied the allegations.In December 2018, Upbit became the first cryptocurrency exchange in the world to receive certifications from the Korea Internet and Security Agency for Information Security Management System (ISMS) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for information security (ISO 27001), cloud security (ISO 27017) and cloud privacy (ISO 27018).On November 27, 2019, Upbit lost about US$48.5 million worth of Ethereum from a hack.In September 2021, South Korea started to regulate virtual asset service providers.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Xapo,"Xapo Bank is a private bank headquartered in Gibraltar, which operates globally and is licensed as a  virtual asset currency provider by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. The company originally established to offer a bitcoin wallet service that combined cold storage vaults with a bitcoin-based debit card. As of 2023, the company offers stock market trading to its clients in Europe.
+
+
+== History ==
+Xapo Bank's founding CEO and entrepreneur Wences Casares became interested in bitcoins because of the frequent financial fluctuations in his native Argentina. He has said that his family's finances were “devastated as the economy (in Argentina) rocketed from inflation to deflation to devaluation.” Casares believes that digital currencies such as bitcoin “could solve the disjointed nature of our world economy.”In 2011, Casares bought his first bitcoins but couldn't find a way to store them, so he built a ‘vault’ for his own use. Friends, and later financial institutions, soon asked Casares if they could store their bitcoins in his vault. This became the foundation for Xapo, which was founded in late 2013 by Casares and COO Federico Murrone. Xapo opened its products to the public in March 2014.Casares said Xapo Bank was founded with the aim of making the bitcoin currency more secure and accessible. The Xapo Wallet operates through a mobile app and online and includes the ability to transfer funds to and from the Xapo Vault. In April 2014, Xapo introduced a debit card that will link to the user's Xapo Wallet and will function like a standard debit card, except that it is backed by bitcoins instead of traditional currency.Prior to Xapo Bank, Casares founded and later sold online brokerage firm Patagon to Banco Santander for $750 million. He also launched the first Internet provider in his home country of Argentina in 1994.In May 2015 Xapo Bank moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Zug, located in the Zurich metropolitan area of Switzerland. That year LifeLock, which acquired Lemon, a company led by eventual Xapo founder Casares, alleged in a suit that Casares developed the source code for Xapo using Lemon's resources. In July 2017, Xapo was granted a European e-money license in Gibraltar allowing it to provide electronic fiat money custodial and transfer services.
+In July 2018 Xapo Bank was awarded a BitLicense by the New York State Department of Financial Services and with it formal approval to operate in the state of New York as a regulated Bitcoin business. The company relinquished its license in January 2022.In 2019, Coinbase acquired Xapo Bank's institutional custody business.
+
+
+=== Security ===
+The Xapo Bank Vault consists of physical servers located around the globe that the company says is protected by biometric scanner access, 24-7 video surveillance, and armed guards. Casares claims that Xapo “is the first bitcoin vault fully protected and insured against hacking and bankruptcy.”
+
+
+== Investors ==
+Xapo announced $20 million Series A funding in March 2014. The funding round was led by Benchmark, with participation from Fortress Investment Group, Pantera Capital, and Ribbit Capital. Benchmark partner Matt Cohler said the VC firm backed Xapo in part because Xapo “is led by one of the most important people in the bitcoin ecosystem, it’s insured and has investors from both Silicon Valley and Wall Street.” The company has raised a total of $40 million as of August 2014.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitcoin
+
+
+== References =="
+2021 Squid Game cryptocurrency scam,"The 2021 Squid Game cryptocurrency scam was a significant fraudulent event that took place in the world of cryptocurrency. Inspired by the popular South Korean Netflix series ""Squid Game,"" this cryptocurrency, known as Squid Coin, promised investors an opportunity to play and earn. However, it quickly unraveled, leaving investors defrauded of millions of dollars.
+
+
+== Background ==
+In November 2021, Squid Coin gained sudden popularity, with its valuation soaring to an astonishing $2,861 per coin. Marketed as a ""play-to-earn cryptocurrency,"" it garnered immense attention and witnessed a meteoric rise in its price, surging by thousands of percentage points.The creators of Squid Coin presented it as a revolutionary opportunity for investors to participate in an upcoming online game inspired by the Netflix series ""Squid Game,"" in which participants compete in deadly children's games for money.The mechanics of the scam involved enticing investors with the promise of earning rewards by purchasing Squid Coin tokens. Investors were led to believe that these tokens could be used to participate in the forthcoming Squid Game online platform, where they could earn more tokens through gameplay. These earned tokens were purportedly exchangeable for other cryptocurrencies or national currencies, further fueling the excitement around Squid Coin.However, as the value of Squid Coin skyrocketed, concerns began to surface. Investors who had bought into the cryptocurrency soon discovered that they were unable to sell their tokens. This inability to resell raised significant doubts about the legitimacy of the project and started to sound alarm bells among cryptocurrency experts and enthusiasts.The situation escalated when Squid Coin's value suddenly plummeted to $0, leaving investors with worthless tokens. This abrupt crash, commonly referred to as a ""rug pull"" in the cryptocurrency world, is an event where the creators of a cryptocurrency rapidly sell their holdings, causing the coin's value to collapse. It became apparent that the developers of Squid Coin had quickly cashed out their holdings, draining liquidity from the exchange.As the scam unraveled, investors were left with substantial losses, while the developers of Squid Coin disappeared from the public eye, taking an estimated $3.38 million with them. The project's website, which had previously been active, disappeared along with its social media accounts, further erasing any trace of its existence.
+
+
+== Warnings and Disappearance ==
+The absence of an option to sell the coin was a significant loophole that signaled trouble. Furthermore, the website contained numerous errors, and social media accounts associated with the project disappeared.
+
+
+== References =="
+Atom Asset Exchange,"Atom Asset Exchange (AAX) is a defunct cryptocurrency exchange that offered spot, perpetual contracts and savings products across a wide variety of digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and others.
+
+
+== History ==
+AAX was formed in 2018, in Seychelles, operating primarily in Hong Kong. CEO Thor Chan has resigned since May, 2021.Two days after crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy, AAX suspended all withdrawals on 13 November 2022, and deleted its social media accounts. On December 16, its website and App ceased to function. Using the Telegram app, thousands of AAX investors formed multiple online messaging groups, joining their efforts to locate the senior executives of the company. On December 23, 2022, two men were detained by police in Hong Kong.
+
+
+== Products ==
+AAX offered crypto futures contracts, spot pairs, P2P fiat trading, savings products, and API connectivity. AAX supports bitcoin trading along with support for over 20 fiat currencies.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Exit scam,"An exit scam is a confidence trick where an established business stops shipping orders while receiving payment for new orders. If the entity had a good reputation, it could take some time before it is widely recognized that orders are not shipping, and the entity can then make off with the money paid for unshipped orders. Customers who trusted the business do not realize that orders are not being fulfilled until the business has already disappeared.
+Conversely, purchasers can also perpetrate exit scams if, while secretly planning to close their business and/or abscond, they procure goods and services for which they do not intend to pay. However, these sorts of incidents are less common. Moreover, it is not uncommon for a procurer to go out of business due to insolvency they did not wish to occur. Such insolvencies are not typically considered to be criminal acts, let alone exit scams unless there is clear evidence of bad faith – e.g., if it can be proven the business avoided paying vendors even though it was solvent before closing down and/or it became insolvent as a result of embezzlement or other such behavior.
+Individual vendors often reach a point of reputation maturity whereby they have sold sufficient product to have accumulated both significant reputation and escrowed funds, that many may choose to exit with those funds rather than compete at the higher-volume higher-priced matured product level. For individual vendors, exit scams are often a viable scheme when dealing with any physical product (for which buyers must reasonably expect to wait before receiving orders, thus often granting the perpetrator a considerable grace period before the scam can no longer be plausibly denied) compared to digital, virtual and other intangible goods which buyers will generally expect to be delivered within a very short time after remitting payment.
+Exit scams could be a tempting alternative to a non-fraudulent shutdown of illegal operations if the operation was inevitably going to shut down anyway for other reasons. If an illegal entity thrives by selling and/or facilitating the sale of illicit drugs, for example, it is at constant risk of being shut down by the authorities, whereas if the operators perform an exit scam, there are much better prospects for the perpetrators to both keep their profits and avoid eventual prosecution.
+In illegal darknet markets, exit scams are frequently perpetrated. While the most common such schemes are perpetrated by individual vendors who receive payment for the product they have no intention of shipping, such scams have also been perpetrated both by individual procurers who obtain the product which they have no intention of paying for and by operators and/or administrators of these markets who, by shutting down an entire market, can abscond with whatever currency the market was holding on behalf of buyers and/or sellers in escrow at the time of the shutdown. Regardless of who is perpetrating the scam, if the cheated parties are themselves knowingly participating in illegal activities, it is not usually a viable option to notify law enforcement.The best-known examples are online sellers where the buyer does not know the real identity or physical location of the scammer and therefore has little recourse. Payments to darknet markets are usually made in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or monero, where payments are irreversible and cannot be recovered through a chargeback. This is sometimes known in cryptocurrency as a rug pull.
+
+
+== Examples ==
+In 2016, the darknet market (online black market) Evolution was previously cited as the biggest exit scam yet, where the administrators apparently made off with $12 million in bitcoin, which was held in escrow on the marketplace.Most exit scams and Ponzi schemes involving cryptocurrencies take place in the context of initial coin offerings. For example, a report by Satis Group estimates that 80% of all ICOs that took place in 2017 were scams of this type.This would ultimately be surpassed by the Wall Street Market exit scam of 2019, which had $14.2 million worth of cryptocurrencies stolen just before the site was seized by the authorities. Prosecution is difficult due to the anonymity offered by the darknet. The damage caused by exit scams is estimated to exceed $4.3 billion in 2019.
+
+
+== References =="
+Mirror Trading International,"Mirror Trading International (MTI) declared a pyramid scheme by the South African High Court was a cryptocurrency trading platform promising automated trading services with significant returns.MTI was masterminded by Johann Steynberg, who claimed to use an artificial intelligence bot for its trading activities. MTI faced intense scrutiny and legal challenges, particularly from South African authorities, who alleged that it was operating as a fraudulent scheme. 
+MTI's unraveling led to its eventual collapse, the arrest of key figures, and significant financial losses for many investors.The scheme involved 100,000 people from 140 countries.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of Ponzi schemes
+
+
+== References =="
+Save the Kids token,"Save the Kids token was a cryptocurrency token and pump and dump scheme launched in 2021, which was marketed as a charity token meant to give a percentage of the transaction fee to a Binance-operated charity. The token was widely publicized by YouTube personalities, including RiceGum and members of the FaZe Clan who were later removed, in the time leading up to its launch.
+
+
+== Background ==
+Save the Kids token was developed by an individual named Lucas, who disclosed that the project was first formed by two individuals named ""Manny"" and ""H."", who for legal reasons could not disclose the full name of the founders. Lucas claimed when he was originally recruited to develop, he initially believed the charitable intentions of the founders, though later learned that the founders were going around bringing on board several social media influencers to market the coin. Lucas additionally added that he was initially concerned Manny and H. were part of a larger group who were working to fund further pump and dump schemes.The pump and dump aspect was caused from the token's anti-whaling mechanism, which is intended to prevent larger stakeholders from selling a large part of their funds. The site initially described that any single holder who owned over 0.5% of all tokens would be designated as a ""whale"", who could only sell 20% of your total supply every 24 hours in 0.1% transaction limits until they no longer held 0.5% of all supply. However, it was later discovered that the code had been tweaked at the last minute, enabling ""whales"" to sell all of their holdings with only a minute time limit.
+
+
+=== Promotion ===
+Save the Kids was widely promoted by commentator RiceGum, Xcademy founder Joel Morris, and model Sommer Ray, as well as FaZe Clan members Kay (Frazier Khattri), Jarvis (Jarvis Khattri), Nikan (Nikan Nadim), and Teeqo. Many of the influencers appeared in videos promoting the token and made numerous tweets encouraging their fanbase, mostly consisting of teenagers, to purchase the token.
+
+
+== Launch ==
+Save the Kids Token was launched on June 5, 2021, and traded on the PancakeSwap exchange under the symbol $KIDS, starting around US$0.02. Immediately, though, the price of tokens collapsed to less than half a cent and further declined to price the token around $0.00138 at the start of July 2021. According to YouTuber Coffeezilla, the crash of Save the Kids was caused by Jarvis selling two-thirds of his coins, Nikan selling one-third of his holdings, and Kay selling nearly his entire collection of tokens, predicted to be valued around US$80,000 by Coffeezilla.
+
+
+== Aftermath ==
+After the scandal arose, Save the Kids Token's website was taken offline, and various influencers have removed their tweets on the incident. Binance themselves addressed the controversy saying that they do not accept donations from altcoin campaigns, disproving Save the Kids Token's claim that they had donated over US$80,000 to the charity. The project is believed to have been abandoned, and the website has since been taken offline.
+
+
+=== Coffeezilla investigation ===
+YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, known online as Coffeezilla, conducted an investigation into the entirety of the Save the Kids token scandal. Ultimately, Findeisen found that Manny was only a middleman behind the scandal and that most influencers who promoted the currency were connected with it through their managers. The primary architects of the scheme were Frazier Kay, who had used several cryptocurrency wallets to potentially hide his tracks, Jordan Galen, a manager and promotion finder for Kay and various other members of the FaZe Clan, and YouTube personality Sam Pepper. Findeisen eventually uncovered that Lucas had changed the anti-whale mechanism on orders from Pepper, and that Kay was one of the main architects of the Save the Kids token. It was also suggested in Findeisen's videos that Kay and Pepper broke ties during the launch of Save the Kids, a possible motive for Pepper to order that Lucas change the anti-whale mechanism, a claim Kay continues to make. However, Kay additionally stated to Findeisen that he knew nothing about cryptocurrency, which Findeisen debunked by stating Frazier had multiple cryptocurrency wallets with one having hundreds of different cryptocurrencies.
+
+
+=== FaZe Clan ===
+FaZe Clan management tweeted that they were completely unaware of the actions of its members and did not support them, posting that Kay had been expelled from the group entirely while Jarvis, Nikan, and Teeqo would be suspended until further notice; the latter of whom would later be reinstated after it was discovered that he had not sold any of his holdings. Kay responded by saying that though he had admitted he should have vetted his promotion through FaZe clan initially, he had absolutely no involvement in the scandal and promoted the coin with a belief that it would help the world for the better, though Findeisen, after conducting his investigation, discovered Kay had a history of promoting altcoins. After his expulsion from FaZe Clan, Kay claimed he had been scared himself and was planning to pursue legal action against Findeisen. Kay additionally promised that he would pay back as many people as possible who lost their money to the token, claiming that he had lost $37,000 himself (which was adjusted in March 2022 to total around US$500,000), and further vowing to embargo Pepper on a personal and professional level.
+
+
+== Legacy ==
+The scandal has been commonly cited as a textbook example of the cryptocurrency influencer scam and serves as a warning for other influencers to refrain from participating in or endorsing digital assets. Frazier Khattri has encouraged influencers after Save the Kids to refrain from endorsing cryptocurrency, saying that the crypto market has ""not fully developed"". Save The Kids was additionally credited as one of the focus examples for the growing trend of cryptocurrency scams, to which more than $80 million has been lost so far mostly from younger audiences buying into the currencies simply from the hype.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website, archived from the original"
+Financial cryptography,"Financial cryptography is the use of cryptography in applications in which financial loss could result from subversion of the message system. Financial cryptography is distinguished from traditional cryptography in that for most of recorded history, cryptography has been used almost entirely for military and diplomatic purposes.
+Financial cryptography includes the mechanisms and algorithms necessary for the protection of financial transfers, in addition to the creation of new forms of money. Proof of work and various auction protocols fall under the umbrella of Financial cryptography. Hashcash is being used to limit spam.
+Financial cryptography has been seen to have a very broad scope of application. Ian Grigg sees financial cryptography in seven layers, being the combination of seven distinct disciplines: cryptography, software engineering, rights, accounting, governance, value, and financial applications. Business failures can often be traced to the absence of one or more of these disciplines, or to poor application of them.  This views Financial cryptography as an appropriately cross-discipline subject. Indeed, inevitably so, given that finance and cryptography are each built upon multiple disciplines.
+
+
+== History ==
+Cryptographers think the field originated from the work of Dr David Chaum who invented the blind signature. The blind signature is a special form of a cryptographic signature which allowed virtual coins to be signed without the signer seeing the actual coin. It permitted a form of digital token money that prevented traceability. This form is sometimes known as digital currency. Similar concepts are now being applied to modern blockchain technologies.A system that was widely used during the 1970s-1990s and previously developed cryptographic mechanism is the Data Encryption Standard, which was used primarily for the protection of electronic funds transfers. However, it was the work of David Chaum that excited the cryptography community about the potential of encrypted messages as actual financial instruments.
+As part of a business model, Financial cryptography followed the guide of cryptography and only the simplest ideas were adopted. Account money systems protected by SSL such as PayPal and e-gold were relatively successful. In 2001, PayPal processed $3.1 billion in payments, averaging 189,000 transactions daily totaling $9.6 million.But more innovative mechanisms, including blinded token money, struggled to gain traction. David Chaum's DigiCash, opened in 1989, filed for bankruptcy protection in November 1998. Two competitive rivals also failed to remain viable. First Virtual Holdings abandoned its business in August 1998. CyberCash ceased its ""CyberCoin"" in early 1999.
+
+
+== Associations ==
+Financial cryptography is to some extent organized around the annual meeting of the International Financial Cryptography Association, which is held each year in a different location.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Automated teller machines (ATM)
+Bitcoin
+Blockchain
+Cryptoeconomics
+Digital currency
+Monero (cryptocurrency)
+Point-of-sale (POS)
+Hardware security modules (HSM)
+Payment system
+Smart contracts
+Economics of security
+Bilateral key exchange
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+International Financial Cryptography Association"
+Social token,"A social token is a type of cryptocurrency used to monetize a brand. They can be personal (or creator tokens) or community tokens. The value of a social token revolves around the brand issuing it, and are used by holders as a way to feel belonging to a certain group.Social token are usually used by creators, as a way to monetize their personal brand. They provide creators with a means to get paid by selling the tokens, with buyers receiving special perks such as meet and greets with the creators. The rewards associated with each token is determined by the creator.
+
+
+== References =="
+Solana (blockchain platform),"Solana is a blockchain platform which uses a proof-of-stake mechanism to provide smart contract functionality. Its native cryptocurrency is SOL.
+Solana was launched in 2020 by Solana Labs, which was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal in 2018. The blockchain has experienced several major outages, was subjected to a hack, and a class action lawsuit was filed against the platform.
+Solana's total market cap was US$55 billion in January 2022. However, by the end of 2022, this had fallen to around $3 billion following the bankruptcy of FTX. Following the general rise of the cryptocurrency market in 2023, its market cap rose to $7 billion. 
+
+
+== Characteristics ==
+According to the company's white paper, Solana runs on a proof of stake model. The New York Times and Financial Times described the coin as an alternative to Ethereum.
+
+
+== History ==
+Solana was first opened to the public in March 2020, with its first block being created on 16 March 2020. The Solana blockchain was designed to support smart contracts and decentralized apps in particular. Large numbers of simultaneous transactions have contributed to several outages of the Solana blockchain.In June 2021, Solana Labs sold $314 million worth of its native cryptocurrency, SOL, to a group of funds led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital.On 1 July 2022, a class action lawsuit was filed against Solana. The lawsuit accused Solana of selling unregistered securities tokens in the form of Solana from 24 March 2020, onward and that Solana deliberately misled investors concerning the total circulating supply of SOL tokens. According to the lawsuit, Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder of Solana Labs, lent a market maker more than 11.3 million tokens in April 2020 and failed to disclose this information to the public. The lawsuit claimed that Solana stated it would reduce the supply by this amount, but it only burned 3.3 million tokens.On 3 August, 2022, 9,231 Solana wallets were hacked and four Solana wallet addresses stole approximately $8 million from victims. The Solana Foundation stated that the hack was caused by digital wallet software from Slope Finance.In April 2023, Solana Mobile, a subsidiary of Solana Labs, began selling the Solana Saga, an Android smartphone with several Solana-based decentralized apps preinstalled.In June 2023, the SEC sued Coinbase, alleging that Solana and twelve other currencies offered by the platform failed the Howey Test and qualified as securities. The suit accuses Coinbase of illegally evading requirements for disclosure by offering these tokens. The SEC had previously issued a Wells notice to Coinbase in March.In September 2023, Visa announced that along with payment processors Worldpay, Inc. and Nuvei, it had added support for the Solana blockchain to send payments to merchants using the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), rather than fiat currency via bank wire.
+
+
+=== Market value ===
+The value of Solana tokens has fluctuated greatly since the system's inception. The market capitalization of the Solana blockchain surpassed $63 billion in September 2021, and reached $74 billion in early November 2021, having risen by nearly 12,000% that year to a price of $259.96. The blockchain's popularity at this time was due in part to interest in NFTs.In November 2022, the price of Solana dropped by 40 percent in one day following the bankruptcy of FTX, due to sell off from Alameda Research. Solana was Alameda's second-largest holding at the time and FTX held $982 million in Solana tokens. By the end of 2022, Solana had lost more than $50 billion in value since the beginning of the year.  Since the start of 2023 until 15 March, coinciding with a rise in the cryptocurrency market, Solana's value had risen by 100 percent to a market capitalization of around $7 billion. On 11 June 2023, Solana dropped nearly 30% in one day after the SEC announced that it would make the case in court that Solana is a financial security, causing big exchanges to liquidate their holdings, including Robinhood which delisted SOL and other tokens named by the SEC in its lawsuit.
+
+
+== Outages ==
+The Solana blockchain had experienced several notable outages in service.
+On 14 September, 2021, the Solana blockchain went offline after a surge of transactions caused the network to fork, and different validators had different views of the state of the network. The network was brought back online the next day on 15 September, 2021. The outage lasted a total of about 17 hours.The Solana blockchain again went offline on 1 May, with the outage lasting roughly seven hours due to it being taken offline by bots. The blockchain went offline again on 31 May, 2022, due to a bug in how the blockchain processes offline transactions. This outage lasted about four and a half hours.On 1 October, 2022, the Solana network went down for 6 hours due to a consensus bug in the validator client allowing a misconfigured node to publish multiple valid but different blocks.Solana's outages have frequently resulted in the value of the network's native SOL token falling.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of cryptocurrencies
+Decentralized finance
+
+
+== References =="
+SpankChain,"SpankChain is an adult entertainment website and cryptocurrency exchange mostly used for exchanges in the sex work industry. Users pay for services using SpankChain Ethereum-based coin ""SPANK"". The SpankChain's tokens are sometimes referred to as ""SpankCoin"".
+
+
+== History ==
+In April 2018, SpankChain offered a $25,000 reward to sex workers who revealed information about political clients who supported the passing of the FOSTA/SESTA acts, which regulated sex work in the United States. The company reportedly had 6,000 users as of October 2018.In 2018, a malicious attacker stole 165 Ether (valued at $40,000) from SpankChain by exploiting a vulnerability in the Ethereum blockchain. After the cryptocurrency bubble of 2018 burst, the company downsized to eight employees.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+https://spankchain.com"
+Stablecoin,"A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency where the value of the digital asset is supposed to be pegged to a reference asset, which is either fiat money, exchange-traded commodities (such as precious metals or industrial metals), or another cryptocurrency.In theory, 1:1 backing by a reference asset could make a stablecoin value track the value of the peg and not be subject to the radical changes in value common in the market for many digital assets. In practice, however, stablecoin issuers have yet to be proven to maintain adequate reserves to support a stable value and there have been a number of failures with investors losing the entirety of the (fiat currency) value of their holdings.
+
+
+== Background ==
+Stablecoins have several purported purposes. They can be used for payments and are more likely to retain value than highly volatile cryptocurrencies. In practice, many stablecoins have failed to retain their ""stable"" value.Stablecoins are typically non-interest bearing and therefore do not provide interest returns to the holder.
+
+
+== Reserve-backed stablecoins ==
+Reserve-backed stablecoins are digital assets that are stabilized by other assets. Furthermore, such coins, assuming they are managed in good faith and have a mechanism for redeeming the asset(s) backing them, are unlikely to drop below the value of the underlying physical asset, due to arbitrage. However, in practice, few, if any, stablecoins meet these assumptions.
+Backed stablecoins are subject to the same volatility and risk associated with the backing asset. If the backed stablecoin is backed in a decentralized manner, they are relatively safe from predation, but if there is a central vault, it may be robbed or suffer loss of confidence.
+
+
+=== Fiat-backed ===
+The value of stablecoins of this type is based on the value of the backing currency, which is held by a third party–regulated financial entity. Fiat-backed stablecoins can be traded on exchanges and are redeemable from the issuer. The stability of the stablecoin is equivalent to the cost of maintaining the backing reserve and the cost of legal compliance, licenses, auditors, and the business infrastructure required by the regulator.
+In this setting, the trust in the custodian of the backing asset is crucial for the stability of the stablecoin's price. If the issuer of the stablecoin does not actually possess the fiat necessary to make exchanges, the stablecoin can quickly lose value and become worthless.
+The most popular stablecoin, Tether, initially claimed to be fully backed by fiat currency; this was proven to be untrue, and Tether was fined $41 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for deceiving consumers. Instead, Tether only had enough fiat reserve to guarantee 27.6% of their stablecoin. Nevertheless, Tether still remains widely used.
+Cryptocurrencies backed by fiat currency are the most common and were the first type of stablecoins on the market. Their characteristics are:
+
+Their value is pegged to one or more currencies (most commonly the US dollar, the euro, and the Swiss franc) in a fixed ratio;
+The value connection is realized off-chain through banks or other types of regulated financial institutions which serve as depositaries of the currency used to back the stablecoin;
+The amount of the currency used to back the stablecoin should reflect the circulating supply of the stablecoin.Examples: TrueUSD (TUSD), USD Tether (USDT), USD Coin, Monerium EURe.In January 2023, National Australia Bank (not Australia's central bank) announced that it would create by mid-2023 an Australian Dollar fiat-backed stablecoin called the AUDN, for streamlining cross-border banking transactions and trading carbon credits.
+
+
+=== Commodity-backed ===
+The main characteristics of commodity-backed stablecoins are:
+
+Their value is fixed to one or more commodities and redeemable for such (more or less) on demand;
+There is an implied or explicit promise to redeem by unregulated individuals, agorist firms, or even regulated financial institutions;
+The amount of commodity used to back the stablecoin should reflect the circulating supply of the stablecoin.Holders of commodity-backed stablecoins can redeem their stablecoins at the conversion rate to take possession of the backing assets under whatever rules as to timing and amount are in place at the time of redemption. Maintaining the stability of the stablecoin is the cost of storing and protecting the commodity backing.
+
+
+=== Cryptocurrency-backed ===
+Cryptocurrency-backed stablecoins are issued with cryptocurrencies as collateral, conceptually similar to fiat-backed stablecoins. However, the significant difference between the two designs is that while fiat collateralization typically happens off the blockchain, the cryptocurrency or crypto asset used to back this type of stablecoins is done on the blockchain, using smart contracts in a more decentralized fashion. In many cases, these allow users to take out a loan against a smart contract via locking up collateral, making it more worthwhile to pay off their debt should the stablecoin ever decrease in value. In addition, to prevent sudden crashes, a user who takes out a loan may be liquidated by the smart contract should their collateral decrease too close to the value of their withdrawal.
+Significant features of crypto backed stablecoins are:
+
+The value of the stablecoin is collateralized by another cryptocurrency or a cryptocurrency portfolio;
+The peg is executed on-chain via smart contracts;
+The supply of the stablecoins is regulated on-chain, using smart contracts;
+price stability is achieved by introducing supplementary instruments and incentives, not just the collateral.The technical implementation of this type of stablecoins is more complex and varied than that of the fiat-collateralized kind, which introduces a greater risk of exploits due to bugs in the smart contract code. With the tethering done on-chain, it is not subject to third-party regulation creating a decentralized solution. The potentially problematic aspect of this type of stablecoins is the change in the value of the collateral and the reliance on supplementary instruments. The complexity and non-direct backing of the stablecoin may deter usage, as it may take time to comprehend how the price is ensured. Due to the highly volatile and convergent cryptocurrency market, substantial collateral must also be maintained to ensure stability.
+Live stablecoins projects of this type are Havven (the pair: nUSD –  stablecoin and HAV –  the collateral-backed nUSD), DAI (pair: CDP –  Collateralized Debt Position and MKR –  governance token used to control the supply) and others. There is also Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), see BitGo.
+
+
+== Seigniorage-style/algorithmic stablecoins (not backed) ==
+Seigniorage-style coins, also known as algorithmic stablecoins, utilize algorithms to control the stablecoin's money supply, similar to a central bank's approach to printing and destroying currency. Seigniorage-based stablecoins are a less popular form of stablecoin.Algorithmic stablecoins are a type of stablecoin intended to hold a stable value over the long term because of particular computer algorithms and game theory rather than a peg to a reserve asset. In practice, some algorithmic stablecoins have yet to maintain price stability. For example, the ""UST"" asset on the Terra blockchain was theoretically supported by a reserve asset called ""Luna"", and plummeted in value in May 2022. Wired magazine said, ""The Ponzinomics were just too obvious: When you pay money for nothing, and stash your nothing in a protocol with the expectation that it will give you a 20 percent yield—all you end up with is 20 percent of nothing.""Significant features of seigniorage-style stablecoins are:
+Adjustments are made on-chain,
+No collateral is needed to mint coins,
+Value is controlled by supply and demand through algorithms, stabilizing the price.Basis was one example of a seigniorage-style coin.TerraUSD (UST), created by Do Kwon, was meant to maintain a 1:1 peg with the United States dollar. Instead of being backed by dollars, UST was designed to keep its peg through a complex system connected with another Terra network token, Terra (LUNA). In May 2022 UST broke its peg with its price plunging to 10 cents, while LUNA fell to ""virtually zero"", down from an all-time high of $119.51. The collapse wiped out almost $45 billion of market capitalization over the course of a week.On 13 June 2022, Tron's algorithmic stablecoin, USDD, lost its peg to the US Dollar.
+
+
+== Possible advantages ==
+The Bank of International Settlements lists the possible merits of the subject as enhancement of anti-money laundering efforts, operational resilience, customer data protection, financial inclusion, tax compliance, and cybersecurity.
+
+
+== Risks and criticisms ==
+
+
+=== Lack of regulation ===
+Nellie Liang, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance reported to the Senate banking committee that the rapid growth of the stablecoin market capitalization and its potential for financial services innovation require urgent congressional regulation.
+
+
+=== Lack of transparency ===
+Tether is currently the world's largest market capitalization stablecoin. It has been accused of failing to produce audits for reserves used to collateralize the quantity of minted USDT stablecoin. Tether has since issued assurance reports on USDT backing, although some speculation persists.
+
+
+=== De-pegging ===
+Many projects can advance a product and call it a stablecoin. Thus, despite the name, many stablecoins have historically needed more stability because digital assets can be built to many different standards. Stablecoins such as TerraUSD, USDD, DEI and others crashed to zero in 2022 alone.
+
+
+=== Other concerns ===
+Griffin and Shams' research attributed the creation of unbacked USDT to the rise in Bitcoin's price in 2017. Following that, research indicated little to no evidence that Tether USD minting events influenced Bitcoin values unless they were publicized to the public by Whale Alert.
+
+
+== Failed and abandoned stablecoin projects ==
+A number of stablecoins have crashed or lost their peg. For example:
+
+The stablecoin project Basis, which had received over $100 million in venture capital funding, shut down in December 2018, citing concerns about US regulation.
+On 11 May 2022, Terra's stablecoin UST fell from $1 to 26 cents. The subsequent failure of Terraform Labs resulted in the loss of nearly $40B invested in the Terra and Luna coins. In September 2022, South Korean prosecutors requested the issuance of an Interpol Red Notice against the company's founder, Do Kwon.Diem (formerly Libra) was abandoned by Facebook/Meta and later purchased by Silvergate Capital.
+
+
+== References =="
+Stacks blockchain,"Stacks, formerly Blockstack, is a blockchain platform for smart contracts, decentralized finance (""DeFi""), NFTs, and decentralized apps (""DApps""). Stacks blockchain is a layer for bitcoin similar to the Lightning Network.
+
+
+== Design ==
+Concerns around internet privacy, security, and data breaches brought attention to the Stacks project. Software developers have used the Stacks software to build decentralized alternatives to popular services. Stacks (STX) token is the native cryptocurrency of the Stacks blockchain, which is used as gas fee for executing smart contracts and processing transactions.
+
+
+== History ==
+Stacks project was originally started by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea as Blockstack. STX became the first SEC qualified token offering in 2019. Blockstack PBC, a company working on the Stacks technology, raised around $75 million through a mix of venture capital and token sales. The main Stacks blockchain launched in Jan 2021.
+
+
+== Applications ==
+
+
+=== Blockchain Naming System (BNS) ===
+The Blockchain Naming System is an application used to register human-readable, globally unique names with accounts on the Stacks blockchain. A BNS name consists of a namespace, the name and optionally a subdomain. Examples are muneeb.id, muneeb.btc and muneeb.id.blockstack.
+
+
+=== CityCoins ===
+In 2021, the CityCoins project launched fungible tokens for the cities of Miami and New York City. In September 2021, Miami's city commissioners voted to accept the protocol treasury, valued at $21 million at the time. MiamiCoin's value crashed, and so Stacks donated $5.25M to the City of Miami.As of March 2023, Bloomberg was reporting that CityCoin was facing a ""quiet demise"" as liquidity issues and a lack of interest caused both the New York City and Miami coins to be delisted from the OkCoin cryptocurrency exchange.
+
+
+== References =="
+Security token offering,"A security token offering (STO) / tokenized IPO is a type of public offering in which tokenized digital securities, known as security tokens, are sold in security token exchanges. Tokens can be used to trade real financial assets such as equities and fixed income, and use a blockchain virtual ledger system to store and validate token transactions.Due to tokens being classified as securities, STOs are more susceptible to regulation and thus represent a more secure investment alternative than ICOs, which have been subject to numerous fraudulent schemes.
+Furthermore, since ICOs are not held in traditional exchanges, they can be a less expensive funding source for small and medium-sized companies when compared to an IPO. An STO on a regulated stock exchange (referred to as a tokenized IPO) has the potential to deliver significant efficiencies and cost savings, however.
+By the end of 2019, STOs had been used in multiple scenarios including the trading of Nasdaq-listed company stocks, the pre-IPO of World Chess, FIDE's official broadcasting platform, and the creation of Singapore Exchange's own STO market, backed by Japan's Tokai Tokyo Financial Holdings.
+
+
+== Controversy regarding ICOs ==
+Though sharing some core concepts with ICOs and IPOs, STOs are in fact different from both, standing as an intermediary model. Similarly to ICOs, STOs are offerings that are made by selling digital tokens to the general public in cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, Kraken, Binaryx and others. The main difference stands in the fact that ICO tokens are the offered cryptocurrency's actual coins, entirely digital, and classified as utilities. New ICO currencies can be generated ad infinitum, as might in some cases their tokens. Additionally, their value is almost entirely speculative and arises from the perceived utility value buyers expect them to provide.
+Security tokens, on the other hand, are actual securities, like bonds or stocks, tied to a real company.In terms of legislation, some jurisdictions do treat STOs, ICOs, and other cryptocurrency-related operations under the same legislative umbrella. In general, though, STOs are placed under securities legislation (together with traditional IPOs), and ICOs under utilities, with the differentiation being made mostly on a case-by-case basis.The main debate surrounding security tokens is, thus, the legal differentiation of what can be qualified as a utility instead of a security. Generally, legislation understands that if a passive financial return is expected from the investment, then it is classified as a security. This way, even if the offering company understands their tokens are merely a utility asset with no expected return investment, if it can be proven otherwise then the ICO becomes an unregulated STO, passive of legal punishment. Moreover, this assumption of utility has been abused by some STO offering companies to sell securities without regulatory compliance (maliciously labeled as ICOs).This legal ambiguity has led to some ICO offerers being prosecuted by the SEC as a security offering part, though their tokens were announced as utilities. Such companies include messaging apps Kik and Telegram, the former being sued by the SEC for over $100 million and the latter delaying their offering plans after similar prosecution.
+
+
+== Regulation ==
+One of the main selling points of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has been the decentralization aspect, by which no government can influence or control the currency. By extension, a cryptocurrency is not directly affected by a specific country's jurisdiction, sociopolitical environment, or economic events. Such a lack of regulation has led to the rising of large-scale crypto-related criminal activity, ranging from terrorist funding to tax evasion, most of which go untracked and unpunished. Similarly, ICO scams have been an increasingly troublesome matter, causing billions of dollars in losses and damaging the cryptocurrency market's value as a whole.So far, STOs have been regulated and legalized in many countries where ICOs have not, due to fitting in many already pre-existing regulations regarding securities.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Initial coin offering
+Initial public offering
+Alternative currencies
+Private currency
+Digital asset
+
+
+== References =="
+The Open Network,"The Open Network (previously Telegram Open Network, both abb. as TON) is a decentralized computer network consisting of a layer-1 blockchain with various components. TON was originally developed by Dr. Nikolai Durov and the messaging platform, Telegram and now embraced by a global community of independent contributors. 
+
+
+== History ==
+In 2017-2018, the Telegram Messenger team is starting to explore blockchain solutions for themselves. Finding no current Layer 1 blockchain able to support Telegram's 9-figure userbase, they decide to design their own layer-1 chain, then called Telegram Open Network.To obtain the resources required to make TON a reality, Telegram is launched a Gram token sale in Q1 2018. Durov considered venture capital financing but decided against it.
+According to documents related to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) v. Telegram suit (2020), by 2017, the self-funded startup needed money to pay for servers and services.
+Funds raised during the Telegram ICO were planned to be used for the development of Telegram and TON and for the ongoing expenses required to support the growth of the ecosystem. More than 80 percent of collected funds planned to be spent on equipment, bandwidth, colocation, and user verification costs. The rest planned to be allocated for wages, offices, and legal and consulting services.
+
+
+=== Genesis (2018-2020) ===
+Telegram introduces design and first implementation of TON Blockchain. The Telegram team releases a series of documents detailing the design of TON Blockchain. Telegram initially launched the TON Testnet to the public through a testing environment for the TON blockchain. During the early testnet phase, Telegram released testnet tokens, which had no value and were used for testing purposes.To fund the development of the messenger and the blockchain project, Telegram attracted investments through a private Gram offering, but in light of regulatory complications, the Telegram team withdrew from the TON project (May 2020)On July 2020 Telegram placed the remaining testnet tokens  into special Giver smart contracts that allowed anyone to participate in future mining and discontinued support for the TON testnet.A small team of open-source developers and Telegram contest winners Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelyanenko, NewTON, took a deep dive into TON's codebase and resumed active blockchain development, adhering to the principles outlined in the original TON whitepaper.
+
+
+=== Development and launch (2020-2022) ===
+After TON's private development phase, all of its code was released to the open-source in September 7, 2019. The launch of the test network was initially scheduled for Q2 2018 with the main network launch in Q4, but the milestones were postponed several times. The testnet was launched in January 2019 with a half a year deviation from the plan. In May the company released the lite version of the TON blockchain network client. In September the company released the complete source code for TON nodes on GitHub, making it possible to launch a full node and explore the testnet. The launch of the TON main network was scheduled for October 31.
+
+
+== Design ==
+
+
+=== TON blockchain ===
+The Open Network's fundamental infrastructure is a scalable multi-blockchain platform designed to support the creation and operation of decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. Utilizing the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, it can theoretically support up to 2^92 accompanying blockchains. 
+TON's design philosophy involves leveraging sharding to attain scalability. Its blockchains are designed with the ability to split and merge automatically to adapt to fluctuating loads. This design feature ensures that block generation speed is independent of transaction volume, avoiding network congestion and maintaining low operational costs irrespective of demand.
+Hypercube routing mechanisms in TON ensure efficient data exchange between any two blockchains, regardless of the network size. Due to the logarithmic relationship between the time taken to transfer data and the number of blockchains in TON, the network can scale to millions of chains without compromising processing speed.TON employs an advanced proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Validator nodes use deposit stakes to vouch for their reliability, achieving consensus through a variant of the Byzantine fault tolerance protocol. This approach is resource-efficient and allows TON to devote the computing power of nodes to processing transactions and executing smart contracts.
+The TON network comprises a masterchain and up to 2^32 workchains, each with its unique ruleset. These rulesets dictate various aspects of the workchains, such as account address formats, transaction protocols, and virtual machines for executing smart contracts and managing basic cryptocurrencies. The workchains function cohesively within the TON ecosystem while maintaining their individual characteristics.
+
+
+=== Governance ===
+Governance in TON is inherently decentralized and decisions for network modifications are contingent upon approval from the majority of validators. This is facilitated through the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism where validators can vote for network configuration changes or update their software to accept proposed changes.
+
+
+== Applications ==
+
+
+=== Toncoin ===
+Toncoin is the principal cryptocurrency of The Open Network (TON) blockchain, and in particular of its masterchain and basic workchain. It is used for transaction fees, securing the blockchain through staking, deciding how the network develops, gas payments (i.e., smart-contract message processing fees), and settling payments.
+
+
+=== TON Proxy ===
+A network proxy and anonymizer layer designed for TON nodes, TON Proxy is akin to the Invisible Internet Project (I2P) and facilitates the creation of decentralized VPN services and blockchain-based TOR alternatives. This capability enhances online privacy and offers protection against censorship towards the facilitation of decentralized applications which may be more resistant to censorship. As of September 30, 2022, TON Proxy has been made compatible with HTTP Proxy.
+
+
+=== TON DNS ===
+Launched by the TON Foundation on June 30, 2022, TON DNS operates similarly to domain names associated with other cryptocurrencies, offering "".ton"" as its domain zone. The program assigns human-readable names to accounts, smart contracts, services, and network nodes. This service simplifies the process of accessing decentralized applications by allowing users to use short and simple domain names rather than long strings of alphanumeric characters. Domain names can also be associated with wallet addresses.
+
+
+=== TON Storage ===
+On December 31, 2022, TON Storage, a decentralized file storage system, was introduced. TON Storage is a distributed file storage system accessible through the TON P2P Network, resembling torrent-like technology that utilizes smart contracts for reliability. TON Storage provides a platform for the storage and exchange of large amounts of data using the TON blockchain network, in an effort to eliminate the need for centralized web servers.
+
+
+=== TON Payments ===
+Launched on June 30, 2022, TON Payments can be used for instant off-chain value transfers between users, bots, and other services. Security measures embedded in the system ensure that these transfers are as secure as on-chain transactions.
+
+
+== Everscale ==
+By May 2020, when Telegram's commitment to the project was unclear, other projects started to develop the technology.Launched on May 7, 2020, ""Free TON"" is another project to continue development of Telegram Open Network technology using the source code freely available under GNU GPL. By January 2021, the community of the project reached 30,000 people. Free TON's token titled ""TON Crystal"" or just ""TON"" is distributed as a reward for contributions to the network.  Of five billion tokens issued at the moment of launch, 85% were reserved for users, 5% for validators, and 10% for the developers (including 5% dedicated for TON Labs, the developer of TON OS middleware for TON blockchain, which is the essential part of Free TON). In 2021 it was rebranded to Everscale.
+
+
+== Regulation ==
+On October 11, 2019, a couple of weeks before the planned TON launch, SEC obtained a temporary restrictive order to prevent the distribution of Grams. The regulator contended that initial Gram purchasers would be acting akin to underwriters, and the resale of Grams, once distributed, will be an unregistered distribution of securities.After a lengthy legal battle between Telegram and the SEC, Judge P. Kevin Castel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York agreed with the SEC's vision that the sale of Grams, the distribution to initial purchasers, and the highly likely future resale should be viewed as a single ""scheme"" to distribute Grams to the secondary market in an unregistered security offering. The ""security"" at issue consisted of the whole set of contracts, expectations, and understandings around the sale and the distribution of tokens to the interested public, and not the Grams themselves. In this case, the initial purchasers acted as underwriters that planned to resell tokens, and not to consume them. The restrictions on Gram distribution remained in force for purchasers based in and outside U.S., as Telegram had no tools to prevent U.S. citizens from purchasing Grams on the secondary market.Following the court decision, the Telegram Open Network team announced that they would be unable to launch the project by the expected 30 April 2020 deadline. On 12 May 2020, Pavel Durov announced the end of Telegram's active involvement with TON. On June 11, Telegram settled with SEC U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and agreed to return $1.22 billion as ""termination amounts"" in Gram purchase agreements, and pay an $18.5 million penalty to SEC. The company also agreed to notify the SEC of any plans to issue digital assets over the next three years. The judge approved the settlement on June 26. ""New and innovative businesses are welcome to participate in our capital markets, but they cannot do so in violation of the registration requirements of the federal securities laws,"" the SEC spokesperson noted. Telegram had subsequently shut down TON test network.In 2020, Telegram repaid TON investors $770 million and converted $443 million into a one-year debt at 10% interest, raising its total liabilities to $625.7 million. On 10 March 2021, the company made the placement of 5-year bonds worth $1 billion to cover the debts it had to return by 30 April 2021.
+
+
+== References =="
+Tokenomics,"Tokenomics, also known as token economics, is an emerging field concerned with the economic properties of agent-driven systems that use cryptographic tokens that are typically created and managed on blockchain-based distributed ledgers.Key areas of interest include determining the value properties of the tokens themselves, and how the properties of tokens (together with other cryptographically secured rules and associated system actions) affect broader economic characteristics of the system including:
+
+How they provision and distribute scarce resources
+How that system interacts with other external economic processes
+How economic agents behave
+The economic efficiency of all these processesThe field often has a strong applied focus, concerning itself with how to use its insights and principles to engineer economic systems to possess specific, desired properties.Both cryptocurrency and tokens are the subclasses of digital assets that use the technology of cryptography. Crypto is the native currency of a blockchain, and it is developed directly by the blockchain protocol.Tokens can be created as native elements of a blockchain protocol, or by using a smart contract that is deployed on a blockchain which will host the new token. For example, Ether (ETH) is the native crypto asset of the Ethereum blockchain, and was created by the core Ethereum developer team to incentivise proper maintenance of the blockchain. While Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) tokens, were created using a Ethereum smart contract developed an unaffiliated third party, in order to give token holders certain governance rights over the game Axie Infinity.In both cases, different tokenomic attributes are chosen to support the token's intended role. With particular attention typically being paid to tokens' ability to function as an incentive mechanism, and choosing monetary policy that brings token supply into line with its demand. This includes specifying rules about how and when new token should be generated or removed from the system. Rules that are written into smart contracts allow these system processes to be automated.In the real-world economics system, the economy is subject to fluctuations like inflation and deflation. Central banks intervene through monetary policies. Tokenonomics can be thought of as an approach to implementing monetary policies and economic rules via automated smart contracts. On the blockchain, different projects may issue their own tokens with different tokenomics to complete their ecosystem for various purposes, such as fundraising and governance. Some common tokenomics models include the deflationary model, inflationary model, and dual-token model. For instance, before the very last Bitcoin is added to the Bitcoin pool, it is inflationary because as miners (people who find Bitcoin by using algorithms to solve mathematical puzzles) keep mining Bitcoins, the amount of Bitcoins increases and the purchasing power of each Bitcoin decrease. However, the tokenomics of Bitcoin has multiple mechanisms to lower the rate of inflation, such as making mathematical puzzles harder and harder to solve and allowing fewer and fewer miners to receive the coin.
+
+
+== Creation of tokens and token types ==
+Companies may create their own tokens for economic and structural reasons. Tokens are created to encourage the holder to interact and empower the product by automatically distributing the rewards to their stakeholders. Projects may use tokens to raise funds from the public and for proof of internal operation (e.g. game tokens and governance tokens for the right to vote). To achieve the purposes and function of the tokens created, a fine tokenomics structure is needed.
+
+
+=== Security tokens for fundraising ===
+In traditional capital markets, if a company wants to raise funds from the public, it must go through an initial public offering (IPO), which may take years, costing anywhere from $4 to $28 million in fees, depending on its size. In the early stages, only accredited investors are allowed to enter an investment, such as a venture capital. In the decentralized, automated world, with lower cost, tokens can be created by anyone, with fundamental parameters and functions described by tokenomics. Instead of equities, blockchain companies raise funds through the issuing of tokens in the process of initial coin offerings (ICOs). The security tokens can be thought of as equity shares of the blockchain companies. After issuing the tokens, individual investors are allowed to buy tokens and own shares. For investors, they can become early contributors to gain returns along with the growth of the company. Web 3.0 investors can sell their holdings of tokens after the vesting period.
+
+
+=== Utility tokens for internal use ===
+Utility tokens are used as proof to access a company's service or product. Unlike security tokens, utility tokens are for exchange and securing the liquidity and value of the company. Utility tokens are an in-ecosystem currency. For example, with a token named Smooth Love Potion (SLP) in the game Axie Infinity, players can use it to breed desired spirits. In this case, SLP acts as the internal currency within the game. Users earn SLP from tasks, and spend SLP to defeat opponents.
+
+
+=== Risk ===
+Investors risk being ""rugged,"" meaning that the token issuer may ""raise money and disappear,"" resulting in a value loss in those tokens and a capital loss for investors. Hackers may hack into the system and steal the tokens. Each tokenomics model has its disadvantages and advantages.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Cryptoeconomics
+
+
+== References =="
+Thodex,"Koineks Teknoloji A.Ş, known online as Thodex, is a defunct Turkey based cryptocurrency exchange founded by Faruk Fatih Özer. 
+Thodex was the first global exchange based in Turkey and of the 40 cryptocurrency exchanges in Turkey at the time, it was one of the big ones. It had 391,000 users when it froze in April 2021 and the owner fled Turkey with the clients' money.
+Thodex was founded as Koineks in 2017, at the time only the 4th cryptocurrency exchange to be founded in Turkey. They established Turkey's first Bitcoin ATMs.
+Koineks went global in 2020 changing its name to Thodex in March 2020. That year, Thodex was also licensed by Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as a Money Service Business (MSB). The total transaction volume on Thodex was ~$3 billion as of November 2020. The exchange had various rewards campaigns to draw in new users and new capital.
+
+
+== Shutdown ==
+What would turn out to be the last of these rewards campaigns ran from 15 March to 15 April 2021. It was a Dogecoin rewards campaign where they stated that they would distribute 2 million dogecoin, 150 per new user that signs up. This campaign was set up in the month leading up to what is known by fans of Dogecoin as Dogeday (April 20) a day at which Dogecoin fans expected Dogecoin to go up in price significantly. Due to the hype, over half of the trading on the exchange was in Dogecoin. On the 19th of April, users experienced some disruptions in their transactions. Following complaints, Thodex stated that the issues were due to the exchange being under a cyberattack and the next day, April 20, trading on Thodex was halted entirely.Thodex assured users in a statement that things would resume to normal in 4–5 days and that trading had temporarily shut down because ""big-name banks"" were interested in investing substantially as partners of the exchange, and they needed to temporarily suspend trading for the partnership to settle. In the meantime, Faruk Fatih Özer, the owner of the exchange, left Turkey for Tirana, Albania with $2 billion of cryptocurrency in their possession.Complaints by users led to the start of an investigation on April 22 by public prosecutors, and after determining that users of Thodex could not access their funds and verifying that Özer had indeed left Turkey, financial crimes agents froze all the assets of Thodex. Arrest warrants were issued for Özer and 81 other suspects. The Cyber Crimes Directorate arrested all suspects except for Özer himself, the arrested suspects included Özer's two brothers. An Interpol Red Notice was issued for Özer the next day. The Istanbul Public Prosecutors Office opened a fraud investigation into the owner, and an investigation into Thodex in the scope of tax offenses and Consumer Protection Law. The prosecutors also requested that the Cyber Crimes Directorate establish contact with foreign exchanges to determine if Özer had sent Bitcoins to their Binance address and if so whether those could be frozen/confiscated.In May, the first hearing for a victim of the frozen exchange was held by the Anatolian Civil Court. They sued Thodex for the taking/using of deposited money contrary to the user agreement.The Public Prosecutors' office in 2022 reportedly received certain receipts that showed that Özer had compensated some of the victims out of remorse. Nevertheless, 21 of the suspects including Özer were indicted for 3 separate crimes and face up to 40,564 years of collective prison sentence.The court determined that the suspects had converted their clients' money to cryptocurrency and gold and that they had lured in their victims with deceptive advertising.The arrest of Faruk Özer was made public by the Ministry of Interior on 30 August 2022. Albanian authorities had apprehended him in Vlorë. On 7 September 2023, Özer was sentenced to 11,196 years in prison by a Turkish court.
+
+
+== Aftermath ==
+After the Thodex collapse, Turkey which did not have any regulations regarding cryptocurrency exchange operations started to look into ways to regulate cryptocurrency, and new regulations followed in 2021.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+=== Notes ===
+
+
+=== Citations ===
+
+
+=== Bibliography ==="
+USD Coin,"USD Coin (USDC) is a digital stablecoin pegged to the United States dollar. USD Coin is managed by a consortium called Centre, which was founded by Circle and includes members from the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and Bitcoin mining company Bitmain, an investor in Circle. USDC is issued by a private entity and should not be confused with a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
+
+
+== Usage ==
+USDC is primarily available as an Ethereum ERC-20 token, and on blockchains including Hedera Hashgraph, Algorand, Avalanche, Solana, Stellar, Polygon, and TRON. in August of 2023, Circle announced that USDC would be available on six additional blockchains: Base, Cosmos via the Noble network, NEAR, Optimism, Polkadot, and Polygon PoS. Visa announced it was expanding a pilot program that sends USDC over the Solana blockchain to help pay merchants in cryptocurrency.
+
+
+== Reserves ==
+Circle claims that each USDC is backed by a dollar held in reserve, or by other ""approved investments"", though these are not detailed. The wording on the Circle website changed from the previous ""backed by US dollars"" to ""backed by fully reserved assets"" in June 2021.USDC reserves are regularly attested (but not audited) by Grant Thornton, LLP, and the monthly attestations can be found on the Centre Consortium's website.
+
+
+== History ==
+USDC was first announced on 15 May 2018 by Circle, and was launched in September 2018.On March 29, 2021, Visa announced that it would allow the use of USDC to settle transactions on its payment network.As of July 2022, Circle states that there are 55 billion USDC in circulation.On March 11, 2023, USDC lost its peg to the dollar after Circle confirmed $3.3 billion, approximately 8% of its reserves, were at risk due to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank that occurred the previous day. USDC regained its peg to the dollar four days later.In August 2023, Circle and Coinbase closed the Centre Consortium, the organization that had managed USDC since 2018, giving circle sole governance of USDC.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Jeremy Allaire
+Tether (cryptocurrency)
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Mining pool,"In the context of cryptocurrency mining, a mining pool is the pooling of resources by miners, who share their processing power over a network, to split the reward equally, according to the amount of work they contributed to the probability of finding a block. A ""share"" is awarded to members of the mining pool who present a valid partial proof-of-work. Mining in pools began when the difficulty for mining increased to the point where it could take centuries for slower miners to generate a block. The solution to this problem was for miners to pool their resources so they could generate blocks more quickly and therefore receive a portion of the block reward on a consistent basis, rather than randomly once every few years.
+
+
+== History ==
+November 2010:  Slush launched in 2010 and is the first mining pool.<
+2011–2013:  The era of deepbit, which at its peak held up to 45% of the network hashrate.
+2013–2014:  Since the introduction of ASIC, and when deepbit failed to support the newer stratum protocol, GHash.IO replaced deepbit and became the largest.
+2014–2015:  F2Pool, which launched in May 2013, overtook GHash.IO and became then the largest mining pool.
+2016–2018:  Rise of Bitmain and its AntPool. Bitmain also controls a few other smaller pools like BTC.com and ViaBTC.
+2019–2020:  The launch of Poolin. Poolin and F2Pool each held about 15% of the network hashrate at this time period, with smaller pools following.
+2020:  Binance launches a mining pool, following Huobi and OKex. Luxor launches a US-based mining pool..
+2022:  Cruxpool launches the first French mining pool. PEGA Pool launches the first eco friendly focused mining pool. But at the end of summer 2023, PEGA Pool announced the closure of its mining operation.
+
+
+== Mining pool share ==
+Share is the principal concept of the mining pool operation. Share is a potential block solution. So it may be a block solution, but it is not necessarily so. For example, suppose a block solution is a number that ends with 10 zeros and, a share may be a number with 5 zeros at the end. Sooner or later one of the shares will have not only 5, but 10 zeros at the end, and this will be the block solution.
+Mining pools need shares to estimate the miner's contribution to the work performed by the pool to find a block. There are numerous miner reward systems: PPS, PROP, PPLNS, PPLNT, and many more.
+
+
+== Mining pool methods ==
+Mining pools may contain hundreds or thousands of miners using specialized protocols.  In all these schemes 
+  
+    
+      
+        B
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle B}
+   stands for a block reward minus pool fee and 
+  
+    
+      
+        p
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle p}
+   is a probability of finding a block in a share attempt (
+  
+    
+      
+        p
+        =
+        1
+        
+          /
+        
+        D
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle p=1/D}
+  , where 
+  
+    
+      
+        D
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle D}
+   is current block difficulty). A pool can support ""variable share difficulty"" feature, which means that a miner can select the share target (the lower bound of share difficulty) on their own and change 
+  
+    
+      
+        p
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle p}
+   accordingly.
+
+
+=== Pay-per-Share ===
+The Pay-per-Share (PPS) approach offers an instant, guaranteed payout to a miner for their contribution to the probability that the pool finds a block. Miners are paid out from the pool's existing balance and can withdraw their payout immediately. This model allows for the least possible variance in payment for miners while also transferring much of the risk to the pool's operator.
+Each share costs exactly the expected value of each hash attempt 
+  
+    
+      
+        R
+        =
+        B
+        ⋅
+        p
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle R=B\cdot p}
+  .
+
+
+=== Proportional ===
+Miners earn shares until the pool finds a block (the end of the mining round). After that each user gets reward 
+  
+    
+      
+        R
+        =
+        B
+        ⋅
+        
+          
+            n
+            N
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle R=B\cdot {\frac {n}{N}}}
+  , where 
+  
+    
+      
+        n
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle n}
+   is amount of their own shares, and 
+  
+    
+      
+        N
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle N}
+   is amount of all shares in this round. In other words, all shares are equal, but its value is calculated only at the end of each round.
+
+
+=== Pooled mining ===
+Pooled mining (BPM), also known as ""slush's system"", due to its first use on a pool called ""slush's pool', uses a system where older shares from the beginning of a block round are given less weight than more recent shares. A new round starts the moment the pool solves a block and miners are rewarded Proportional to the shares submitted. This reduces the ability to cheat the mining pool system by switching pools during a round, to maximize profit.
+
+
+=== Pay-per-last-N-shares ===
+Pay-per-last-N-shares (PPLNS) method is similar to Proportional, but the miner's reward is calculated on a basis of N last shares, instead of all shares for the last round. It means that when a block is found, the reward of each miner is calculated based on the miner contribution to the last N pool shares. Therefore, if the round was short enough all miners get more profit and vice versa.
+
+
+=== Solo Mining Pool ===
+Solo pools operate the same way as usual pools, with the only difference being that block reward is not distributed among all miners. The entire reward in a solo pool goes to the miner who finds the block.
+
+
+=== Peer-to-Peer Mining Pool ===
+Peer-to-peer mining pool (P2Pool) decentralizes the responsibilities of a pool server, removing the chance of the pool operator cheating or the server being a single point of failure. Miners work on a side blockchain called a share chain, mining at a lower difficulty at a rate of one share block per 30 seconds. Once a share block reaches the network target, it is transmitted and merged onto the blockchain. Miners are rewarded when this occurs proportional to the shares submitted prior to the target block. A P2Pool requires the miners to run a full node, bearing the weight of hardware expenses and network bandwidth.
+
+
+=== Geometric method ===
+Geometric Method (GM) was invented by Meni Rosenfeld. It is based on the same ""score"" idea, as Slush's method: the score granted for every new share, relatively to already existing score and the score of future shares, is always the same, thus there is no advantage to mining early or late in the round.
+The method goes as follows:
+
+Choose parameters 
+  
+    
+      
+        f
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle f}
+   and 
+  
+    
+      
+        c
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle c}
+   (fixed and variable fee).
+At the start of every round, set 
+  
+    
+      
+        s
+        =
+        1
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s=1}
+  . For every worker 
+  
+    
+      
+        k
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle k}
+  , let 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle S_{k}}
+   be the worker's score for this round, and set 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+        =
+        0
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle S_{k}=0}
+  .
+Set 
+  
+    
+      
+        r
+        =
+        1
+        −
+        p
+        +
+        
+          
+            p
+            c
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle r=1-p+{\frac {p}{c}}}
+  , where 
+  
+    
+      
+        p
+        =
+        1
+        
+          /
+        
+        D
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle p=1/D}
+  . If the difficulty changes during the round, 
+  
+    
+      
+        r
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle r}
+   needs to be updated.
+When worker 
+  
+    
+      
+        k
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle k}
+   submits a share, set 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+        =
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+        +
+        s
+        p
+        B
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle S_{k}=S_{k}+spB}
+  , and then 
+  
+    
+      
+        s
+        =
+        s
+        r
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s=sr}
+  .
+If the share is a valid block, end the round. For every worker 
+  
+    
+      
+        k
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle k}
+   pay 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          
+            
+              (
+              1
+              −
+              f
+              )
+              (
+              r
+              −
+              1
+              )
+              
+                S
+                
+                  k
+                
+              
+            
+            
+              s
+              p
+            
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle {\frac {(1-f)(r-1)S_{k}}{sp}}}
+  
+
+
+=== Double Geometric method ===
+Generalized version of Geometric and PPLNS methods. It involves new parameter: 
+  
+    
+      
+        o
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle o}
+   (""cross-round leakage""). When 
+  
+    
+      
+        o
+        =
+        0
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle o=0}
+   this becomes the Geometric method. When 
+  
+    
+      
+        o
+        =
+        1
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle o=1}
+   this becomes a variant of PPLNS, with exponential decay instead of a step function.
+
+Choose parameters 
+  
+    
+      
+        f
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle f}
+  , 
+  
+    
+      
+        c
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle c}
+  , and 
+  
+    
+      
+        o
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle o}
+  .
+When the pool first starts running, initialize 
+  
+    
+      
+        s
+        =
+        1
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s=1}
+  . For every worker 
+  
+    
+      
+        k
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle k}
+  , let 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle S_{k}}
+   be the worker's score, and set 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+        =
+        0
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle S_{k}=0}
+  .
+Set 
+  
+    
+      
+        r
+        =
+        1
+        +
+        
+          
+            1
+            c
+          
+        
+        p
+        (
+        1
+        −
+        c
+        )
+        (
+        1
+        −
+        o
+        )
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle r=1+{\frac {1}{c}}p(1-c)(1-o)}
+  . If at any point the difficulty or the parameters change, 
+  
+    
+      
+        r
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle r}
+   should be recalculated.
+When worker 
+  
+    
+      
+        k
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle k}
+   submits a share, set 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+        =
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+        +
+        (
+        1
+        −
+        f
+        )
+        (
+        1
+        −
+        c
+        )
+        s
+        p
+        B
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle S_{k}=S_{k}+(1-f)(1-c)spB}
+   (where 
+  
+    
+      
+        B
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle B}
+   is the block reward at the time it was submitted), and then 
+  
+    
+      
+        s
+        =
+        s
+        r
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle s=sr}
+  .
+If the share is a valid block, then also do the following for each worker 
+  
+    
+      
+        k
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle k}
+  : Give him a payout of 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          
+            1
+            
+              c
+              
+                s
+              
+            
+          
+        
+        (
+        1
+        −
+        o
+        )
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle {\frac {1}{c_{s}}}(1-o)S_{k}}
+  , and then set 
+  
+    
+      
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+        =
+        
+          S
+          
+            k
+          
+        
+        ⋅
+        o
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle S_{k}=S_{k}\cdot o}
+  .
+
+
+== Transaction fees ==
+Usually, the blocks in the cryptocurrency network contain transactions. Transaction fees are paid to the miner (mining pool). Different mining pools could share these fees between their miners or not. Pay-per-last-N-shares (PPLNS), Pay-Per-Share Plus (PPS+) or Full Pay-Per-Share (FPPS) are the most fair methods where the payouts from the pool include not only the block subsidy but also the transaction fees.
+
+
+== Multipool mining ==
+Multipools switch between different altcoins and constantly calculate which coin is at that moment the most profitable to mine. Two key factors are involved in the algorithm that calculates profitability, the block time, and the price on the exchanges. To avoid the need for many different wallets for all possible minable coins, multipools may automatically exchange the mined coin to a coin that is accepted in the mainstream (for example bitcoin). Using this method, because the most profitable coins are being mined and then sold for the intended coin, it is possible to receive more coins in the intended currency than by mining that currency alone. This method also increases demand on the intended coin, which has the side effect of increasing or stabilizing the value of the intended coin.Some companies that sell hash power may do so by aggregating the work of many small miners (for example, NiceHash), paying them proportionally by share like a pool would. Some such companies operate their own pools. These can be considered multipools, because they usually employ a similar method of work switching, although the work they assign is determined by customer demand rather than ""raw"" profitability.
+
+
+== PoC mining ==
+Similar to other mining technologies, the PoC, PoC+, PoS Proof of Space method allows the computing to be performed beforehand and all answers are stored on a miners hard drive, the heavy energy consumption for PoC is not required like it is for PoW mining and therefore PoC is almost always a more environmentally friendly blockchain choice. When mining happens the miner simply ""looks"" through the pre-stored answers and submits the best one found to the network, with minimal energy used to read the hard drives. Due to the low hardware specification requirements of the PoC mining process, this type of mining can be conducted on a regular PC still being used for other day-to-day tasks.  The first PoC blockchain was brought online in 2014 and is known as Signum today, with other PoC chains coming out much later, examples: Chia, Flax, and BitcoinHD. The network difficulty, as well as other network and mining status information, can be viewed on any of the public mining pool dashboards, example: Mining Pool Dashboard  A list of current PoC, PoS, PoC+ type mining pools are also tracked by some third party ""Mining Pool Stats"" pages, an example of one is Mining Pool Stats.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Cryptographic protocol
+Digital currency exchanger
+Electronic money
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+An estimation of hashrate distribution amongst the largest mining pools
+First PoC blockchain
+example of a PoC+ Mining Pool
+example of a PoC mining pool stats tracking site"
+Meme coin,"A meme coin (also spelled memecoin) is a cryptocurrency that originated from an Internet meme or has some other humorous characteristic. It may be used in the broadest sense as a critique of the cryptocurrency market in its entirety—those based on particular memes such as ""doge coins"", celebrities like Coinye, and pump-and-dump schemes such as BitConnect—or it may be used to make cryptocurrency more accessible. The term is often dismissive, comparing the value or performances of those cryptocurrencies to that of mainstream ones. Supporters, on the other hand, observe that some memecoins have acquired social currency and high market capitalizations.In late 2013, Dogecoin was released after being created as a joke on the Doge meme by software engineers. This sparked the creation of several subsequent meme coins. In October 2021, there were about 124 meme coins circulating in the market. Notable examples include Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.In late 2021, advertisements promoting the meme coin Floki Inu in London led to subsequent investigations around promoting the meme coin, considered to be an unregulated financial product by the ASA (The Advertising Standards Authority).Some countries have taken steps to regulate meme coins. In early 2021, Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission banned meme coins as part of a crackdown on digital goods with ""no clear objective or substance"".
+
+
+== Popularity ==
+Meme coins have surged in popularity since Elon Musk endorsed the use of Dogecoin, one of the first meme coins. He continues to post tweets about Dogecoin in 2022, including one in January where he stated he would eat a Happy Meal from McDonald's on live TV if they started accepting Dogecoin as payment. The risk of losing money is significant. However, some projects seem to be successful and sustainable over time.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Meme stock
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Will APENFT token listed on Binance
+Bigtert Token Prediction
+Storepay Token Prediction"
+Zealot Campaign,"The Zealot Campaign is a cryptocurrency mining malware collected from a series of stolen National Security Agency (NSA) exploits, released by the Shadow Brokers group on both Windows and Linux machines to mine cryptocurrency, specifically Monero. Discovered in December 2017, these exploits appeared in the Zealot suite include EternalBlue, EternalSynergy, and Apache Struts Jakarta Multipart Parser attack exploit, or CVE-2017-5638.  The other notable exploit within the Zealot vulnerabilities includes vulnerability CVE-2017-9822, known as DotNetNuke (DNN) which exploits a content management system so that the user can install a Monero miner software. An estimated USD $8,500 of Monero having been mined on a single targeted computer. The campaign was discovered and studied extensively by F5 Networks in December 2017.
+
+
+== How it works ==
+With many of the Zealot exploits being leaked from the NSA, the malware suite is widely described as having “an unusually high obfuscated payload”, meaning that the exploit works on multiple levels to attack the vulnerable server systems, causing large amounts of damage. The term “Zealot” was derived from the StarCraft series, namely a type of warrior.
+
+
+=== Introduction ===
+This multi-layered attack begins with two HTTP requests, used to scan and target vulnerable systems on the network.  Similar attacks in the past were only targeted to either Windows or Linux-based systems, yet Zealot stands out by being prepared for both with its version of Apache Struts exploit along with using DNN.
+
+
+=== Post-exploitation stage ===
+After the operating system (OS) has been identified via a JavaScript, the malware then loads an OS-specific exploit chains:
+
+
+==== Linux/macOS ====
+If the targeted system runs on either Linux or macOS, the Struts' payload will install a Python agent for the post-exploitation stage.  After checking the target system to see if it has already been infected, it then downloads a cryptocurrency mining software, often referred to as a “mule”. From there, it obfuscates an embedded Python code to process. Different from other botnet malware, the Zealot campaigns request the Command & Control (C&C) server-specific User-Agent and Cookie headers, meaning that anyone but the malware will receive a different response. Due to Zealot encrypting via a RC4 cipher, see below, most network inspection and security software were able to see that the malware was on the network, but were not able to scan it.
+
+
+==== Windows ====
+If the targeted OS is Windows, the Struts' payload downloads an encoded PowerShell interpreter.  Once it is decoded two times, the program then runs another obfuscated script, which in turn leads the device to a URL to download more files. That file, known as PowerShell script “scv.ps1”, is a heavily obfuscated script which allows the attacker to deploy mining software on the targeted device.  The deployed software can also use a Dynamic-link Library (DLL) mining malware, which is deployed using the reflective DLL injection technique to attach the malware to the PowerShell processing itself, as to remain undetected.
+
+
+==== Scanning for a firewall ====
+Prior to moving onto the next stage, the program also checks to see if the firewall is active.  If yes, it will pipe an embedded base64 embedded Python code to circumvent the firewall.  Another possible solution is known as the “Little Snitch”, which will possibly terminate the firewall if active.
+
+
+==== Infecting internal networks ====
+From the post-exploitation stage, the program scans the target system for Python 2.7 or higher, if it is not found on the system, it will then download it.  Following that, it then downloads a Python module (probe.py) to propagate the network, the script itself is highly obfuscated with a base encryption of base64 and is then zipped up to 20 times. The downloaded zip file could be named several iterations, all of which are derived from the StarCraft game. The files included are listed below:
+
+Zealot.py – main script executing the EternalBlue and EternalSynergy exploits, see below.
+A0.py – EternalSynergy exploit with built-in shellcode for Windows 7
+A1.py – EternalBlue exploit for Windows 7, receives shellcode as an argument
+A2.py – EternalBlue exploit for Windows 8, receives a shellcode as an argument
+M.py – SMB protocol wrapper
+Raven64.exe – scans the internal network via port 445 and invokes the zealot.py filesAfter all these files run successfully, the miner software is then introduced.
+
+
+==== Mining ====
+Known commonly as the “mule” malware, this PowerShell script is named the “minerd_n.PS2” within the compressed files that are downloaded and executed via the EternalSynergy exploit. The software then utilizes the target system’s hardware to process mining for cryptocurrency. This mining software has reportedly stolen close to $8,500 from one victim, yet total amounts of mined Monero are still speculated among researchers.
+
+
+== Exploits involved ==
+
+
+=== EternalBlue ===
+Initially utilized in the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, this exploit was specifically utilized as a mining software with the Zealot campaign.
+
+
+=== EternalSynergy ===
+While not much is known about this exploit, it was used in cooperation with EternalBlue, along with other exploits in the Zealot campaign and others.  Most notably, EternalSynergy was involved in the Equifax hack, WannaCry ransomware, and cryptocurrency mining campaigns.
+
+
+=== DNN ===
+An ASP.NET based content management system, DNN (formerly DotNetNuke) sends a serialized object via a vulnerable DNNPersonalization cookie during the HTTP request stage. Using an “ObjectDataProvider” and an “ObjectStateFormatter”, the attacker then embeds another object into the victim’s shell system. This invoked shell system will then deliver the same script that was delivered in the Apache Struts exploit. The DNN acts as a secondary backup for the attackers, should the Apache Struts exploit fail.
+
+
+=== Apache Struts Jakarta multipart parser ===
+Used to deliver a PowerShell script to initiate the attack, this exploit is one of the two HTTP requests sent during the initial stage of infection. Among the first discovered of the exploits of the Zealot campaign, the Jakarta Parser exploit allowed hackers to exploit a “Zero-Day” flaw in the software to hack into the financial firm, Equifax in March 2017. This particular exploit was the most notable and public of the exploits, as it was utilized in a largely public case, and was still being utilized until December 2017, when the exploit was patched.
+
+
+== Uses ==
+
+
+=== The Lazarus Group ===
+The Bangladeshi-based group utilized a spear-phishing method, known commonly as Business Email Compromise (BCE), to steal cryptocurrency from unsuspecting employees. Lazarus primarily targeted employees of cryptocurrency financial organizations, which was executed via a Word document, claiming to be a legitimate-appearing European company. When the document was opened, the embedded trojan virus would then load onto the system computer and begin to steal credentials and other malware. While the specific Malware is still unknown, it does have ties to the Zealot malware.
+
+
+=== Equifax Data Breach (2017) ===
+Among the several exploits involved the March 2017 Equifax data breach, the Jakarta Parser, EternalBlue, and EternalSynergy were heavily involved with attacking the servers. Instead of the software being utilized to mine cryptocurrency, it was used to mine the data of over 130 million Equifax customers.
+
+
+== References =="
+Zerocoin protocol,"Zerocoin is a privacy protocol proposed in 2013 by Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew D. Green and his graduate students, Ian Miers and Christina Garman. It was designed as an extension to the Bitcoin protocol that would improve Bitcoin transactions' anonymity by having coin-mixing capabilities natively built into the protocol. Zerocoin is not currently compatible with Bitcoin.
+
+
+== History ==
+Due to the public nature of the blockchain, users may have their privacy compromised while interacting with the network. To address this problem, third-party coin mixing service can be used to obscure the trail of cryptocurrency transactions. In May 2013, Matthew D. Green and his graduate students (Ian Miers and Christina Garman) proposed the Zerocoin protocol where cryptocurrency transactions can be anonymized without going through a trusted third-party, by which a coin is destroyed then minted again to erase its history.While a coin is spent, there is no information available which reveal exactly which coin is being spent. Initially, the Zerocoin protocol was planned to be integrated into the Bitcoin network. However, the proposal was not accepted by the Bitcoin community. Thus, the Zerocoin developers decided to launch the protocol into an independent cryptocurrency. The project to create a standalone cryptocurrency implementing the Zerocoin protocol was named ""Moneta"". In September 2016, Zcoin (XZC), the first cryptocurrency to implement the zerocoin protocol, was launched by Poramin Insom and team. In January 2018, an academic paper partially funded by Zcoin was published on replacing Proof-of-work system with memory intensive Merkle tree proof algorithm in ensuring more equitable mining among ordinary users. In April 2018, a cryptographic flaw was found in the Zerocoin protocol which allows an attacker to destroy the coins owned by honest users, create coins out of thin air, and steal users' coins. The Zcoin cryptocurrency team while acknowledging the flaw, stated the high difficulty in performing such attacks and the low probability of giving economic benefit to the attacker. In December 2018, Zcoin released an academic paper proposing the Lelantus protocol that removes the need for a trusted setup and hides the origin and the amount of coins in a transaction when using the Zerocoin protocol.
+
+
+== Architecture ==
+Transactions which use the Zerocoin feature are drawn from an escrow pool, where each coin's transaction history is erased when it emerges. Transactions are verified by zero-knowledge proofs, a mathematical way to prove a statement is true without revealing any other details about the question.
+
+
+== Zerocash ==
+On 16 November 2013, Matthew D. Green announced the Zerocash protocol, which provides additional anonymity by shielding the amount transacted. Zerocash reduces transaction sizes by 98%, however was significantly more computationally expensive, taking up to 3.2 GB of memory to generate. More recent developments into the protocol have reduced this to 40 MB.
+Zerocash utilizes succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge (also known as zk-SNARKs), a special kind of zero-knowledge method for proving the integrity of computations. Such proofs are less than 300 bytes long and can be verified in only a few milliseconds, and contain the additional advantage of hiding the amount transacted as well. However, unlike Zerocoin, Zerocash requires an initial set up by a trusted entity.Developed by Matthew D. Green, the assistant professor behind the Zerocoin protocol, Zcash was the first Zerocash based cryptocurrency which began development in 2013.
+
+
+== Cryptocurrencies ==
+
+
+=== Zcoin (XZC) ===
+
+In the late 2014,  Poramin Insom, a student in Masters in Security Informatics from Johns Hopkins University wrote a paper on implementing the zerocoin protocol into a cryptocurrency with Matthew Green as faculty member. Roger Ver and Tim Lee were Zcoin's initial investors. Poramin also set up an exchanged named ""Satang"" that can convert Thai Baht to Zcoin directly.On 20 February 2017, a malicious coding attack on Zerocoin protocol created 370,000 fake tokens which perpetrators sold for over 400 Bitcoins ($440,000). Zcoin team announced that a single-symbol error in a piece of code ""allowed an attacker to create Zerocoin spend transactions without a corresponding mint"". Unlike Ethereum during the DAO event, developers have opted not to destroy any coins or attempt to reverse what happened with the newly generated ones.In September 2018, Zcoin introduced the Dandelion protocol that hides the origin IP address of a sender without using a The Onion Router (Tor) or Virtual Private Network (VPN). In November 2018, Zcoin conducted the world's first large-scale party elections in Thailand Democrat Party using InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). In December 2018, Zcoin implemented Merkle tree proof, a mining algorithm that deters the usage of Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) in mining coins by being more memory intensive for the miners. This allows ordinary users to use central processing unit (CPU) and graphics card for mining, so as to enable egalitarianism in coin mining.  On 30 July 2019, Zcoin formally departed from Zerocoin protocol by adopting a new protocol called ""Sigma"" that prevents counterfeit privacy coins from inflating coin supply. This is achieved by removing a feature called ""trusted setup"" from the Zerocoin protocol.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+One criticism of zerocoin is the added computation time required by the process, which would need to have been performed primarily by bitcoin miners. If the proofs were posted to the blockchain, this would also dramatically increase the size of the blockchain. Nevertheless, as stated by the original author, the proofs could be stored outside the blockchain.Since a zerocoin will have the same denomination as the bitcoin used to mint the zerocoin, anonymity would be compromised if no other zerocoins (or few zerocoins) with the same denomination are currently minted but unspent. A potential solution to this problem would be to only allow zerocoins of specific set denominations, however, this would increase the needed computation time since multiple zerocoins could be needed for one transaction.Depending on the specific implementation, Zerocoin requires two very large prime numbers to generate a parameter which cannot be easily factored. As such, these values must either be generated by trusted parties, or rely on RSA unfactorable objects to avoid the requirement of a trusted party. Such a setup, however, is not possible with the Zerocash protocol.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Cryptocurrencies in Europe,"The general notion of cryptocurrencies in Europe denotes the processes of legislative regulation, distribution, circulation, and storage of cryptocurrencies in Europe. In April 2023, the EU Parliament passed the Markets in Crypto Act (MiCA) unified legal framework for crypto-assets within the European Union.
+
+
+== The legality of cryptocurrencies in Europe ==
+There are some regulatory policy recommendations for EU states to follow in the course of cryptocurrency adoption and regulatory framework development that are given below in chronological order.
+
+In 2013, the European Banking Authority (EBA) issued a public warning about the possible risks of virtual currencies.
+In 2014, The EBA issued a decision on virtual currencies, which included a list of more than 70 risks associated with its dissemination.
+In 2016, the European Central Bank issued an analysis of virtual currency schemes, acknowledging the potential advantages of virtual currencies.
+In 2017
+The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a study in 2017 on the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in securities markets.
+Also in the same year, ESMA released two statements on initial coin offerings (ICOs), one on investor risks and the other on the laws that apply to companies that participate in these offers. After that, the European Commission directed the EBA and ESMA to evaluate the applicability and appropriateness of the existing EU financial services regulatory framework to crypto assets.
+In 2018
+The European Parliament released two reports about virtual currencies and central banks’ monetary policy.
+The Financial Stability Board (FSB) released a study on the crypto asset market and its potential pathways for future financial stability concerns.
+In 2019
+During the G7 meeting of July 2019 risks posed by global stablecoin projects were discussed.
+FINMA, the Swiss financial authority, published a supplement to its ICO guidelines outlining how it treats so-called ‘stable coins’ under Swiss supervisory law.
+In 2019, ECB highlighted the paper series with a discussion about stability in crypto-assets.
+In 2020
+In September 2020, The European Commission has today adopted a new Digital Finance Package, including Digital Finance and Retail Payments Strategies, and legislative proposals on crypto-assets and digital resilience.
+In 2020, the ECB released a report about stablecoins’ regulatory status.
+In 2020, the European Commission proposed a pilot regime for market infrastructures that wish to try to trade and settle transactions in financial instruments in crypto-asset form.
+In 2021
+In July 2021, The European Central Bank is launching a pilot project for the ""digital euro"". Also, it has officially launched a 2-year-long study on the creation of a Digital Euro and the various nuances that would involve.
+In July 2021, the European Commission released a statement that would apply what is known as the travel rule to crypto transactions to make them more traceable.
+In September 2021, European Securities and Markets Authority published a report on Trends, Risks and Vulnerabilities where crypto assets are considered a high-risked innovational financial technology.
+On April 20, 2023, the EU Parliament passed the Markets in Crypto Act (MiCA), a unified legal framework to regulate crypto-assets in the European Union, in order to mitigate money laundering and help reduce consumer risk by making providers liable for losses.
+
+
+== Cryptocurrency market ==
+According to Chainalysis, Europe's growth was largely driven by so-called ""whales"", large institutional investors shifting enormous sums of cryptocurrency. According to Chainalysis, Europe has the world's largest crypto economy, collecting $1 trillion in the previous year, or 25% of all crypto activity worldwide.Different countries have their own approach to cryptocurrencies legalization, distribution, and storage.
+
+
+=== Germany ===
+Germany continues implementing crypto into the national regulation. First, they started with licensing crypto custody service providers and defining crypto assets as financial instruments. Now private funds are allowed to keep 20% of their investments in crypto.In August 2020, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice of Germany promulgated a bill to regulate electronic securities in the country (eWpG-E).
+
+
+=== United Kingdom ===
+Although the United Kingdom affirmed in 2020 that crypto assets are property, it has no cryptocurrency regulations and does not consider cryptocurrencies to be legal tender. Mining of cryptocurrencies is permitted.In March 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) declared that all cryptocurrency ATMs in the country were illegal and would need to be shut down. None of the ATM's operators had successfully registered with the agency. The FCA cited a failure to comply with know your customer laws (KYC), which track and prevent money laundering, as well as the high risk to customers, due to a lack of regulation and protection. At the time, Coin ATM Radar listed 81 such ATMs in the country.
+
+
+=== Ukraine ===
+In September 2021, the Parliament of Ukraine passed a law to legalize cryptocurrency. The law divided virtual currencies into secured and unsecured assets and establishes an obligation for crypto service providers to comply with anti-money laundering laws.
+
+
+=== The Netherlands ===
+In July 2020, The Dutch Central Bank (DNB) said the euro system's central bank digital currency (CBDC) should be more programmable than Bitcoin.
+
+
+=== Estonia ===
+Estonia published its AML Bill as early as 2018. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Estonia's tax policy is one of the most competitive in the world. There is no income tax in this jurisdiction, therefore funds received through ICOs are not subject to it, and Bitcoin and altcoins are not subject to VAT. As of 2021, 55% of all crypto currency service providers in the world are registered in Estonia according to the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) (Estonian: Rahapesu Andmebüroo (RAB)).
+
+
+=== France ===
+Government policy appears to be supportive of crypto, if it would be possible to regulate. In March 2020, the Central Bank of France began to study the topic of CBDC, in May it sold securities for the digital euro, and in September 2020, France announced the launch of CBDC based on the Tezos blockchain.
+
+
+=== Spain ===
+In Spain, there is no specific virtual currencies' legislation, except for the law approved in July 2021 on preventing and fighting tax evasion.
+
+
+=== Austria ===
+Investors were cautioned by the Financial Market Authority (FMA) that cryptocurrencies are risky and that FMA does not monitor or control virtual currencies, including bitcoin or any cryptocurrency trading platforms. 
+
+
+=== Hungary ===
+In 2014, in a press release the central bank of Hungary, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB),  stated that Cryptocurrencies are ""much riskier"" than conventional forms of electronic payment, such credit cards.
+
+
+=== Denmark ===
+The Financial Supervisory Authority of Denmark declared in a statement that it will not regulate the use of bitcoin and that it is not a form of currency.The Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) released a statement on 17th December 2013 that supporting the European Banking Authority 's warning. In 2017, FSA notified that it has no regulatory control over bitcoin transactions, hence it does not prevent anyone on the establishment of such business.In 2013, FSA's chief legal adviser stated that Denmark might consider changing existing financial regulation to include virtual currencies.
+
+
+=== Sweden ===
+The Swedish Tax Agency issued a preliminary decision on Value Added Tax (VAT) on bitcoins, declaring that trading bitcoins is not subject to Swedish VAT, but is instead subject to the Financial Supervisory Authority regulations and treated as a currency.Financial Supervisory Authority and the central bank in a statement publicly declared that bitcoin is legal but not an official form of payment or legal tender.
+
+
+=== Czech Republic ===
+Czech Republic Govt. stated that businesses and people who purchase, sell, store, manage, or mediate the acquisition or selling of virtual currencies or offer similar services are required to adhere to anti-money laundering regulations.For the purposes of accounting and taxes, Bitcoin is categorized as an intangible asset rather than as electronic money.
+
+
+=== Switzerland ===
+Swiss Govt declared that Bitcoin businesses in Switzerland are regulated by anti-money laundering laws and may need a banking license in certain situations.
+On December 5, 2013, a proposal was submitted by 45 Swiss Parliament members concerning digital sustainability, which urged the Swiss government to evaluate the opportunities for utilization of bitcoin by the country's financial sector.In response to the parliament's recommendations, the Swiss Federal Council issued a report on virtual currencies in June 2014.
+
+
+=== Norway ===
+In December 2013, the Norwegian Tax Administration said that they did not classify bitcoin as currency but rather as an asset. Wealth tax is applied on profits. In business, use of bitcoin will be subject to tax sale tax.
+
+
+=== Luxembourg ===
+In Luxembourg, the first BitLicense was issued in October 2015.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Central bank digital currency
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References =="
+Cryptocurrencies in Puerto Rico,"With the arrival of several figures led by Brock Pierce following the passing of hurricane Maria in 2017, cryptocurrency became an issue of media and economic interest in the Caribbean archipelago of Puerto Rico. These traders relocated to the island motivated by the tax incentives provided by Act 20-2012 and Act 22-2012 (both now part of as Act 60–2019) and the tropical setting. They claimed that their intention was to create an utopian blockchain ""crypto city"" or ""community"", which at various times became known by the names of Puertopia, Crypto Rico, Puerto Crypto or Sol, calling themselves Puertopians. The ideas promoted by this group have prompted a mixed reception, being favored by gubernatorial administrations but also spawning protests from political and grassroots movements that raise concerns about disaster capitalism, gentrification and settler colonialism. Puerto Rico has earned a reputation as a hub for cryptocurrency enthusiasts and, according to Pierce, by 2021 the archipelago had the largest quantity of coins concentrated in a single place in the world.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Background ===
+As a semi-autonomous territory that ""belongs to, but is not part of"" the United States, Puerto Rico is regarded as a foreign jurisdiction by the IRS for tax purposes. However, despite this the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA), does not apply. In 2012, the Promotion of Export Services Act (more commonly known as ""Act 20"") and the Act to Promote the Relocation of Individual Investors to Puerto Rico (a.k.a. ""Act 22""), which facilitated the export of services and offered significant tax exemptions to wealthy individuals that were willing to relocate to Puerto Rico respectively, were passed with the intention of attracting venture funding. Most of those who arrived have focused on the acquisition of real estate and other forms of economic development. In 2019, the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico approved Act 60, which integrated all preexisting laws into a new Incentives Code.Roosevelt Roads Naval Station closed down in 2004, after the United States Navy was ousted from Vieques, Puerto Rico, following a wave of civilian protests. Since then, a number of initiatives have been proposed, but the redevelopment of the zone has stalled and only specific facilities have been repurposed. Among the projects that did not make it past the planning stage are the Caribbean Riviera mega-project under Luis Fortuño, the involvement of Clark Realty Capital in housing/commercial projects under Alejandro García Padilla and a large scale amusement park under Ricardo Rosselló. Others, such as the filming of productions like Wrecked and Crossbones or Marine Environmental Remediation Group's boat recycling facility were either temporary or short lived.
+In its current form, cryptocurrency was introduced as a response to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and anonymous figure Satoshi Nakamoto is considered its popularizer. Bitcoin, created in 2009, was the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Since then, numerous others have been created. An increase in the value of these cryptocurrencies has made several traders wealthy, with some oscillating between being millionaires and billionaires.
+
+
+=== Influx of crypto traders, Puertopia ===
+Michael Terpin, founder of BitAngels, claims to be the first crypto investor to relocate by doing so in 2016 and has been active in promoting the settlement of more foreigners as part of a practice that he does not consider ""colonization"". On September 20, 2017, hurricane Maria passed over Puerto Rico, creating what is considered the worst natural disaster on record for the archipelago. Only months later, a group of cryptocurrency figures led by Bitcoin Foundation chairman Brock Pierce relocated to Old San Juan, gathering in hotels and purchasing a colonial building that previously housed a children's museum. The first reference to this migration in media happened in January 2018, when Jeremy Gardner said that ""they're going to build a modern-day Atlantis out there"". The new arrivals numbered in the dozens and were mostly composed by executives of firms (Ethereum Blockchain-as-a-Service entrepreneur Andrew Keys), early adopters, nouveau riche men that had benefited from the early adoption of bitcoin and its value rising in 2017, traders and investors, among other enthusiasts. According to a New York Times article that quoted Pierce, it was the economic environment that followed which convinced them to choose the ravaged archipelago. In the words of Fifth Avenue Capital's Stephen Morris, ""It's only when everything's been swept away that you can make a case for rebuilding from the ground up"". The group unveiled plans to build Puertopia or Sol, a city in which all transactions were made via digital currency and contracts codified in the underlying technology of blockchain. Located at in the derelict remains of Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, the project would include the first cryptocurrency-exclusive bank in the world and was to be a showcase for the group to promote their vision of ""what a crypto future could look like"". The group claimed that it would be investing in the local economy, in particular the widespread reconstruction efforts following the hurricane.
+The Puertopians are part of a larger group of clients that have fueled the creation of local businesses dealing with tax and legal advice for the incoming super rich. A number of foreign-owned banking institutions were created in Puerto Rico, including FV Bank, Mercantile Bank International (SJMX, formerly San Juan Merchantile Exchange) and a new iteration of the historical Medici Bank, all of which welcomed transactions in cryptocurrency. Bitcoin ATMs hosted by Bitstop and Athena began being installed, while Robots Inc. was granted a patent for a similar device. A pattern of decline in the value of digital coins during 2018 directly resulted in the dissolution of the San Juan-based noble bank. As the Puertopians began to lose money, some left Puerto Rico, while others adopted defensive measures while the possibility of a prolonged market crash, known as the ""crypto winter"", was forthcoming. As traders lost money initiatives involving local non-profits were abandoned, mainly those directed towards aiding the communities that remained affected by the hurricane. The goal to build a crypto city remains unfulfilled, with recent initiatives at Roosevelt Roads focusing on restoring its airport and establishing a spaceport. Pierce, who purchased a colonial building from the Catholic Church in 2020, has claimed that ""these were loose ideas, nothing of which was concrete of well thought out"". Puertopians themselves broadened their presence in the archipelago, retaining their home base in Old San Juan but acquiring properties in Dorado, Humacao, Rincón and the island municipality of Vieques.During the summer of 2020, Puerto Rican software mogul Orlando Bravo became interested in bitcoin while vacationing at Dorado, purchasing an undisclosed amount of it and publicly speaking in its favor. By 2021, the influx had increased again, with the relocation of cryptocurrency hedge funds Pantera and Redwood City Ventures as well as the mining operations of CoinMint. Among these was Frances Haugen, who earned notoriety after exposing the inner workings of Facebook and had purchased enough cryptocurrency ""at the right time"". At the time, retired baseball player Alfredo Escalera publicly lobbied for more public policy, stating that ""our governors should educate themselves about the development of the technology, the mining of the coins and the programming of the 'blockchains' to attract the thousands of investors that engage in this business worldwide."" Shortly after moving to Dorado, influencer Logan Paul became involved into a cryptocurrency named Dink Doink, which has been labelled as a ""scam"" by Nasdaq. Crypto personality Amanda Cassatt and her husband Samuel relocated, as more individuals arrived from different states. However, this wave also brought individuals that did not receive Act 60 exemptions but also became involved with the community, such as Keiko Yoshino of the Puerto Rico Blockchain Trade Association.Aware that the perception of the group became increasing contentious as property prices in San Juan increased, the Puertopians began to rebrand their efforts as ""more inclusive, empowering and communal"", individual-owned and linked them to the advent of Web3. As such, weekly events known as CryptoCurious and Crypto Mondays are organized with the general public as their targets. Local crypto entrepreneurs such as Juan Carlos Pedreira began to capitalize. According to the DEDC, at least 31 individuals classified as ""crypto entrepreneurs"" arrived to Puerto Rico in 2021, with potentially up to 100 involved in the industry. Among local corporations, the Díaz Fontanez Group was the first to pay the salary of its employees in digital currency, citing the move as a response to growing inflation in international markets.The 2022 Puerto Rico Digital Trends Study published by the Sales & Marketing Executives Association (CME) placed overall awareness of cryptocurrencies in 67.7%, of which 40.6% ""does not understand"" how they work and another 30.5% ""does not consider them trustworthy"", with another 14.5% considering them ""the money of the future"". The temporary suspension of the physical presence requisite prior to hurricane Fiona led to YouTuber/investor Hayden Bowles publicly announcing that he was leaving the island prior to the event, sparking public backlash. Likewise, criticism was targeted at the group for failing to deliver on most of their proposals, including the construction of decentralized power grids backed by blockchain technology, following Maria and for failing to deliver funds gathered after the latest storm to local NPOs.
+
+
+=== House of Representatives of Puerto Rico hearings on regulation ===
+In January 2022, Speaker Tatito Hernández of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), who has argued in favor of employing blockchain for tasks such as fighting public corruption, revealed that the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico was investigating the topic of creating a regulatory frame for cryptocurrency. House Resolution 527 was passed with the expressed intent of studying “the concept of blockchain as a government filing system, as well as the use of digital coins (cryptocurrency) as an accepted form of payment in Puerto Rico"". Jesús Manuel Ortiz of the PPD, chair of the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico's Government Commission and who has publicly endorsed cryptocurrencies as the “scaffold of the worldwide economy in the near future"", was responsible for the investigation. According to a February 2022 report, the Puerto Rico Department of Treasury has established that the acquisition of property and real estate using cryptocurrencies has become widespread in Puerto Rico. All of those involved in the hearings acknowledged that such transactions had become pervasive.In representation of the PRDT, Ángel L. Pantoja recommend following the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidelines on the topic, given the political status of Puerto Rico and a lack of precedent. Natalia Zequeira, Financial Institutions Commissioner, emphasized that the volatility of cryptocurrencies had convinced banks to adopt “conservative positions"" and after listing what she perceived as positives and negatives, concluded that once the regulatory framework is in place “Puerto Rico cannot fall behind. The future is all about markets, transactions and digital currency. It is imperative for us to be at the forefront of this technology"". Speaking for the Puerto Rico Bankers Association, Zoimé Álvarez argued that in order to comply with Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation standards regulatory controls were required to prevent illegal activity such as “money laundering [or] terrorism financing"". Afterwards, Ortiz made it clear that he had been satisfied and anticipated that bill will be presented to regulate cryptocurrencies in the jurisdiction.On November 7, 2022, the Government Commission issued a positive report signed by Ortiz for the investigation of potential uses for the implementation of blockchain for public purposes and regulating cryptocurrencies. 
+The DDEC created its own regulatory framework in February 2023, when it extended Law 60 tax exemptions to blockchain-related ventures. Days later, the PRHOR defeated P.C. 1565 with votes of 24-14, which was promoted by Ortiz and intended to create a task force, the Comité Asesor de la Asamblea Legislativa para implementar la tecnología Blockchain, to create a plan for the implementation of the technology within 180 days.
+
+
+=== The 2022–2023 Crypto Winter ===
+As the price of all cryptocurrencies fell systematically throughout 2022 and scandals such as FTX’s sudden bankruptcy contributed to the collapse, the Puertopians publicly dismissed the issue as cyclical and continued operations unconcerned, this despite facing additional criticism that Puerto Ricans that wanted to begin startups within the industry received little to no support from the investors. When queried, some shrugged off thousands of dollars in losses and that less people were attending their events at San Juan by saying that the devaluation had repelled “crypto tourists” away, even claiming that the “quality” of attendees had improved. The group was also tied to other incidents that took place within the archipelago, including the death of DeFi developer Nikolai Mushegian at Condado following a paranoid Tweet about being pursued by intelligence agencies including the CIA and Mossad, their “sp[ies]” and what he called the “pedo elite”. The market collapse led to a decrease in settlers that moved to Puerto Rico expecting to become rich from their investment in the future, while sobriety overtook the longstanding Puertopians.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+
+
+=== Government and politics ===
+The Puerto Rico Department of Treasury declined to comment on the issue, recognizing that they did not have an expert in cryptocurrency at the moment, but noted a future interest in having one. The Puerto Rico Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions has seen sufficient legitimacy to approve the existence of ""Digital Internacional Bank"" licenses, under the interpretation of international banking laws. However, unlike other locations where banks have suppressed the use of cryptocurrency, the Puerto Rico Bankers Association notes through president Zoimé Álvarez that they did not consider themselves ""enemies"" and that ""[cryptocurrency] is here to stay, only being concerned by the irreversible nature of payments. When first interviewed about the topic, governor Ricardo Rosselló of the conservative Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) expressed that ""there is still a lot of work to be done and giving clarity that this is not used for money laundering or it's not used for other areas"", but favored widely adopting blockchain as a ""game changer"". Despite being in charge of the conference (named ""Puerto Crypto"") where relevant legislation is to be addressed, Manuel A. Laboy Rivera Secretary of Economic Development and Commerce of Puerto Rico (DEDC), expressed a lack of knowledge about the real reach of bitcoin within the Puerto Rican economy (despite it being recorded since the early 2010s) and speculated that some changes to the local financial regulations may be needed. When prodded about what these would involve, he states that they would revolve around fraud protection. Corporative lawyer Antonio Bauzá agreed and argued in favor of audits. In 2021, Carlos Fontán director of the invcentives program of the DEDC reaffirmed the government's assessment that the Puertopians were creating jobs.By the time that he left office among public protests related to the Telegramgate, Rosselló was regarded as ""supportive of crypto-entrepreneurial efforts "" and among his final appointments was SJMX founder James Robert 'Bo' Collins to the board of Invest Puerto Rico. Wanda Vázquez Garced, who held the office for two years, increased the yearly fee paid by Act 60 beneficiaries from $300 to $5,000. Elected in 2020, PNP governor Pedro Pierluisi, who had publicly supported the tax incentives since his days as Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, resumed the favorable public policy and hosted a dinner with Pierce and cryptocurrency-friendly New York mayor Eric Adams. By 2019, the legal ramifications the topic was discussed in the University of Puerto Rico School of Law's Revista Jurídica, where Verónica S. Otero Rivera concluded that Acts 20 and 22 were designed for other types of business and that new legislation was needed for the model used by digital coins.In 2021, OCIF commissioner Natalia Zequeira defended that a lack for formal regulation responded to an aversion to ""innovation"" in entities such as FDIC. She was later responsible for licensing the digital-asset custody and settlement services that the office authorized to FV Bank in November 2022. OCIF also ordered Athena to cease and desist its cryptocurrency operations in Puerto Rico until it received a MSB from the government, this after the unregulated operation of the BATMs was linked to irregular transactions involving stolen money and fake IDs in the municipality of Manatí.Liberal factions including the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (MVC) have opposed the settlement of Puerto Rico by beneficiaries of Act 60,  believing that it promotes displacement, with María de Lourdes Santiago presenting a bill to repel the benefits. Former gubernatorial candidate for the defunct Working People's Party, Rafael Bernabe Riefkohl, linked the influx of foreigners to the economic policies that the United States imposed following the Spanish–American War, and how they decimated the sugar industry in Puerto Rico, the subsequent implementation Operation Bootstrap and their relationship to previous migrations. In December 2022, Avraham Eisenberg was arrested in the island for pilfering more than a hundred million dollars by exploiting the Mango Markets platform to accumulate cryptocurrency loans, prior to this he was given Act 60 benefits by DDEC secretary Manuel Cidre.
+
+
+=== Media ===
+The largest newspaper in Puerto Rico, El Nuevo Día, has been covering cryptocurrency topics since 2014, with articles ranging from bitcoin adoption and local regulation to the establishment of Medici Bank. Most of these articles have been informative as opposed to investigative, with exceptions including a piece where Sharon Minelli Pérez created a profile of the ""crypto enthusiasts"" that had become involved since the ""crypto boom"" of 2017. Christian Gabriel Ramos Segarra has authored several articles about the topic for El Vocero in 2021, initially discussing the lack of formal regulation and how, in conjunction with price fluctuations of BTC, this had slowed down the widespread adoption among the general populace in Puerto Rico, citing that by this point the bulk of those involved was still in the influx of foreign traders. In another piece, he echoed the arguments of several traders including Pierce about the potential of cryptocurrency for economic development in Puerto Rico if properly regulated. When price of bitcoin improved in 2021, Aiola Virella of Metro Puerto Rico interviewed Juan Carlos Pedreira the concept of that coin displacing traditional currency within some markets as inflation increased.When the Puertopians first made their presence known in 2018, Rafael Lenín López of WAPA-TV began an investigation for NotiCentro, the channel's news service. In it he interviewed a number of government officials, technological experts and economists, whose reactions varied between cautious support and skepticism. Eva Lloréns Vélez of Caribbean Business wrote about the regulation that would be required before Puerto Rico could become ""a crypto-paradise"", citing figures that discussed the legal and banking aspects of the idea. This publication also gave general coverage of other local topics related to cryptocurrency including regulation, the proposal for a digital coin known as ""Kokicoin"", the relationship between Noble bank and Tether and conferences including CoinAgenda. Digital newspaper NotiCel has published several pieces on cryptocurrency, with its staff adopting differing views on the subject following an initial report on the arrival of the Puertopians and the tax incentives. Eric De León Soto has written informative pieces about crypto banking and a proposal to create an investment fund promoted by Pierce. However, Adriana De Jesús Salamán has critical about the group, noting the suspicions surrounding them and writing about the acquisition of properties in Old San Juan and the arrival of the Special Economic Zones, which she labelled as ""another experiment for Puerto Rico from the crypto-community"". In 2022, Jeremy Ortiz Portalatín of Telemundo Puerto Rico's (WKAQ-TV) newsservice published an investigative series where he interviewed traders and politicians within the context of the ongoing inflation of the United States dollar, discussing the Puertopians, regulation and the Metaverse.Abroad, journalists like Larisa Yarovaya and Brian Lucey of The Conversation have expressed concerns that the creation of Sol would result in crypto-colonialism. Mariah Espada of Time focused her coverage on the activists that opposed Act 60 beneficiaries including ""crypto currency tycoons"" and the perception that it fuels displacement and gentrification. Neil Strauss of Rolling Stone opted to publish a biographical article of Pierce and documented his day-to-day life as he intended ""to turn Puerto Rico into a Burning Man utopia"", discussing a number of personal quirks which prompt comparisons to cult leaders and hippies, but establishing his position as the de facto leader of the Puertopians. Chloe Watlington of The Baffler, disregarded the Puertopians' proposal to build a techno-utopia as a ""battery of garbled catchphrases and slogans masquerading as business plans"" and linked them ""old colonial scams in Puerto Rico"". Mark Elwood of the New York Post wrote positively about the administration's approach to what it calls the ""Puerto Crypto movement"", comparing it to Singapore and arguing that it's going to ""reshape Puerto Rico into America's homegrown answer to Dubai"". Samantha Bee was critical of the arrival of these traders to Puerto Rico, calling the group ""tax locusts"" and hosting Manuel Natal in a segment of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee titled ""Tax Locusts and Blockchain Bros"".
+Canadian author Naomi Klein shares a similar opinion in The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists, asserting that ""the true religion here is tax avoidance"". Writing for British newspaper The Times, Josh Glancy described the group as more idealistic, ""self-assured and utopian"" than Sillicon Valley tycoons, presenting them in a generally favorable light as an emerging ""technological network"".
+
+
+=== Other demographics ===
+Upon their arrival the general populace the concept was not well understood and often compared to the Iraqi dinar investment scam. In contrast, the idea of cryptocurrency was favored by young Puerto Ricans that are interested in technology, entrepreneurs and those involved in the creative industries. By 2018 some businesses began accepting bitcoin as a form of payment, as did individuals involved in services such as touristic taxis and Uber drivers. The first health care institution to accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment in Puerto Rico was Profesional Hospital Guaynabo located in the eponymous municipality. The media attention to the topic resulted in better awareness in the following years, reaching more blue collar workers. The increase in adoption also led to cryptocurrency being used by criminals that began requesting scam payments in bitcoin. Parallel to this, grassroots movements that oppose gentrification began to publicly oppose the arrival of the Puertopians along other beneficiaries of Act 60, led by an organization known as #AbolishAct60, which considers the acquisition of real state by these traders as a ""predatory"" practice as it takes place in conjunction with an ongoing migration of Puerto Ricans to Florida and other locations. The first instance took place in October 2018, when a young woman confronted Pierce while he was hosting an event named #RestartWeek. Local feminist group Taller Salud has protested Act 60 as it believes that ""tax havens and inaccessible incentives for natives that have strengthened and upheld colonialism."" This animosity extended to Puerto Ricans that cooperated with the group, who were referred to as ""vendepatrias"" (traitors) for their involvement. Amid a pattern of foreigners acquiring the increasingly expensive buildings in Old San Juan, posters depicting the Puertopians (in particular Pierce) with the caption “this is what our colonizers look like"" began appearing throughout the colonial city along other beneficiaries of Act 60.Among members of the stateside Puerto Ricans, artists Liat Berdugo and Emily Martinez, collectively known as Anxious to Make, created an exhibit known as ""Eternal Boy Playground"" that documented the reactions of people that opposed the arrival of the first wave cryptocurrency traders as disaster capitalism. Others like Diáspora en Resistencia have been actively trying to point the attention of Congress towards the issue, both to scrutinize Act 60 beneficiaries and to pressure the local government into action. In September 2022, Bad Bunny released the video for ""El Apagón"", which criticizes gentrification and a number of interest groups including ""crypto bros"".
+
+
+== References ==
+Footnotes"
+Cryptocurrency and crime,"Cryptocurrency and crime describe notable examples of cybercrime related to theft (or the otherwise illegal acquisition) of cryptocurrencies and some methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies that have been used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency.According to blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, 0.15% of known cryptocurrency transactions conducted in 2021 were involved in illicit activities like cybercrime, money laundering and terrorism financing, representing a total of $14 billion.
+
+
+== Background ==
+
+There are various types of cryptocurrency wallets available, with different layers of security, including devices, software for different operating systems or browsers, and offline wallets.
+Novel exploits unique to blockchain transactions exist, aiming to generate unintended outcomes for those involved. One of the more well-known issues that open the possibility for exploits on Bitcoin is the transaction malleability problem.The Immunefi Crypto Losses 2022 Report lists industry losses from frauds and hacking as a combined total of US$3.9 billion for the year, and at US$8 billion for 2021.
+
+
+== Notable thefts ==
+In 2018, around US$1.7 billion in cryptocurrency was lost to scams, theft and fraud. In the first quarter of 2019, the amount of such losses rose to US$1.2 billion. 2022 was a record year for cryptocurrency theft, according to Chainalysis, with US$3.8 billion stolen worldwide during 125 system hacks, including US$1.7 billion stolen by ""North Korea-linked hackers"".
+
+
+=== Exchanges ===
+Notable cryptocurrency exchange compromises resulting in the loss of cryptocurrencies include:
+
+Between 2011 and 2014, US$350 million worth of bitcoin was stolen from Mt. Gox.
+In 2016, US$72 million was stolen through exploiting Bitfinex's exchange wallet, users were refunded.
+On December 7, 2017, Slovenian cryptocurrency exchange NiceHash reported that hackers had stolen over $70 million using a hijacked company computer.
+On December 19, 2017, Yapian, the owner of South Korean exchange Youbit, filed for bankruptcy after suffering two hacks that year. Customers were still granted access to 75% of their assets.
+In 2018, cryptocurrencies worth US$400 million were stolen from Coincheck.
+In May 2018, Bitcoin Gold had its transactions hijacked and abused by unknown hackers. Exchanges lost an estimated $18 m and Bitcoin Gold was delisted from Bittrex after it refused to pay its share of the damages.
+In June 2018, South Korean exchange Coinrail was hacked, losing over $37M worth of cryptos. The hack worsened an already ongoing cryptocurrency selloff by an additional $42 billion.
+On July 9, 2018, the exchange Bancor, whose code and fundraising had been subjects of controversy, had $23.5 million in cryptocurrency stolen.
+Zaif US$60 million in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Monacoin was stolen in September 2018
+Binance In 2019 cryptocurrencies worth US$40 million were stolen.
+Africrypt founders are suspected of absconding in June 2021 with US$3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin
+PolyNetwork (DeFi) suffered the loss of US$611 million in a theft in August 2021.
+Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid was compromised in August 2021 resulting in a loss of US$97 million worth of digital coins
+Cream Finance was subject to a US$29 million theft in August, 2021 and $130 million October 28, 2021.
+On December 2, 2021, users of the BadgerDAO DeFi lost around $118,500,000 worth of bitcoin and $679,000 worth of ethereum tokens in a front-end attack. A compromised API key of the Cloudflare content delivery network account allowed injecting a malicious script to the web interface. BadgerDAO ""paused"" all smart contracts due to user complaints.
+On December 6, 2021, the cryptocurrency exchange BitMart lost around $135M worth of Ethereum and an estimated $46 million in other cryptocurrencies due to a breach of two of its wallets. Although BitMart stated that it would reimburse its clients, many BitMart clients have not received any money from the exchange as of January 2022.
+On December 12, 2021, users of VulcanForge lost around $135M worth of PYR due to breaches of multiple wallets. Partnering centralized exchanges had been notified of the hack and they have pledged to seize any stolen funds upon deposit.
+On January 27, 2022, Qubit Finance (DeFi) lost around $80M worth of Binance Coin due to a flaw in the smart contract that enabled the withdrawal of the said amount in exchange for a deposit of 0 ETH.
+In March 2022, the largest cryptocurrency theft of the year, US$625 million in ether and USD coin was stolen from the Ronin Network. Hacked nodes were finally discovered when a user reported being unable to withdraw funds. The heist was later linked to Lazarus Group, a North Korean state-backed hacking collective, by the U.S. Treasury Department.
+On September 20, 2022, Wintermute was hacked resulting in theft of US$160 million. The company attributed the vulnerability to a service used by the platform that generates vanity addresses for digital accounts.
+On September 25, 2023, it was reported that $200 million was stolen by hackers from crypto firm Mixin Network. The company stated that the database of its network's cloud service provider was attacked by hackers resulting in the loss of the assets.
+
+
+=== Wallets ===
+The Parity Wallet has had two security incidents amounting to 666,773 ETH lost or stolen. In July 2017, due to a bug in the multisignature code, 153,037 ETH (approximately US$32 million at the time) were stolen. In November 2017, a subsequent multisignature flaw in Parity made 513,774 ETH (about US$150 million) unreachable; as of March 2019, the funds were still frozen.
+
+
+=== Energy ===
+Notable cases of electricity theft to mine proof-of-work cryptocurrencies include:
+
+In February 2021 Malaysian police arrested six men involved in a Bitcoin mining operation which had stolen US$2 million in electricity
+Ukraine authorities shut down an underground gaming and cryptocurrency farm in July, 2021, accused of stealing $259,300 of electricity each month
+In July 2021 Malaysian authorities destroyed 1,069 cryptocurrency mining systems accused of stealing electricity from the grid
+In May, 2021 UK authorities closed a suspected bitcoin mine after Western Power Distribution found an illegal connection to the electricity supply
+
+
+=== Blockchains ===
+
+
+==== Bitcoin ====
+There have been many cases of bitcoin theft. As of December 2017, around 980,000 bitcoins—over five percent of all bitcoin in circulation��had been lost on cryptocurrency exchanges.One type of theft involves a third party accessing the private key to a victim's bitcoin address, or of an online wallet. If the private key is stolen, all the bitcoins from the compromised address can be transferred. In that case, the network does not have any provisions to identify the thief, block further transactions of those stolen bitcoins, or return them to the legitimate owner.Theft also occurs at sites where bitcoins are used to purchase illicit goods. In late November 2013, an estimated US$100 million in bitcoins were allegedly stolen from the online illicit goods marketplace Sheep Marketplace, which immediately closed. Users tracked the coins as they were processed and converted to cash, but no funds were recovered and no culprits were identified. A different black market, Silk Road 2, stated that during a February 2014 hack, bitcoins valued at $2.7 million were taken from escrow accounts.Sites where users exchange bitcoins for cash or store them in ""wallets"" are also targets for theft. Inputs.io, an Australian wallet service, was hacked twice in October 2013 and lost more than $1 million in bitcoins. GBL, a Chinese bitcoin trading platform, suddenly shut down on 26 October 2013; subscribers, unable to log in, lost up to $5 million worth of bitcoin. In late February 2014 Mt. Gox, one of the largest virtual currency exchanges, filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo amid reports that bitcoins worth US$350 million had been stolen. Flexcoin, a bitcoin storage specialist based in Alberta, Canada, shut down in March 2014 after saying it discovered a theft of about $650,000 in bitcoins. Poloniex, a digital currency exchange, reported in March 2014 that it lost bitcoins valued at around $50,000.
+In January 2015 UK-based bitstamp, the third busiest bitcoin exchange globally was hacked and US$5 million in bitcoins were stolen. February 2015 saw a Chinese exchange named BTER lose bitcoins worth nearly $2 million to hackers.A major bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex, was compromised by the 2016 Bitfinex hack, when nearly 120,000 bitcoins (around US$71 million) was stolen in 2016. Bitfinex was forced to suspend its trading. The theft was the second-largest bitcoin heist ever, dwarfed only by the Mt. Gox theft in 2014. According to Forbes, ""All of Bitfinex's customers... will stand to lose money. The company has announced a cut of 36.067% across the board."" Following the hack the company refunded customers. In 2022, the US government recovered 94,636 bitcoin (worth approximately $3.6 billion at the time of recovery) from the 2016 thefts of the Bitfinex exchange, reported as the ""largest financial seizure"" in U.S. history. By February 2022, the amount of bitcoin stolen in 2016 had increased in value to $4.5 billion. Two people were arrested for the thefts in 2022; married couple Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and rapper Heather ""Razzlekhan"" Morgan were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.On May 7, 2019, hackers stole over 7000 Bitcoins from the Binance Cryptocurrency Exchange, at a value of over 40 million US dollars. Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng stated: ""The hackers used a variety of techniques, including phishing, viruses, and other attacks... The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time.""Thefts have raised safety concerns. Charles Hayter, founder of the digital currency comparison website CryptoCompare said, ""It's a reminder of the fragility of the infrastructure in such a nascent industry."" According to the hearing of U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business on April 2, 2014, ""these vendors lack regulatory oversight, minimum capital standards and don't provide consumer protection against loss or theft.""
+
+
+==== Ethereum ====
+
+In June 2016, hackers exploited a vulnerability in The DAO to steal US$50 million. Subsequently, the currency was forked into Ethereum Classic, and Ethereum, with the latter continuing with the new blockchain without the exploited translations.On November 21, 2017, Tether announced that it had been hacked, losing $31 million in USDT from its core treasury wallet. The company has 'tagged' the stolen currency, hoping to 'lock' them in the hacker's wallet (making them unspendable).In 2022, hackers created a signature account on a blockchain bridge called ""Wormhole"" and stole more than $300 million worth of ether.
+
+
+== Fraud ==
+
+
+=== Exit scams and ponzi schemes through initial coin offerings (ICOs) ===
+Most exit scams (or rugpulls) as well as many ponzi schemes involving cryptocurrencies are performed through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). As an example, according to a report by Satis Group almost 80% of all projects launched through an ICO in 2017 were scams. These scams usually involve attracting investments from mostly retail investors, inflating the price and the perpetrators subsequently abandoning the project in question after selling off their own shares.The novelty of ICOs accounts for the current lack of governmental regulation. This lack of regulatory measures as well as the pseudonymity of cryptocurrency transactions and their  international nature across countless jurisdictions in many different countries can make it much more difficult to identify and take legal action against perpetrators involved in these scams. Since 2017 the SEC has been actively pursuing groups and individuals responsible for ICO-related scams.
+
+
+==== Examples of ICO-related scams ====
+AriseCoin (AriseBank): AriseBank marketed itself as the world's first decentralized bank, falsely claiming to be able to offer FDIC-insured accounts, VISA-cards as well as services related to cryptocurrency and making other false statements. AriseBank promoted its AriseCoin through celebrity endorsement and social media in order to raise the US$1 billion the company was aiming for. Their ICO was halted by the SEC in early 2018 with their CEO and COO receiving a fine of US$2.7 million.
+BitConnect: Bitconnect was among the highest performing cryptocurrencies in 2017, promising investors enormous returns through a trading bot. At its height it reached a market capitalization of US$3.4 billion. In early 2018 the exchanged ceased to operate with investors losing millions of dollars, amounting to a total of US$14.5 million. It later turned out that the initial profits were generated through a ponzi scheme by paying earlier customers with money made through newer customers. Legal action against the perpetrators was taken on an international scale.
+Centra: Centra was a Miami-based company claiming to offer a cryptocurrency-based debit card backed by VISA and Mastercard. The company raised US$32 million by October 2017 through an ICO and few months later performing an exit-scam. In April 2018 two of the founders were arrested. It was soon revealed that neither Mastercard nor VISA backed the company in their alleged efforts.
+Modern Tech (PinCoin/iFan): Based in Vietnam, Modern Tech hosted two separate ICOs for PinCoin as well as iFan promising monthly returns of 48%. After the initial success the founders ran off with approximately US$660 million raised from 32,000 investors. The founders are still at large and none of the funds have been retrieved.
+PlexCoin: After Dominic Lacroix and Sabrina Paradis-Rogers (the founders of PlexCoin) had officially raised around US$15 million through a fraudulent ICO in August 2017 while promising a return of 1,354 % within a month, the SEC filed a civil complaint in December of the same year against them and sought an injunction to cease those sales, freeze the assets involved, pay civil penalties and prohibit the ones responsible behind the token launch from participating in any future offerings of cryptocurrency. Shortly after Lacroix was sentenced to two months in prison and fined CA$110,000 by the Quebec Superior Court. The SEC's proceedings lead to seven-figure fines for the defendants in 2019 and a retrieval of the investors' funds. During the proceedings the SEC was able to prove that the success of the ICO was inflated by the founders who in fact had raised US$8.5 million instead of the US$15 million they had announced.
+
+
+=== Ponzi schemes ===
+Ponzi schemes are another common  form of utilizing blockchainbased technologies to commit fraud. Most schemes of this sort use multi-level marketing schemes to encourage investors to conduct risky investments. Onecoin is one of the more notable examples of cryptocurrency-ponzi schemes: Founded in 2014 by Ruja Ignatova, OneCoin is estimated to have generated US$4 billion in income. While at least in China some of the investors' funds have been recovered and several members of the organisation arrested in the U.S., Ignatova herself is still at large.
+
+
+=== Money laundering ===
+
+Due to the inability of third parties to de-pseudonymize cryptotransactions criminal entities have often resorted to using cryptocurrency to conduct money laundering. Especially ICOs lacking KYC guidelines and anti-money laundering procedures are often used to launder illicit funds due to the pseudonymity offered by them. By using ICOs criminals launder these funds by buying tokens off of legitimate investors and selling them. This issue is intensified through the lack of measures against money laundering implemented by centralized cryptocurrency-exchanges.A well-known early example of money laundering using cryptocurrencies is Silk Road. Shut down in 2013 with its founder Ross Ulbricht indicted for among other counts a money laundering conspiracy, the website was used for several illicit activities including money laundering solely using Bitcoin as a form of payment.Apart from traditional cryptocurrencies, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are also commonly used in connection with money laundering activities. NFTs are often used to perform Wash Trading by creating several different wallets for one individual, generating several fictitious sales and consequently selling the respective NFT to a third party. According to a report by Chainalysis these types of wash trades are becoming increasingly popular among money launderers especially due to the largely anonymous nature of transactions on NFT marketplaces. Auction platforms for NFT sales may face regulatory pressure to comply with anti-money laundering legislation.
+
+
+==== Regulatory measures ====
+Canada is generally regarded as the first state-actor implementing regulatory measures dealing with money laundering conducted by usage of cryptocurrencies. By 2013 the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) — in direct reference to the centralized exchange Mt. Gox — issued regulations making it clear that all crypto-to-fiat exchangers had to apply KYC- as well as anti-money laundering methods. Any suspicious transactions have therefore to be reported to the authorities. Centralized exchanges have to register as money transmitters, with the exact definition of who and what constitutes a money transmitter in the cryptosphere being somewhat blurred and regulations differing between the different states of the U.S. An important exemption from these regulations are decentralized exchanges due to the fact that they do not hold any fiat-currency.As part of the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive of 2015 and in an effort to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, the European Union has issued a directive making all member-states to have to make sure that cryptoexchanges are licensed and registered. The EU is furthermore planning to take measures to ensure that all customers of cryptocurrency-exchanges are to verify their identity as part of the registration process.
+
+
+===== Regarding NFTs =====
+Auction platforms for NFT sales may face regulatory pressure to comply with anti-money laundering legislation. A February 2022 study from the United States Treasury assessed that there was ""some evidence of money laundering risk in the high-value art market,"" including through ""the emerging digital art market, such as the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)."" The study considered how NFT transactions may be a simpler option for laundering money through art by avoiding the transportation or insurance complications in trading physical art. Several NFT exchanges were labeled as virtual asset service providers that may be subject to Financial Crimes Enforcement Network regulations.The European Union has yet to establish specific regulations to combat money laundering through NFTs. The European Commission announced in July 2022 that it is planning to draw regulations regarding that issue by 2024.
+
+
+=== Further examples ===
+Josh Garza, who founded the cryptocurrency startups GAW Miners and ZenMiner in 2014, acknowledged in a plea agreement that the companies were part of a pyramid scheme, and pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2015. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission separately brought a civil enforcement action against Garza, who was eventually ordered to pay a judgment of US$9.1 million plus $700,000 in interest. The SEC's complaint stated that Garza, through his companies, had fraudulently sold ""investment contracts representing shares in the profits they claimed would be generated"" from mining. Garza was later found guilty of fraud and ordered to pay US$9 million and begin serving a 21-month sentence commencing January 2019 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Connecticut.The cryptocurrency community refers to pre-mining, hidden launches, ICO or extreme rewards for the altcoin founders as deceptive practices. This is at times an inherent part of the cryptocurrency's design. Pre-mining refers to the practice of generating the currency before its released to the public.FTX and Alameda Research founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was indicted by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in December 2022 and charged with commodities and wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, as well as with violating campaign finance laws.
+
+
+== Malware ==
+
+
+=== Malware attacks ===
+Some malware can steal private keys for bitcoin wallets allowing the bitcoins themselves to be stolen. The most common type searches computers for cryptocurrency wallets to upload to a remote server where they can be cracked and their coins were stolen. Many of these also log keystrokes to record passwords, often avoiding the need to crack the keys. A different approach detects when a bitcoin address is copied to a clipboard and quickly replaces it with a different address, tricking people into sending bitcoins to the wrong address. This method is effective because bitcoin transactions are irreversible.: 57 One virus, spread through the Pony botnet, was reported in February 2014 to have stolen up to $220,000 in cryptocurrencies including bitcoins from 85 wallets. Security company Trustwave, which tracked the malware, reports that its latest version was able to steal 30 types of digital currency.A type of Mac malware active in August 2013, Bitvanity posed as a vanity wallet address generator and stole addresses and private keys from other bitcoin client software. A different trojan for macOS, called CoinThief was reported in February 2014 to be responsible for multiple bitcoin thefts. The software was hidden in versions of some cryptocurrency apps on Download.com and MacUpdate.
+
+
+=== Ransomware ===
+Many types of ransomware demand payment in bitcoin. One program called CryptoLocker, typically spread through legitimate-looking email attachments, encrypts the hard drive of an infected computer, then displays a countdown timer and demands a ransom in bitcoin, to decrypt it. Massachusetts police said they paid a 2 bitcoin ransom in November 2013, worth more than $1,300 at the time, to decrypt one of their hard drives. Bitcoin was used as the ransom medium in the WannaCry ransomware.
+One ransomware variant disables internet access and demands credit card information to restore it, while secretly mining bitcoins.As of June 2018, most ransomware attackers preferred to use currencies other than bitcoin, with 44% of attacks in the first half of 2018 demanding Monero, which is highly private and difficult to trace, compared to 10% for bitcoin and 11% for Ether.
+
+
+=== Unauthorized mining ===
+
+
+== Phishing ==
+A phishing website to generate private IOTA wallet seed passphrases, and collected wallet keys, with estimates of up to US$4 million worth of MIOTA tokens stolen. The malicious website operated for an unknown amount of time and was discovered in January 2018.
+
+
+== Fraud factories ==
+Fraud factories in Asia traffic workers to scam westerners into buying cryptocurrencies online.
+
+
+== Other incidents ==
+In 2015, two members of the Silk Road Task Force—a multi-agency federal task force that carried out the U.S. investigation of Silk Road—were convicted over charges pertaining to corruption. Former DEA agent, Carl Mark Force, had attempted to extort Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht (""Dread Pirate Roberts"") by faking the murder of an informant. He pleaded guilty to money laundering, obstruction of justice, and extortion under color of official right, and was sentenced to 6.5 years in federal prison. Former U.S. Secret Service agent, Shaun Bridges, pleaded guilty to crimes relating to his diversion of $800,000 worth of bitcoins to his personal account during the investigation, and also separately pleaded guilty to money laundering in connection to another cryptocurrency theft. Bridges were sentenced to almost eight years in federal prison.Gerald Cotten founded QuadrigaCX in 2013, after graduating from the Schulich School of Business in Toronto. Cotten was acting as the sole curator of the exchange. Quadriga had no official bank accounts since banks at the time had no method of managing cryptocurrency. In late 2018, Canada's largest crypto exchange QuadrigaCX lost US$190 million in cryptocurrency when the owner died; he was the only one with knowledge of the password to a storage wallet. The exchange filed for bankruptcy in 2019.Michael Terpin, the founder and chief executive officer of Transform Group, a San Juan, Puerto Rico-based company that advises blockchain businesses on public relations and communications, sued Ellis Pinsky in New York on May 7, 2020, for leading a ""sophisticated cybercrime spree"" that stole US$24 million in cryptocurrency by hacking into Terpin's phone in 2018. Terpin also sued Nicholas Truglia and won a $75.8 million judgment against Truglia in 2019 in California state court.On July 15, 2020, Twitter accounts of prominent personalities and firms, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg and Uber were hacked. Twitter confirmed that it was a coordinated social engineering attack on their own employees. Twitter released its statement six hours after the attack took place. Hackers posted the message to transfer the Bitcoin in a Bitcoin wallet, which would double the amount. The wallet's balance was expected to increase to more than $100,000 as the message spread among the Twitter followers.In 2021, US Authorities carried out a raid on James Zhong's home in Gainesville, Georgia. Authorities found over 51,000 bitcoin that Zhong had stolen from Silk Road between 2012 and 2013. Through an error on Silk Road, Zhong was able to withdraw more bitcoin than what was initially deposited. He concealed his identity and was able to evade authorities for nearly a decade. Zhong ended up pleading guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to 1 year and 1 day in prison along with a forfeiture of all bitcoin.In 2022, the Federal Trade Commission reported that $139 million in cryptocurrency was stolen by romance scammers in 2020. Some scammers targeted dating apps with fake profiles.In early 2022, the Beanstalk cryptocurrency was stripped of its reserves, which were valued at more than US$180 million, after attackers had managed to use borrowed US$80 million in cryptocurrency to buy enough voting rights to transfer the reserves to their own accounts outside the system. It was initially unclear if such an exploit of governance procedures was illegal.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitcoin network § Alleged criminal activity
+Computer security
+Cryptocurrency bubble
+Terrorism financing
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Zandt, Florian (31 March 2022). ""Infographic: The Biggest Crypto Heists"". Statista."
+Cryptocurrency exchange,"A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency exchange can be a market maker that typically takes the bid–ask spreads as a transaction commission for its service or, as a matching platform, simply charges fees.
+Some brokerages which also focus on other assets such as stocks, like Robinhood and eToro, let users purchase but not withdraw cryptocurrencies to cryptocurrency wallets. Dedicated cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase do allow cryptocurrency withdrawals, however.
+
+
+== Operation ==
+A cryptocurrency exchange can typically send cryptocurrency to a user's personal cryptocurrency wallet. Some can convert digital currency balances into anonymous prepaid cards which can be used to withdraw funds from ATMs worldwide while other digital currencies are backed by real-world commodities such as gold.The creators of digital currencies are typically independent of the digital currency exchange that facilitate trading in the currency. In one type of system, digital currency providers (DCP) are businesses that keep and administer accounts for their customers, but generally do not issue digital currency to those customers directly. Customers buy or sell digital currency from digital currency exchanges, who transfer the digital currency into or out of the customer's DCP account. Some exchanges are subsidiaries of DCP, but many are legally independent businesses. The denomination of funds kept in DCP accounts may be of a real or fictitious currency.A digital currency exchange can be a brick-and-mortar business or a strictly online business. As a brick-and-mortar business, it exchanges traditional payment methods and digital currencies. As an online business, it exchanges electronically transferred money and digital currencies.Often, the digital currency exchanges operate outside the Western countries to avoid regulation and prosecution. However, they do handle Western fiat currencies and maintain bank accounts in several countries to facilitate deposits in various national currencies.Decentralized exchanges such as Etherdelta, IDEX and HADAX do not store users' funds on the exchange, but instead facilitate peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading. Decentralized exchanges are resistant to security problems that affect other exchanges, but as of mid 2018 suffer from low trading volumes.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== 2004–2008 Pre crypto regulatory issues ===
+In 2004 three Australian-based digital currency exchange businesses voluntarily shut down following an investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). The ASIC viewed the services offered as legally requiring an Australian Financial Services License, which the companies lacked.In 2006, U.S.-based digital currency exchange business Gold Age Inc., a New York state business, was shut down by the U.S. Secret Service after operating since 2002. Business operators Arthur Budovsky and Vladimir Kats were indicted ""on charges of operating an illegal digital currency exchange and money transmittal business"" from their apartments, transmitting more than $30 million to digital currency accounts. Customers provided limited identity documentation, and could transfer funds to anyone worldwide, with fees sometimes exceeding $100,000. Budovsky and Kats were sentenced in 2007 to five years in prison ""for engaging in the business of transmitting money without a license, a felony violation of state banking law"", ultimately receiving sentences of five years' probation.In April 2007, the U.S. government ordered E-Gold administration to lock/block approximately 58 E-Gold accounts owned and used by The Bullion Exchange, AnyGoldNow, IceGold, GitGold, The Denver Gold Exchange, GoldPouch Express, 1MDC (a Digital Gold Currency, based on e-gold) and others, forcing G&SR (owner of OmniPay) to liquidate the seized assets.
+A few weeks later, E-Gold faced four indictments.
+
+
+=== 2008–2014 advent of crypto currency ===
+Following the launch of a decentralized cryptocurrency bitcoin in 2008 and the subsequent introduction of other cryptocurrencies, many virtual platforms were created specifically for the exchange of decentralized cryptocurrencies. Their regulation differs from country to country.
+In July 2008, WebMoney changed its rules, affecting many exchanges. Since that time it became prohibited to exchange WebMoney to the most popular e-currencies like E-gold, Liberty Reserve and others.
+Also in July 2008 E-gold's three directors accepted a bargain with the prosecutors and pleaded guilty to one count of ""conspiracy to engage in money laundering"" and one count of the ""operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business"". E-gold ceased operations in 2009.
+In 2013, Jean-Loup Richet, a research fellow at ESSEC ISIS, surveyed new money laundering techniques that cybercriminals were using in a report written for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. A common approach to cyber money laundering was to use a digital currency exchanger service which converted dollars into Liberty Reserve and could be sent and received anonymously. The receiver could convert the Liberty Reserve currency back into cash for a small fee. In May 2013, digital currency exchanger Liberty Reserve was shut down after the alleged founder, Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, and four others were arrested in Costa Rica, Spain, and New York ""under charges for conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy and operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business."" Budovsky, a former U.S. citizen and naturalized Costa Rican, was convicted in connection with the 2006 Gold Age raid. More than $40 million in assets were placed under restraint pending forfeiture, and more than 30 Liberty Reserve exchanger domain names were seized. The company was estimated to have laundered $6 billion in criminal proceeds.
+
+
+=== 2014 to present ===
+In February 2014, Mt. Gox, the largest cryptocurrency exchange at the time, suspended trading, closed its website and exchange service, and filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan from creditors. In April 2014, the company began liquidation proceedings. This was the result of a large theft of bitcoins that were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot wallet over time, beginning in late 2011.In December 2021 the MyCryptoWallet exchange called in liquidators.In June 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission launched an enquiry into Binance as an entity and not into the crypto products it was dealing in.On 11 November 2022, FTX, which was at that time the third largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume and valued at $18 billion, entered bankruptcy proceedings in the US court system, following what the exchange termed as ""a liquidity crisis"". The financial impact of the collapse extended beyond the immediate FTX customer base, as reported, while, at a Reuters conference, financial industry executives said that ""regulators must step in to protect crypto investors."" Technology analyst Avivah Litan commented on the cryptocurrency ecosystem that ""everything...needs to improve dramatically in terms of user experience, controls, safety, [and] customer service."" On December 13, 2022, FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, after being extradited from the Bahamas, was charged by the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York with fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the US and violate campaign finance laws.
+
+
+== Examples ==
+In early 2018, Bloomberg News reported the largest cryptocurrency exchanges based on the volume and estimated revenues data collected by CoinMarketCap. Similar statistics was reported on Statista in a survey by Encrybit to understand cryptocurrency exchange problems. According to the survey, the top three cryptocurrency exchanges are:
+
+Binance
+Coinbase
+KrakenOther data points in the survey included the problems that cryptocurrency traders experience with cryptocurrency exchanges and the expectation of traders. Security and high trading fees are the top concerns. The exchanges are all fairly new and privately held. Several do not report basic information such as the names of the owners, financial data, or even the location of the business.
+
+
+== Legislation ==
+
+By 2016, several cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the European Union obtained licenses under the EU Payment Services Directive and the EU Electronic Money Directive. The adequacy of such licenses for the operation of a cryptocurrency exchange has not been judicially tested. The European Council and the European Parliament announced that they will issue regulations to impose stricter rules targeting exchange platforms.
+In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission maintained that ""if a platform offers trading of digital assets that are securities and operates as an ""exchange,"" as defined by the federal securities laws, then the platform must register with the SEC as a national securities exchange or be exempt from registration"". The Commodity Futures Trading Commission now permits the trading of cryptocurrency derivatives publicly.Among the Asian countries, Japan is more forthcoming and regulations mandate the need for a special license from the Financial Services Authority to operate a cryptocurrency exchange. China and Korea remain hostile, with China banning bitcoin miners and freezing bank accounts. While Australia is yet to announce its conclusive regulations on cryptocurrency, it does require its citizens to disclose their digital assets for capital gains tax.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitcoin
+Blockchain
+Cryptocurrency
+Cryptography
+Digital gold currency
+List of bitcoin companies
+Foreign exchange market
+Medium of exchange
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Rash, Wayne (7 March 2018). ""Crypto-Currency Exchanges, Coin Offerings Facing Likely SEC Regulation"". eWeek. Retrieved 9 March 2018."
+Cryptoeconomics,"Cryptoeconomics is an evolving economic paradigm for a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of digital economies and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Cryptoeconomics integrates concepts and principles from traditional economics, cryptography, computer science, and game theory disciplines.  Just as traditional economics provides a theoretical foundation for traditional financial (a.k.a., Centralized Finance or CeFi) services, cryptoeconomics provides a theoretical foundation for DeFi services bought and sold via fiat cryptocurrencies, and executed by smart contracts.
+
+
+== Definitions and goals ==
+The term cryptoeconomics was coined by the Ethereum community during its formative years (2014-2015), but was initially inspired by the application of economic incentives in the original Bitcoin protocol in 2008. Although the phrase is typically attributed to Vitalik Buterin, the earliest public documented usage is a 2015 talk by Vlad Zamfir entitled “What is Cryptoeconomics?” Zamfir's view of cryptoeconomics is relatively broad and academic: “… a formal discipline that studies protocols that govern the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in a decentralized digital economy. Cryptoeconomics is a practical science that focuses on the design and characterization of these protocols”. Alternatively, in a 2017 talk, Buterin's view is more narrow and pragmatic: “… a methodology for building systems that try to guarantee certain kinds of information security properties”.According to Binance, the primary goals of cryptoeconomics are to understand how to fund, design, develop, and facilitate the operations of DeFi systems, and to apply economic incentives and penalties to regulate the distribution of goods and services in emerging digital economies.
+Cryptoeconomics may be considered an evolution of digital economics, which in turn evolved from traditional economics (commonly divided into microeconomics and macroeconomics). Consequently, traditional economic concepts regarding production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services also apply to cryptoeconomics. For example, these include Adam Smith's three basic laws of economics:  Law of Supply and Demand, Law of Self Interest, and Law of Competition. They also include more modern economic concepts, such as fiat money theory and Modern Monetary Theory.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+The historical roots of cryptoeconomics can be traced to the rise of altcoins, prominent among them the Ethereum project, which in 2015 pioneered the integration of smart contracts into its blockchain, thereby enabling a wide range of DeFi applications.
+
+
+== Subdisciplines ==
+Similar to how traditional economics is divided into macroeconomics (regional, national, and international economics) and microeconomics (individual and enterprise economics) subdisciplines, cryptoeconomics can be divided into crypto-macreconomics and crypto-microeconomics subdisciplines.
+
+
+=== Crypto-macroeconomics ===
+Crypto-macroeconomics is concerned with the regional, national, and international regulation of cryptocurrencies and DeFi transactions. The Group of Seven governments' interest in cryptocurrencies became evident in August 2014, when the United Kingdom Treasury commissioned a study of cryptocurrencies and their potential role in the UK economy, and issued its final report in January 2021. In June 2021, El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender. In August 2021, Cuba followed with a legal resolution to recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. However, in September 2021, the government of China, the single largest market for cryptocurrency, declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal, completing a crackdown on cryptocurrency that had previously banned the operation of intermediaries and miners within China.
+
+
+=== Crypto-microeconomics ===
+Crypto-microeconomics is concerned with the individual and enterprise usages of cryptocurrencies and DeFi transactions. A strong majority of USA adults have heard about major cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ether), and 16% say they personally have invested in, traded, or otherwise used one. More than 300 million people use cryptocurrency worldwide, and approximately 46 million Americans have invested in Bitcoin.
+
+
+== Criticisms and controversies ==
+
+Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic bubble by many economists, including Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, Richard Thaler,  Paul Krugman, and Nouriel Roubini. In addition, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been criticized for the amount of electricity required for cryptocurrency “mining” (blockchain transaction validation), and for their being used to purchase illegal goods.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Tokenomics
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Cryptoeconomics In 30 Minutes by Vitalik Buterin (Devcon5) on YouTube
+MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab
+Wikiversity - Cryptoeconomics
+
+
+== Further reading ==
+Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson, Jason Potts. Understanding the Blockchain Economy: An Introduction to Institutional Cryptoeconomics. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019.
+Jian Gong, Wei Xu. Cryptoeconomics: Igniting a New Era of Blockchain. CRC Press, 2020."
+CryptoNote,"CryptoNote is an application layer protocol designed for use with cryptocurrencies that aims to solve specific problems identified in Bitcoin. Namely:
+
+Traceability of transactions
+The proof-of-work function (see Bitcoin network)
+Irregular emission
+Hardcoded constants
+Bulky scripts
+Financial privacyThe protocol powers several decentralized privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies, including Monero, MobileCoin and Safex Cash.Nothing is known about the original author of CryptoNote, ""Nicolas van Saberhagen."" Its mathematical component and motivation are described in the article ""CryptoNote Whitepaper"", released in two editions: in 2012 and in 2013. Launched in the summer of 2012, Bytecoin was the first cryptocurrency to use this technology. Later, several teams launched their networks, based on the Bytecoin code.
+
+
+== Emission ==
+Just like in Bitcoin, miners are rewarded for finding solutions. But the stepped release curve characteristic of Bitcoin has been replaced with a smooth one in CryptoNote: the reward decreases with each block.One implementation of the CryptoNote protocol has resulted in a non-smooth emission curve, specifically, the S-curve of the Safex Blockchain, which was designed to match the Diffusion of Innovations technology adoption curve theory.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Monero (cryptocurrency)
+
+
+== References =="
+Cryptojacking,"Cryptojacking is the act of exploiting a computer to mine cryptocurrencies, often through websites, against the user's will or while the user is unaware. One notable piece of software used for cryptojacking was Coinhive, which was used in over two-thirds of cryptojacks before its March 2019 shutdown. The cryptocurrencies mined the most often are privacy coins—coins with hidden transaction histories—such as Monero and Zcash.Like most malicious attacks on the computing public, the motive is profit, but unlike other threats, it is designed to remain completely hidden from the user. Cryptojacking malware can lead to slowdowns and crashes due to straining of computational resources.Bitcoin mining by personal computers infected with malware is being challenged by dedicated hardware, such as FPGA and ASIC platforms, which are more efficient in terms of power consumption and thus may have lower costs than theft of computing resources.
+
+
+== Notable events ==
+In June 2011, Symantec warned about the possibility that botnets could mine covertly for bitcoins. Malware used the parallel processing capabilities of GPUs built into many modern video cards. Although the average PC with an integrated graphics processor is virtually useless for bitcoin mining, tens of thousands of PCs laden with mining malware could produce some results.In mid-August 2011, bitcoin mining botnets were detected, and less than three months later, bitcoin mining trojans had infected Mac OS X.In April 2013, electronic sports organization E-Sports Entertainment was accused of hijacking 14,000 computers to mine bitcoins; the company later settled the case with the State of New Jersey.German police arrested two people in December 2013 who customized existing botnet software to perform bitcoin mining, which police said had been used to mine at least $950,000 worth of bitcoins.For four days in December 2013 and January 2014, Yahoo! Europe hosted an ad containing bitcoin mining malware that infected an estimated two million computers using a Java vulnerability.Another software, called Sefnit, was first detected in mid-2013 and has been bundled with many software packages. Microsoft has been removing the malware through its Microsoft Security Essentials and other security software.Several reports of employees or students using university or research computers to mine bitcoins have been published. On February 20, 2014, a member of the Harvard community was stripped of his or her access to the university's research computing facilities after setting up a Dogecoin mining operation using a Harvard research network, according to an internal email circulated by Faculty of Arts and Sciences Research Computing officials.Ars Technica reported in January 2018 that YouTube advertisements contained JavaScript code that mined the cryptocurrency Monero.In 2021, multiple zero-day vulnerabilities were found on Microsoft Exchange servers, allowing remote code execution. These vulnerabilities were exploited to mine cryptocurrency.
+
+
+== Detection ==
+Traditional countermeasures of cryptojacking are host-based and not suitable for corporate networks. A potential solution is a network-based approach called Crypto-Aegis, which uses machine learning to detect cryptocurrency activities in network traffic, even when encrypted or mixed with non-malicious data.
+
+
+== References =="
+Colored Coins,"Colored Coins is an open-source protocol built on the Bitcoin 2.0 that allows users to represent and manipulate immutable digital resources on top of Bitcoin transactions. They are a class of methods for representing and maintaining real-world assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, which may be used to establish asset ownership. Colored coins are bitcoins with a mark on them that specifies what they may be used for. Colored coins are also considered the initial step toward NFTs built on top of the Bitcoin network.Although bitcoins are fungible on the protocol level, they can be marked to be distinguished from other bitcoins. These marked coins have specific features that correspond to physical assets like vehicles and stocks, and owners may use them to establish their ownership of physical assets. Colored coins aim to lower transaction costs and complexity so that an asset's owner may transfer ownership as quickly as a Bitcoin transaction.Colored coins are commonly referred to as meta coins because this imaginative coloring is the addition of metadata. This enables a portion of a digital representation of a physical item to be encoded into a Bitcoin address. The value of the colored coins is independent of the current prices of the bitcoin; instead, it is determined by the value of the underlying actual asset/service and the issuer's desire and capacity to redeem the colored coins in return for the equivalent actual asset or service.
+
+
+== History ==
+Colored coins arose due to the necessity to generate new tokens and move assets on the Bitcoin network. These tokens can be used to represent any asset in the world, including equities, commodities, real estate, fiat currency, and even other cryptocurrencies.Yoni Assia, the CEO of eToro, was the first to suggest Colored coins in an article published on March 27, 2012. In the article titled bitcoin 2.X (aka Colored bitcoin), Assia claimed that the initial specifications that bitcoins transmitted using the ""Genesis Transaction"" protocol are recognizable, distinctive, and trackable on the ledger. The idea was growing, and on forums such as Bitcointalk, the concept of colored coins started to take form and gain traction. This culminated in Meni Rosenfeld releasing a whitepaper detailing the colored currencies on December 4, 2012.The next year, in 2013, Assia collaborated with Buterin and two others, Lior Hakim and Meni Rosenfeld, to write Color Coins — BitcoinX, which explored the potential possibilities of colored coins.
+
+
+== Development ==
+Colored coins originated as an afterthought by Bitcoin miners. The blockchain's data space had been utilized to encode numerous metadata values. This unexpected data caused processing issues, causing the network to slow down. The Bitcoin team fixed the problem by including a 40-byte area for storing data as a transaction, as well as an encrypted ledger of transactions and information about the coin's genesis.While bitcoin was developed to be a cryptocurrency, its scripting language makes it possible to associate metadata with individual transactions. By precisely tracing the origin of a particular bitcoin, it is possible to distinguish a group of bitcoins from the others, a process known as bitcoin coloring (a term that served as a basis to the name of the Colored Coins protocol).Through the oversight of an issuing agent or a public agreement, special properties can be associated with colored bitcoins, giving them value beyond the currency's value. One way of looking at this is from the abstraction that there are two distinct layers on top of bitcoin: the lower layer referring to the transaction network based on cryptographic technology and an upper layer that constitutes a distribution network of values encapsulated in the design of colored coins.Due to the fact that colored coins are implemented on top of the Bitcoin infrastructure, allow atomic transactions (exchanged for each other in a single transaction) and can be transferred without the involvement of a third party, they enable the decentralized exchange of items that would not be possible through traditional means.To create colored coins, ""colored"" addresses must be created and stored in ""colored"" wallets controlled by color-aware clients such as Coinprism, Coloredcoins, through Colu, or CoinSpark. The ""coloring"" process is an abstract idea that indicates an asset description, some general instructions symbol, and a unique hash associated with the Bitcoin addresses.In 2013, Flavien Charlon, the CEO of Coinprism, developed a Colored Coin Protocol that permitted the generation of colored currencies by employing specified settings in transaction inputs and outputs. This was Bitcoin's first working Colored Coin Protocol. This protocol, also known as the Open Assets Protocol, is open source and may be integrated into existing systems by anyone.On July 3, 2014, ChromaWay developed the Enhanced Padded-Order-Based Coloring protocol (EPOBC), which simplified the process of manufacturing colored coins for developers, and was one of the first to employ Bitcoin Script's new OP RETURN function.In 2015, Colu created the ColoredCoins platforms and Colored Coins protocol allowing users to build digital assets on top of the Bitcoin blockchain using the Bitcoin 2.0 protocol.
+
+
+== Layers of Colored Coins ==
+Colored coin functions by adding a 4th layer to the Bitcoin blockchain.
+
+1st Layer: Network
+2nd Layer: Consensus
+3rd Layer: Transaction
+4th Layer: Watermark (color)Before ERC token standards were created, the concept of using tokens to represent and monitor real-world items existed. Colored coins were the original notion for representing assets on the blockchain. They are not widely used because the transaction structure required to represent colored coins relies on unspent transaction outputs, which Ethereum-based blockchain systems do not support. The primary concept is to add an attribute (the color) to native transactions that specify the asset it symbolizes. For example, for the Bitcoin blockchain, each Satoshi (the lowest potential value of Bitcoin) might represent a separate item. This notion is mostly used to monitor ownership of tokens and, by extension, assets. There is promise in using colored coins as an effective way of tracing in production situations since the transactions can be merged or divided into new transactions and the color can be readily altered after each transaction. Finally, current tools, like as blockchain explorers, make it simple to view and analyze transactions.The nature of colored coins makes them the first non-fungible tokens to be created on the Bitcoin blockchain, albeit with limited features. Colored coins are transferrable in what is known as atomic transactions. Atomic transactions are transactions that permit the direct peer-to-peer exchange of one token for another in a single transaction. In this way, colored coins allow traditional assets to be decentralized.
+
+
+== Transactions ==
+Colored coin uses an open-source, decentralized peer-to-peer transaction protocol built on top of WEB 2.0. Despite being created to be a protocol for monetary transactions, one of the Bitcoin's advantages is a secure transaction protocol not controlled by a central authority. This is possible through the use of Blockchain, which maintains track of all Bitcoin transactions worldwide.
+A transaction consists of:
+
+A set of inputs such that each input has (a) a Transaction Hash and Output Index of a previous transaction carried out on that bitcoin and (b) a digital signature that serves as cryptographic proof that that input address authorizes the transaction.
+An output set such that each output has (a) the bitcoin value to be transferred to that output and (b) a script that maps a single address to that output.
+
+
+== Staining and transferring ==
+The manipulation of colored coins can be performed through several algorithms, which create a set of rules to be applied to the inputs and outputs of Bitcoin transactions:
+At a given moment, a digital resource is associated with the output of a Bitcoin transaction, called Genesis Transactions. The output of this transaction (currency) belongs to the initial owner recorded in the system (in a case of a jewelry store associating its jewelry with digital resources, the newly colored coins will belong to the store).
+When the resource is transferred or sold, the currency that belongs to the previous owner is consumed, while a new colored currency is created at the outgoing address of the transfer transaction.
+When it is necessary to identify the owner of a coin, it is enough to evaluate the transaction history of that coin from its genesis transaction to the last transaction with unconsumed output. The Bitcoin blockchain has tracking of the public keys associated with each address, such that the owner of the coin can prove ownership by sending a message with the private key associated with that address.Among these algorithms, the best known of them is the EPOBC. The EPOBC algorithm colors the coins by inserting a mark in the nSequence field of the first input of the transaction. It is important to note that the nSequence field is always present in Bitcoin transactions, but it is not used, so it does not generate an overhead for the coloring process. Examples of companies driving the EPOBC are ChromaWallet, Cuber, LHV and Funderbeam.
+
+
+=== Genesis transactions ===
+To issue new colors, it is necessary to release coins of that color through genesis transactions. In general, there are two cases to consider about genesis transactions:
+Non-reissuable colors In this case, the transaction inputs are irrelevant to the algorithm, since once the transaction is executed, the coin issuer has no power over them. So all that matters is the genesis transaction itself.
+Reissuable colors In this scenario, the issuer must choose a secure address to be the “Issuing Address” and set transaction entry 0 to come from that address. In a second moment, the issuer will be able to issue new units of that color through genesis transactions with the same secure address. It is important to note that an address can only be associated with a single color. Once an address emits a reissuable color, it will no longer be able to participate in coloring coins of other colors, not even non-reissuable colors.
+
+
+=== Transfer transactions ===
+Transfer transactions are used to send colored coins from one address to another. It is also possible to transfer coins of multiple colors in a single transfer transaction. Tagging-based coloring is the most well-known algorithm for this operation.
+If colored coins are used as input for transactions that do not follow the transfer protocol, the value associated with their color is lost. Furthermore, their value can also be lost in a malformed transaction.There are one or more colored inputs in a transfer transaction. Inputs do not need to be of the same color, e.g. ""gold"" and ""silver"" can be transferred within one transaction, which is beneficial for peer-to-peer trade. The order of inputs and outputs within a transaction, as it is used for non-ambiguous decoding.
+
+
+=== Alternative coloring algorithms ===
+Determining a way to transfer colored coins from one Bitcoin address to another is the most complex part of the colored coins protocol. For transactions with only one input and one output, it is easy to determine that the color of the output coins is the same color that was received by the input address, since a Bitcoin address can only handle a single color value. However, in transactions with multiple inputs and outputs, determining which colored coins of inputs correspond to which outputs become a more complex task. For that, there are several algorithms that propose to solve this problem, each one with its peculiarities.
+Order based coloring is the first and simplest coloring algorithm. An intuitive way to understand this algorithm is to consider that the transaction has a width proportional to its total input amount. On the left side there are inputs, each a width proportional to its value, on the right side there are outputs with values proportional to their bitcoin values. Assume, then, that colored water flows in a straight line from left to right. The color of an outlet will be the color of the water arriving at it, or colorless if multiple-color coins arrive at that outlet. A single Bitcoin address cannot handle coins of different colors.
+Padded order based coloring is a slightly more complex algorithm than the OBC (Order based coloring) algorithm. In essence, the algorithm has the same principle as the OBC, however, treating each output as containing a pad of a certain number of colorless bitcoins, with the colored coins following them.
+
+
+== Applications ==
+The Bitcoin network's decentralized nature indicates that its security does not need dependence on trusted parties and that its players may operate anonymously provided adequate safeguards are adopted. Colored Coins protocols adoption enables the integration of decentralized stock exchanges and other financial functionality into Bitcoin such as certifying credentials (like academic certificates), or establishing the existence of digital documents.
+Smart property: For example, a product rental company can release a colored coin to represent their products, such as a car. Through an application, the company could configure a control message that would send a message signed by the private key that currently has the colored coin. In this way, its users could transfer the vehicle's digital key to each other, by transferring the currency. This protocol feature may be used in land management by indicating ownership of a piece of land with a single or several tokens. The token's information may be used to maintain public registry parameters such as size, GPS locations, year created, and so on. The land administrator may encrypt ownership details such as titles or identification so that only individuals with the right private key can see the information. Anyone with an internet connection can publicly verify and trace the ownership of each token using block explorer software.
+Issue of shares: A company can issue its shares through colored coins, taking advantage of the Bitcoin infrastructure to manage activities such as voting, exchange and payment of dividends. Colored coins may also be used to form Distributed Collaborative Organizations (DCOs) and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), which are acting as virtual corporations with shareholders. In such cases, the blockchain may assist in keeping track of a company's ownership structure as well as creating and distributing DCO shares in a transparent and safe manner. Examples: community currency or corporate currency, deposit representation, access and subscription services.
+Issue of coupons: A company can issue promotional coupons or loyalty points among its customers in the form of colored coins.
+Digital collectibles: Decentralized management of digital resources. Similar to how collectors acquire and sell paintings, colored coins enable managing digital resources in a similar way, such as e-books, music, digital games and software, guaranteeing ownership of the resource to the owner of the coin.As long as the provider's identity is protected by the legal framework, colored coins may be used to transfer any digitally transferable right. The circulation is based on a cryptographic signature. The contract and any payments linked to it are recorded on the blockchain using a unique cryptographic key that identifies the rightful owner of the currency. Parties may use an alias to sign up for the protocol under legally permissible circumstances. In reality, the secret cryptographic key enables the system to validate subscribers' digital identities without disclosing any personal information.Private key holders might then transfer the asset directly to other persons or corporations through a public blockchain.
+Users may trade and manage all asset classes in a somewhat decentralized framework with a minute amount of colored Bitcoin, according to marketing literature, rather than needing to send hundreds or even thousands of bitcoins in return for an item or service.
+Deterministic contracts: A person or company can issue contracts by pre-scheduling a payment, such as stock options.
+Bonds: A special case of a deterministic contract, bonds can be issued with a down payment amount and an installment schedule in bitcoin, another currency or commodity.
+Decentralized digital representation of physical resources: It means tying physical resources, such as physical objects, commodities, or traditional currencies, to digital resources and proving ownership of those objects in that way. NFT tokens use this approach, selling ownership of artworks and even living properties.
+
+
+== Сolored coin wallet ==
+Colored coins can be handled through wallets in the same manner as Bitcoin monetary resources can be managed through bitcoin wallets. Wallets are used to manage the addresses associated with each pair of keys (public and private) of a Bitcoin user, as well as the transactions associated with their set of addresses. Rather than dealing with cryptocurrencies, colored coin wallets add a layer of abstraction, managing digital assets, such as stocks, altcoins, which are created on the Blockchain, intellectual property and other resources.
+While bitcoin wallets are required to use a unique Bitcoin address for each transaction, colored coin wallets frequently reuse their addresses in order to re-issue coins of the same color.
+To issue colored coins, colored addresses must be generated and stored in colored wallets administered by a color-aware client such as Coinprism.
+
+
+== Protocol implementation ==
+Protocol implementations are associated with wallet software, so that the end user does not have to be concerned about transaction structuring or manual resource manipulation. There is, however, some concern about the interoperability of the existing implementations, owing to the fact that colored coins transactions are operationalized using the variety of different algorithms. Transactions between unsupported wallets may result in the loss of currency coloring features.Colored coins require a unified wallet that can distinguish between items other than bitcoins. In June 2015, a Torrent-based version of Colored Coins was developed to cover the protocol's use while Bitcoin has not yet been widely adopted by the market. Making the protocol compatible amongst different Bitcoin implementations is one approach to increase the usage of Bitcoin for digital asset management.
+
+
+== Legal aspects ==
+A smart property or an item with an off-chain identifier that is transferred via blockchain remains subject to legal interpretation. Colored coins and other virtual currency are presently not recognized as evidence of ownership by any government agency in the United States. For financial institutions, the lack of an identifiable identity across on-and off-chain settings is still a barrier.There's a legal challenge with regard to the transfer of common stock ownership using blockchain. Due to the fact that the rights to receive notifications, vote, receive dividends, and exercise appraisal rights are restricted to registered owners, establishing ownership is likely even more critical for blockchain stock.Due to the extralegal nature of colored coin transactions such as NFTs, they frequently result in an informal exchange of ownership over the item with no legal basis for enforcement, frequently conferring nothing more than usage as a status symbol.
+
+
+== Limitations ==
+As virtual tokens colored coins cannot compel the real world to meet the obligations made when they were issued. They can represent something external, in the actual world, such as a corporate action or debt repayment obligation. This suggests that they are issued by a person or entity, which carries some level of risk. That the issuer does not comply with its related obligations or there may even be fraud and that those currencies may not represent anything actual.
+They are unable to prevent a user from changing the underlying cryptocurrency in a way that destroys the extra information. Using virtual tokens in a transaction that does not conform with the rules of colored currencies (stricter than the rules of blockchain transactions and not mandated by it) destroys the additional meaning, leaving only the token’s monetary worth on the blockchain.
+It is impossible to store the semantics of information indicating what a token represents. For instance, the blockchain can record the number of concert tickets that have been issued and the addresses of their owners, but it cannot encode the fact that they represent allowed access to a specific concert at a specific time. Metadata storage and processing require an external system, such as Open-Transactions. Open-Transactions is a free software library that implements cryptographically secure financial transactions using financial cryptographic primitives. It can be utilized to issue stocks, pay dividends, purchase and sell shares, etc.
+The speed of transactions and the capabilities of the smart contract procedures utilized by virtual tokens are equivalent to those of the blockchain they are based on.
+Due to the nature of the Bitcoin host network, adding an additional layer is neither simple nor scalable. Additionally, it inherits all of the information security and safety concerns of the host blockchain. Developing a comprehensive protocol that incorporates asset issuance and native tracking may be a more rigorous and scalable method for creating a blockchain-based asset-tracking system.
+
+
+== Concerns ==
+Opposition to the use of Colored Coins for the treatment of abstracted resources on Bitcoin mainly originates in the financial and banking sectors. It is argued that the proof-of-work blockchain-based security system cannot be exported to a regulated financial resolution environment. As a result, there is no legal framework for Colored Coins' transactions. Finally, there are some regulatory concerns with the coin coloring method. According to institutions that criticize the decentralized transaction system, the legal effect of an individual or entity transferring ownership of a given object to another individual or entity through Bitcoin abstractions is still uncertain.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitcoin
+Blockchain
+Digital currencies
+Non-fungible token
+Bitcoin network
+Smart contract
+Altcoins
+
+
+== References =="
+Crypto Leaks,"CryptoLeaks is an anonymous publisher and investigative media organization founded in 2022. It operates as a non-profit and is funded by donations and media partnerships. The organization claims to be a group of anonymous cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investigative journalists who want to clean up the cryptocurrency industry from corruption, manipulation, and fraud. CryptoLeaks has released several videos purporting to be sting operation videos in which figures in the cryptocurrency industry have revealed key information hidden from the public.In August 2022, CryptoLeaks released over twenty video clips of lawyer Kyle Roche, a founder of Roche Freedman law firm, talking about his relationship with his client Ava Labs, developer of the Avalanche Blockchain and its native AVAX cryptocurrency. In the videos, Roche revealed that Ava Labs had given him AVAX digital tokens worth tens of millions of dollars, and seemed to indicate that his overarching priority was to further Ava Labs’ interests, even when representing other clients. Roche appeared to boast about utilizing litigation as ""a tool to competition"", using lawsuits against competitors to harm their business and distract financial regulators from scrutinizing Ava Labs.Roche denied any improper relationship with Ava Labs, insisting that although the videos were genuine, they had been “illegally obtained” and were “highly edited and spliced out of context”. However, Roche was forced out of his law firm, which rebranded under a new name, and the firm was dismissed from several cryptocurrency cases it had been litigating.
+
+
+== References =="
+Crypto naming controversy,"The meaning of the word crypto as an abbreviation is controversial. Cryptographers - people who specialize in cryptography - have used the term ""crypto"" as an abbreviation for their field of study. However, ""crypto"" has also become a common abbreviation for cryptocurrency.
+
+
+== Etymologies and definitions ==
+The word cryptography derives from the prefix ""crypto-"" of Greek origin meaning ""hidden"" and the suffix ""-graph"" also of Greek origin and meaning ""to write"". This name reflects cryptography's historical role as the study of codes for secret communication. Still, the prefix crypto appears in many other words, such as cryptofascism (secret support for fascism), cryptosporidium (a parasite), and cryptomnesia (a long-forgotten memory).The term ""cryptography"" nowadays refers to an effervescent area of research that has moved beyond secret ciphers to study message authentication, digital signatures, secure multiparty computation and zero-knowledge proofs, among other active areas of research.Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are currencies that use cryptography as an underlying mechanism. Nevertheless, most cryptocurrencies only use digital signatures and hash functions.
+
+
+== Usages ==
+Dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary, define ""crypto"" as a shorthand for cryptography.Matt Blaze registered the domain crypto.com in 1993, but sold the domain in 2018 to a cryptocurrency company. In 2021, the Staples Center in Los Angeles was renamed to the Crypto.com Arena, referring to the cryptocurrency company now behind the domain.Descriptivism, as opposed to prescriptivism, is the school of thought that accepts crypto as referring to cryptocurrency rather than cryptography based on the common use of the term.
+
+
+== Opinions ==
+Computer scientist Matthew D. Green stated that most cryptocurrencies barely have anything to do with serious cryptography, aside from trivial use of digital signatures and hash functions.
+Matt Blaze stated in 2018 that ""I think calling cryptocurrencies 'crypto' is a poor choice, with bad consequences for both cryptography and cryptocurrencies"".Parker Higgins of the Freedom of the Press Foundation stated that the cryptography crowd is by nature deeply invested in precision.Journalist Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai from Vice compared the controversy to the meaning of the word ""hacker"", which can used for criminals as well as curious technology enthusiasts as part of the hacker culture.The website cryptoisnotcryptocurrency.com features the statement ""‘Crypto’ does not mean cryptocurrency, it means cryptography"" on a red background and with an emoticon expressing incredulity.Amie Stepanovich, the executive director of the Silicon Flatirons center at the University of Colorado, created T-shirts bearing the message: ""Crypto. It means cryptography."" This shirt is popular among cybersecurity experts; it was, for example, worn by Matt Blaze.
+
+
+== References =="
+Crypto-trading hamster,"The crypto-trading hamster, also known as Mr Goxx, was a hamster and economic experiment that was used to randomly select cryptocurrencies to buy or sell, on a trading platform. The hamster would spin a wheel that would select from a range of cryptocurrencies, and then, using the same method, would select what action to do with them. The hamster passed away on the 26th of November 2021.
+
+
+== Origin ==
+The hamster was owned by a German student, who together with his friend coded the system and linked it to a real cryptocurrency portfolio on an online trading platform. The pair also created a Twitter and Twitch account for the hamster where the latest news and decisions were shared.
+
+
+== References =="
+ICON (blockchain platform),"ICON is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. ICX is the native cryptocurrency of the platform.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Founding ===
+ICON was founded in 2017 by Min Kim of the Switzerland-based ICON Foundation. According to the ICON white paper, the purpose for ICON was to introduce a new era of decentralization and hyper connect Korea, Asia.
+
+
+=== Launch ===
+ICON's initial coin offering (ICO) in September 2017 raised 150,000 ETH (approximately US$43 million at the time).At the time of launch, ICON was supported by various public and private organizations, including the Seoul Metropolitan Government in South Korea, and the Line Corporation in Japan.
+
+
+=== ICON 2.0 ===
+In November 2021, ICON 2.0 was launched. Changes included Java smart contract support, and preparation for future interoperability via the Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP).
+
+
+== Design ==
+ICON is a permission less, non-hierarchical network of computers (nodes) that build on a growing series of ""blocks"" of transactions, known as a blockchain. Each block contains an identifier of the chain that must precede it if the block is to be considered valid. ICON's consensus mechanism is called Loop Fault Tolerance (LFT), a modified version of the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus.The nodes are run by public representatives (P-Reps), with a block being generated approximately every two seconds. ICON was designed to be scalable for both public and private blockchain use cases.
+
+
+== Applications ==
+
+
+=== Decentralized finance ===
+
+Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a use case of ICON. It offers traditional financial instruments in a decentralized architecture, outside of companies' and governments' control, such as money market funds which let users earn interest. Decentralized finance applications can be accessed through a Web3-enabled browser extension or application, which allows users to directly interact with the ICON blockchain through a website. Many of these decentralized applications (also known as dapps) can connect and work together to create complex financial services.
+
+
+=== Smart contracts ===
+
+Smart contracts are a use case of ICON. A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol which is intended to automatically execute, control, or document legally relevant events and actions, according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need in trusted intermediators, arbitrations, and enforcement costs, fraud losses, as well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions.
+
+
+=== Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) ===
+
+ICON allows for the creation of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Since tokens of this type are unique, they have been used to represent such things as collectibles, digital art, sports memorabilia, virtual real estate, and items within games. Land, buildings, and avatars in blockchain-based virtual worlds can also be bought and sold as NFTs.
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of cryptocurrencies
+Bitcoin
+Decentralized finance
+
+
+== References =="
+Initial exchange offering,"An Initial exchange offering (IEO) is the cryptocurrency exchange equivalent to a stock launch or Initial public offering (IPO). An IEO is the process of digital asset (e.g. coins or tokens) procurement through an established exchange for the purpose of raising capital for start-up companies. Exchanges act as a middleman between investors and the startup, profiting from fees generated by services rendered during the due diligence process and funding phase. IEO's and initial coin offerings (ICO) share similar characteristics with, however, an IEO can be seen as an evolution from the ICO due to legal influence and an increase in financial regulations within the cryptocurrency market.
+
+
+== History ==
+The first use of an IEO by a major exchange was in January 2019, with the launch of Binance's platform Binance Launchpad.
+
+
+== Advantages ==
+IEO's allow for companies and startups to raise capital in through the sale of tokens or coin on a cryptocurrency exchange. This reduces investor risk by the due diligence and vetting completed by the exchange.
+The use of Utility Tokens allow for investors and business to mutual benefit due to the additional access given by holders of a given business utility token.
+IEO's create a safer investment ecosystem by providing access to new investment opportunities on a trusted platform.
+IEO's use the exchanges brand to further promote new projects through their platforms users giving the startup a larger invest pool to raise capital.
+
+
+== Disadvantages ==
+IEO's allow for startups to participate in large scale investments opportunities with the introduction of their business to a large investment ecosystem. IEO's are a vastly more secure method of investment procurement for startups, but it comes at the cost of fees paid to the exchange for their time analyzing the business and a predetermined percentage of the capital raised.
+
+Fees rendered during research stage of IEO development and percentage of total revenue earned.
+Exchanges vary in security level and overall quality, thus some IEO's may be less effective
+The risk of pump and dump schemes is still present in IEO's
+
+
+== Procedure ==
+An IEO which is successful has to follow specific guidelines during the due diligence stage of IEO selection. Since exchanges are using their company brand to promote and invite investors to purchase a startups token or utility coin they insure the project and company is reliable and trustworthy. Platforms that are to promote new startups analyze and vet the businesses white paper, team, business plan, tech and assess the tokenomics of the business. Exchanges vet and analyze business to insure the business plans and projects are up to the values of the exchange. This saves the exchange from damaging their reputation and insures the business is following the global legal requirements such as Anti-Money Laundering Act for cryptocurrency sales.
+
+
+== Regulation ==
+Following the major rise of IEO's in 2019 many regulatory agencies have not created legal restrictions. The Securities and Exchange Committee commented on IEO's stating:""Be cautious if considering an investment in an IEO. Claims of new technologies and financial products, such as those associated with digital asset offerings, and claims that IEOs are vetted by trading platforms, can be used improperly to entice investors with the false promise of high returns in a new investment space. As described below, IEOs may be conducted in violation of the federal securities laws and lack many of the investor protections of registered and exempt securities offerings."" As of 2022, regulation in major industries have been limited and only a few nations have implemented some level of restriction. Registered national security exchanges and automated trading systems (ATSs) are governed by federal laws and regulations aimed at protecting investors and preventing fraudulent and manipulative trading practices. Several online trading platforms mislead investors into believing that they are registered or meet any of the regulatory requirements for a national securities exchange or an ATS, and so do not provide investors with the investor protections that such exchanges or ATSs provide. By failing to comply with federal securities laws, an IEO and/or trading platform may be operating unlawfully and may not be offering the investors and market protections and remedies these laws are designed to provide. Consider carefully whether the trading platform and the company involved in the IEO have complied with federal securities laws.
+
+
+== Red flags ==
+The following are signs of fraud or illegal behaviour, as stated by SEC:
+
+In the absence of discussion or reference to the U.S. federal securities laws, the IEO and online trading platform should be considered as a red flag.
+Any offering that declares it will avoid the federal securities laws of the United States by occurring on an overseas trading platform, but nonetheless allows US investors to invest, should be regarded as a red flag.
+IEOs that claim to be vetted by the trading platforms are a red flag. A security offered in the IEO may violate U.S federal securities laws regardless of whether the trading platform vetted the offering.Further, the SEC cautioned that there is no such thing as an ""SEC-approved IEO.""
+
+
+== Comparison of IEO and ICO ==
+ICOs were the first method used by cryptocurrency companies to raise money. Ethereum followed suit in 2014, raising about $18.3 million. Its blockchain project was based on the so-called charitable foundation model, in which investors donate to support the project.
+The concepts of IEOs and ICOs may seem similar. During the boom of 2017-2018, ICOs on Ethereum were held daily, resulting in many projects raising millions of dollars, although there were also many dubious and fraudulent offerings on the market. Since ICOs could not be verified, the more reliable concept of IEO gradually emerged based on them. In addition, many ICOs were later found to violate U.S. securities laws, which led to various lawsuits and refunds to investors.
+There are much greater risks involved in participating in an ICO. Investors must send bitcoin or ether to a smart contract or website and hope they receive tokens. Anyone with a little knowledge of smart contracts and web development skills can create a spectacular website with a promising plan of action and start raising money. Thus, investing in an ICO is considered more risky.
+
+
+== References =="
+JPM Coin,"JPM Coin is a dollar-backed cryptocurrency (stablecoin) from the bank JP Morgan Chase, announced in February 2019 as an institution-to-institution service.JPM Coin is intended to serve as a value token on the Quorum consortium blockchain, using software (called ""Quorum"") also built by JP Morgan Chase, and is used to facilitate interbank payments on the Interbank Information Network (IIN).As of October 2023, JPM Coin is used for approximately $1 billion of transactions each day.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Quorum homepage, JP Morgan"
+Bitcoin in El Salvador,"El Salvador became the first country in the world to use Bitcoin as legal tender, after having been adopted as such by the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador in 2021. It has been promoted by Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who claimed that it would improve the economy by making banking easier for Salvadorans, and that it would encourage foreign investment. The adoption has been criticized both internationally and within El Salvador, due to the volatility of Bitcoin, its environmental impact, and lack of transparency regarding the government's fiscal policy.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Background ===
+
+The colón (SVC) was the official currency of El Salvador from 1892  until it was replaced by the US dollar on January 1, 2001, when the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador passed the Monetary Integration Act under the administration of former President Francisco Flores. The Act authorized the free circulation of the United States dollar in El Salvador, and removed the colón from circulation. The purpose of dollarizing El Salvador was to achieve financial stability by encouraging foreign investment and decreasing transaction costs of international trade.However, the government was unable to control monetary policy after dollarization, as the value of currency was tied to the United States Federal Reserve. The exchange rate, which was fixed at one U.S dollar being equivalent to 8.75 colóns, decreased the purchasing power of the population. Dollarization slowed down El Salvador's exports because it could not compete against the undervalued currencies of other developing countries such as China. The lack of financial literacy harmed the population of El Salvador since they did not know how to use the US dollar, nor did they understand its value.Remittances accounted for 23% of GDP in 2020. They are currently delivered by money transmitters, which operate on an in-person basis.In 2019, the village of El Zonte adopted bitcoin as a payment following a donation of $100,000 worth of bitcoin from an anonymous donor. The donation came with the stipulation that the village adopt a circular economy based on bitcoin. Many residents in El Zonte did not have access to banking services, and accessed bitcoin through mobile devices and Bitcoin ATMs in commercial areas. The village has since become known as ""Bitcoin Beach"", and has been cited as an example of using cryptocurrency as legal tender by advocates of bitcoin. As of 2022, Honduras and Guatemala had also made attempts to attract tourists through the use of bitcoin in ""bitcoin hubs.""
+
+
+=== Adoption ===
+On June 5, 2021 President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele announced a bill to adopt bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador, via an English-language video at Bitcoin Conference 2021 in Miami. Bukele claimed that the adoption of Bitcoin would make it easier for Salvadorans living abroad to send remittances to their relatives in the country. The use of bitcoin would also make digital transactions more accessible to underbanked people.On June 9, 2021, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted to adopt the Bitcoin Law, that would make the cryptocurrency legal tender in the country, with a majority vote of 62 of the 84 deputies in favor. The government announced that it had set aside $150 million in cash to back the country's bitcoin. The World Bank rejected a request from the government to assist with the implementation of the law due to transparency concerns and the environmental impact of bitcoin mining. The government announced that it would distribute US$30 in bitcoin to people who sign up to use an electronic wallet called Chivo (Salvadorean slang for 'cool'), at a cost of up to $75 million. Chivo is run by a private enterprise, but information regarding the platform and its policies are classified by the government.A poll published by the Central American University in September 2021 found that 9 out of 10 Salvadorans did not have a clear understanding of what bitcoin was, and 68% disagreed with the decision to adopt it as legal tender. The government of El Salvador purchased ₿400, worth about $20.9 million at the time, on September 6. On September 7, 2021, the Bitcoin Law came into effect and bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador, making it the first country in the world to do so. As part of this adoption, the government began requiring all businesses to accept it. Under the law, transactions in bitcoin are not subject to capital gains tax, and foreign bitcoin investors who invest over ₿3 in the country are eligible for permanent residence.
+
+
+=== Reaction ===
+The adoption of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador drew criticism both internationally, and within El Salvador. On September 7, thousands of protestors gathered in San Salvador to protest the launch of Chivo and the adoption of bitcoin. The cause of these protests was concern over a lack of transparency regarding the creation of the Bitcoin Law and Chivo, and the use of tax dollars to purchase bitcoin. The limited rate of internet penetration in El Salvador would also limit the number of people who could make use of cryptocurrency.Many international financial experts warned that bitcoin's volatility would introduce unnecessary risk and instability to El Salvador's underdeveloped economy. In July 2021, Moody's Investors Service downgraded the credit rating of El Salvador, citing Bukele's fiscal policies and the adoption of bitcoin as a factor. The day following El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin, Panamanian congressman Gabriel Silva proposed a similar bill that would give ""legal, regulatory, and fiscal certainty to the use, holding and issuance of digital value and crypto assets in the Republic of Panama.""Some critics suggested that bitcoin's anonymity would make it easier to engage in money laundering and criminal activities. In particular, the potential use of Bitcoin to evade taxes, and in transactions related to transnational gangs and human trafficking in El Salvador was noted.The international cryptocurrency community was largely supportive of the law, which they believed could lead to a greater acceptance of cryptocurrency by states and central banks. Cryptocurrency advocates on Twitter and Instagram shared videos of people using bitcoin to make purchases at chains like Starbucks, Pizza Hut and McDonald's.A poll by the Centro de Estudios Ciudadanos at Francisco Gavidia University in November 2021, found that 91% of Salvadorans preferred to use the US dollar over Bitcoin. In January 2022, Fortune reported that the switch to bitcoin had made paying remittances more difficult for many Salvadorans, rather than easier as had been promised, because the fees associated with the bitcoin transactions were several times as expensive as traditional remittances.In January 2022, the International Monetary Fund urged El Salvador to cease using bitcoin as legal tender, citing its risk to the country's financial stability, integrity and consumer protection. The IMF advised that the continued use of bitcoin would make it less likely that the institution would grant El Salvador a previously discussed loan of $1.3 billion.
+
+
+== Usage of and economic impact of bitcoin in El Salvador ==
+
+
+=== Immediate impact in 2021 ===
+Chivo launched in October 2021, and immediately drew criticism for issues regarding features like payment processing and transactions. Shortly after midnight, Bukele confirmed via Twitter that the app was not available through either the Apple Store or Huawei, although the latter later added it. Chivo was disabled a few hours after launch to allow the platform to increase the capacity of its servers. The system was also plagued by identity theft, which resulted in the theft of sign-on bonuses. Shortly after launch, Chivo announced that it was changing its pricing features to prevent scalping, which led to further complaints over the difficulty of day trading on Chivo and pricing discrepancies.The majority of users stopped using the platform after they had collected their sign on bonuses. According to Financial Times, one of the country's largest banks reported that during the first week of Chivo's under 0.0001% of its transactions were in bitcoin.In 2021, the government of El Salvador began purchasing bitcoin. It spent about $85.5 million on bitcoin between September 2021 and January 2022. The value of bitcoin began decreasing in November 2021, and had fallen by about 45% of its value by January 2022. It is estimated that the Salvadoran national reserves had lost $22 million as a result of this. The government continued to purchase bitcoins during this dip, and had holdings of at least ₿1,801 valued at $66 million as of January 2022.Bukele announced that the government would use sustainable geothermal energy for Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining uses large amounts of energy, which contributes to pollution if fossil fuels power it. Bukele announced plans for a ""Bitcoin City"" in November 2021, to be built in a circle at the base of the Conchagua volcano, which would provide geothermal energy for bitcoin mining. Income taxes would be waived in the city.In 2022, the government began drafting legislature for the creation of $1 billion in ""Volcano Bonds"". Half of these bonds would fund Bukele's Bitcoin City, with the remaining half used to purchase bitcoin on a five-year lock up period. The announcement caused the value of El Salvador's overseas bonds to fall by 30% in December 2021.
+
+
+=== Usage in 2022 ===
+According to a survey done by the Central American University 100 days after the Bitcoin Law came into force: 34.8% of the population has no confidence in bitcoin, 35.3% has little confidence, 13.2% has some confidence, and 14.1% has a lot of confidence. 56.6% of respondents have downloaded the government bitcoin wallet; among them 62.9% has never used it or only once whereas 36.3% uses bitcoin at least once a month.A year after the adoption of bitcoin, economic surveys found that cryptocurrency was not widely used in El Salvador, due in part to a lack of digital literacy. A study published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found that 20% of people who downloaded the Chivo app did not use their $30 sign-on bonus, and an additional 61% of Chivo users stopped using the app after spending their bonus. Despite governmental support for universal bitcoin acceptance, only an estimated 20% of businesses accepted payment in bitcoin. The Salvadoran Chamber of Commerce found that only 14% of businesses in El Salvador had conducted bitcoin transactions between September 2021 and July 2022, and 3% felt that being able to use bitcoin was valuable. According to the Central Reserve Bank, bitcoin was used in 1.9% of remittance payments sent to El Salvador between September 2021 and April 2022. Media outlets reported that bitcoin had failed to increase tourist revenue, and that its use even in tourist hubs was limited to a minority of tourists. However, some businesses in El Zonte reported that they had seen a 30% increase in business from cryptocurrency tourists.In March 2022, the Salvadoran government announced that the ""Volcano Bonds"" project had been postponed, citing global economic conditions and the war in Ukraine as factors.After the 2021–2022 cryptocurrency crash, bitcoin lost 70% of its value from November 2021. By this time, Bukele had spent about US$150 million, roughly 4% of El Salvador's national reserves, to invest in Bitcoin. According to BBC, the 2,300 bitcoins purchased by the Salvadoran government had lost 50% of their value. El Salvador's economic growth rate declined during this time, and many economists predicted it would likely default on its debt. In response to these issues, Bukele decreased public expenditure, including water infrastructure and public services in some municipalities. He frequently responded to volatility in the cryptocurrency market by announcing on Twitter that he was ""buying the dip."" In June 2022, he bought an additional 80 bitcoins. The Salvadoran Minister of Finance Alejandro Zelaya stated that the country had not lost any money during the crash, because it did not sell any of its bitcoin.Prior to the crash, several other countries had announced plans to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, but only the Central African Republic has done so.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Legality of bitcoin by country or territory
+
+
+== References =="
+Environmental effects of bitcoin,"The environmental effects of bitcoin are significant. Bitcoin mining, the process by which bitcoins are created and transactions are finalized, is energy-consuming and results in carbon emissions as about half of the electricity used is generated through fossil fuels. As of 2022, bitcoin mining was estimated to be responsible for 0.2% of world greenhouse gas emissions, and to represent 0.4% of global electricity consumption. Moreover, bitcoins are mined on specialized computer hardware with a short lifespan, resulting in electronic waste. The amount of electrical energy required and e-waste generated by bitcoin mining can be compared to countries like Greece or the Netherlands. Bitcoin's environmental impact has attracted the attention of regulators, leading to incentives or restrictions in various jurisdictions.
+
+
+== Greenhouse gas emissions ==
+
+
+=== Mining as an electricity-intensive process ===
+Bitcoin mining is a highly electricity-intensive proof-of-work process. Miners run dedicated software to compete against each other and be the first to solve the current 10 minute block, yielding them a reward in bitcoins. A transition to the proof-of-stake protocol, which has better energy efficiency, has been described as a sustainable alternative to bitcoin's scheme and as a potential solution to its environmental issues. Bitcoin advocates oppose such a change, arguing that proof of work is needed to secure the network.Bitcoin mining's distribution makes it difficult for researchers to identify the location of miners and electricity use. It is therefore difficult to translate energy consumption into carbon emissions. 
+As of 2022, the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) estimates that bitcoin consumes 95.5 TWh (344 PJ) annually, representing 0.4% of the world's electricity consumption, ranking bitcoin mining between Belgium and the Netherlands in terms of electricity consumption. According to a 2022 estimate published in Joule, bitcoin mining may result in annual carbon emission of 65 Mt CO2, representing 0.2% of global emissions, which is comparable to the level of emissions of Greece.
+
+
+=== Bitcoin mining energy mix ===
+Until 2021, most bitcoin mining was done in China. Chinese miners relied on cheap coal power in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia during late autumn, winter and spring, migrating to regions with overcapacities in low-cost hydropower (like Sichuan and Yunnan) between May and October. After China banned bitcoin mining in June 2021, its mining operations moved to other countries. By August 2021, mining was concentrated in the U.S. (35%), Kazakhstan (18%), and Russia (11%) instead. A study in Scientific Reports found that from 2016 to 2021, each US dollar worth of mined bitcoin caused 35 cents worth of climate damage, compared to 95 for coal, 41 for gasoline, 33 for beef, and 4 for gold mining. The shift from coal resources in China to coal resources in Kazakhstan increased bitcoin's carbon footprint, as Kazakhstani coal plants use hard coal, which has the highest carbon content of all coal types. Despite the ban, covert mining operations gradually came back to China, reaching 21% of global hashrate as of 2022.Reducing the environmental impact of bitcoin is possible by mining only using clean electricity sources. As of 2023, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, renewables represent about half of global bitcoin mining sources, while research by the nonprofit tech company WattTime estimated that US miners consumed 54% fossil fuel-generated power. Still, experts and government authorities, such as the European Securities and Markets Authority and the European Central Bank, have suggested that using renewable energy for mining may limit the availability of clean energy for the general population.Bitcoin mining representatives argue that their industry creates opportunities for wind and solar companies, leading to a debate on whether bitcoin could be an ESG investment. According to a 2023 ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering article, directing the surplus electricity from intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, to bitcoin mining could reduce electricity curtailment, balance the electrical grid, and increase the profitability of renewable energy plants—therefore accelerating the transition to sustainable energy and decreasing bitcoin's carbon footprint. Another 2023 study published in the same journal argued that mining bitcoin off-grid during the precommercial phase (when a wind or solar farm is generating electricity but not yet integrated into the grid) could bring additional profits and therefore support renewable energy development. A 2023 review published in Resource and Energy Economics also concluded that bitcoin mining could increase renewable capacity but that it might increase carbon emissions and that mining bitcoin to provide demand response largely mitigated its environmental impact. Bitcoin mining may also incentivize the recommissioning of fossil fuel plants. For instance, Greenidge Generation, a closed coal-fired power plant in New York State, was converted into natural gas in 2017 and started mining bitcoin in 2020 to monetize off-peak periods. Such impact is difficult to quantify directly.
+
+
+=== Methane emissions ===
+
+Bitcoin has been mined via electricity generated through the combustion of associated petroleum gas (APG), which is a methane-rich byproduct of crude oil drilling that is sometimes flared or released into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 28 to 36 times greater than CO2. By converting more of the methane to CO2 than flaring alone would, using APG generators reduces the APG's contribution to the greenhouse effect, but this practice still harms the environment. In places such as Colorado, where flaring is prohibited, this practice has allowed more oil drills to operate by offsetting costs, delaying fossil fuel phase-out. Commenting on one pilot project with ExxonMobil, political scientist Paasha Mahdavi noted in 2022 that this process could potentially allow oil companies to report lower emissions by selling gas leaks, shifting responsibility to buyers and avoiding a real reduction commitment.
+
+
+=== Comparison to other payment systems ===
+In a 2023 study published in Ecological Economics, researchers from the International Monetary Fund estimated that the global payment system represented about 0.2% of global electricity consumption, comparable to the consumption of Portugal or Bangladesh. For bitcoin, energy used is estimated around 500 kilowatt-hours per transaction, compared to 0.001 kWh for credit cards (not including consumption from the merchant's bank, which receives the payment). However, bitcoin's energy expenditure is not directly linked to the number of transactions. Layer 2 solutions, like the Lightning Network, and batching, allow bitcoin to process more payments than the number of on-chain transactions suggests. For instance, in 2022, bitcoin processed 100 million transactions per year, representing 250 million payments.
+
+
+== Electronic waste ==
+
+Bitcoins are usually mined on specialized computing hardware, called application-specific integrated circuits, with no alternative use beyond bitcoin mining. Due to the consistent increase of the bitcoin network's hashrate, mining devices are estimated to have an average lifespan of 1.3 years until they become unprofitable and need to be replaced, resulting in significant electronic waste. As of 2021, bitcoin's annual e-waste was estimated to be over 30,000 tonnes, which is comparable to the small IT equipment waste produced by the Netherlands. Each bitcoin transaction was estimated to result in 272 g (9.6 oz) of e-waste.
+
+
+== Water footprint ==
+According to a 2023 paper, bitcoin's water footprint reached 1,600 gigalitres (5.7×1010 cu ft) in 2021, due to direct water consumption on site and indirect consumption from electricity generation. The author notes that this water footprint could be mitigated by using immersion cooling and power sources that do not require freshwater such as wind, solar, and thermoelectric power generation with dry cooling.
+
+
+== Regulatory responses ==
+China's 2021 bitcoin mining ban was partly motivated by its role in illegal coal mining and environmental concerns.In September 2022, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy highlighted the need for increased transparency about electricity usage, greenhouse gas emissions, and e-waste. In November 2022, the US Environmental Protection Agency confirmed working on the climate impacts of cryptocurrency mining. In the US, New York State banned new fossil fuel mining plants with a two-year moratorium, citing environmental concerns, while Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, and Wyoming encourage bitcoin mining with tax breaks. Texas incentives aim to cut methane emissions from flared gas using bitcoin mining.In Canada, due to high demand from the industry and concerned that their renewable electricity could be better used, the provinces Manitoba and British Columbia paused new connections of bitcoin mining facilities to the hydroelectric grid in late 2022 for 18 months while Hydro-Québec increased prices and capped usage for bitcoin miners.In October 2022, due to the global energy crisis, the European Commission invited member states to lower the electricity consumption of crypto-asset miners and end tax breaks and other incentives benefiting them.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+=== Works cited ===
+de Vries, Alex; Gallersdörfer, Ulrich; Klaaßen, Lena; Stoll, Christian (16 March 2022). ""Revisiting Bitcoin's carbon footprint"". Joule. 6 (3): 498–502. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2022.02.005. ISSN 2542-4351. S2CID 247143939."
+The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin,"The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin is a 2014 American documentary film directed by Nicholas Mross. The film interviews multiple companies and people that have played important roles in the history expansion of Bitcoin. It first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on April 23, 2014. The film was nominated for the “Best International Documentary Film” at the 2014 Zurich Film Festival. The film has a run time of 96 minutes.The documentary included footage of Gabriel Sukenik, Zach Harvey, Erik Voorhees, Yifu Guo, Gavin Andresen, Brian Armstrong, Fred Ehrsam, Mark Karpeles, Vitalik Buterin, Julian Assange, Tim Berners-Lee, George W. Bush and Ross Ulbricht. The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin's writers were advised by academics and consultants, such as Daniel Mross, Charlie Shrem, Alex Waters, Jered Kenna, Trace Mayer, Andrew Lokenauth, Nicholas Mross and Patrick Lope.
+
+
+== Synopsis ==
+The documentary follows 35-year-old computer programmer Daniel Mross. On top of his job, kids, and marriage, Daniel is an avid enthusiast of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. He discovered Bitcoin in 2011, and from there he has been fascinated by anything that has to do with it. Daniel and his brother and producer, Nicholas Mross, decided to start filming because they believe that this could really be the future of currency, and filming a documentary is one way to expedite the process. By doing this, they were able to educate anyone who watched this film. Throughout Daniel's journey around the World, he meets the individuals who are leading this potential financial revolution. Daniel and the people that he interviews are the pioneers that are adventuring into this mysterious concept. The future goes to show that not everyone involved in Bitcoin early made it out unscathed.
+
+
+=== Development ===
+Daniel and Nicholas Mross came up with the idea of this documentary due to the difficulty Daniel experienced attempting to explain Bitcoin to his peers. In an interview, Daniel states “And I found in short time it was really difficult to talk to people about Bitcoin if they didn't know what it was or to explain it ... It's not something that, you know, especially earlier on was easy to explain to somebody in 1 or 2 minutes.”. This documentary acts as a bridge between those educated in Bitcoin technology and those interested in educating themselves.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+On Rotten Tomatoes, a reviewer aggregate, the film was rated a 67% based on 9 reviews. Those reviews had an average rating of 6.1 out of 10.The New York Times critiqued the film for its sidestepping of economists' past criticisms of the Bitcoin economy. Variety's Dennis Harvey criticized the film for having an overly positive tone towards Bitcoin, as he felt that the ""consistent rah-rah tenor makes Nicholas Mross’ documentary less interesting than it could be, since it shies away from most tough questions to simply chase the enthusiasm demonstrated by Bitcoin supporters.""Common Sense Media rated the movie at 4/5 stars, stating that, ""Although viewers may still have questions afterward, the use of animated visuals to explain how Bitcoin transactions work and interviews with some of Bitcoin's earliest users and pioneers provides a basic understanding of the currency's role in today's society.""
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitcoin
+Bitcoin network
+Cryptocurrency
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin
+The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin at IMDb"
+OpenTimestamps,"OpenTimestamps (OTS) is an open-source project that aims to provide a standard format for blockchain timestamping.
+With the advent of systems like Bitcoin, it is possible to create and verify proofs of existence of documents (timestamps) without relying on a trusted third party; this represents an enhancement in term of security, since it excludes the possibility of a malicious (or careless) trusted third party to compromise the timestamp.OTS defines a set of rules for conveniently creating timestamps and later independently verifying them. Currently, timestamping with Bitcoin is fully supported, however the format is flexible enough to support a variety of methods.Anyone could create timestamp with the permissionless blockchain by paying the transaction fees, for convenience OTS built an infrastructure that aggregates timestamp requests from users and packs them into transactions funded by public calendar servers; as a result, users can timestamp for free, in a trust-minimized setting.
+
+
+== What is a timestamp ==
+A timestamp is a proof that some data d existed prior to a certain point in time.To create such proof, it turns out that it is not necessary to publish d on the blockchain, which would be expensive, but it is enough to commit d to the blockchain. 
+Such commitment proves that d existed prior to a certain block, in the sense that if d changes, then the proof becomes invalid and hence useless.
+The proof consists in a sequence of commitment operations, such as sha256, append, prepend. 
+These operations are the cryptographic path that proves that d commits to a certain block header. In other words, that d caused the block header to have its value, indeed, if d were different then, due to the mathematical properties of commitment operations, the block header would be different. 
+To verify the commitment, the operations are applied in sequence to the data d, then the result, which should be the transaction merkle root, is checked to be equal to the one observed in the blockchain; if the check goes fine, then one can assert that d existed prior to the block.
+For the timestamped file hello.txt, the OTS proof is encoded in a file named hello.txt.ots which contains:
+
+the hash of the timestamped file;
+the commitment operations;
+one or more attestations on the blockchain.With this information, a challenger can independently verify that hello.txt existed prior to a certain block.
+
+
+== Usage ==
+OTS provides users multiple and easy ways to create and independently verify timestamps:
+With opentimestamps-client in Python;
+With java-opentimestamps;
+With javascript-opentimestamps;
+On opentimestamps.org.In the following sections it is shown an example of the usage of the Python client.
+
+
+=== Timestamp creation ===
+The stamp operation creates the first version of the timestamp. It is applied to the file for which you want to prove its existence (original file).
+
+The stamp operation calculates the SHA256 hash of the original file, concatenates a random 128-bit nonce to maintain privacy, and recalculates the SHA256 hash, sending this unique value to the calendar servers. Each of the calendar servers will add the received hash to its Merkle tree and return the necessary response to generate the initial OTS file. This OTS file is still incomplete because it does not yet contain the record in the blockchain.Once a reasonable time has elapsed, the user will run the upgrade operation on the same OTS file. This will communicate with the calendar servers and update the OTS file with the Bitcoin block header attestation.
+
+It is also possible to create timestamps for several different files simultaneously. In that case, the stamp operation will send a single request to the calendar servers with a Merkle root derived from the original files, and later, that same operation will calculate the Merkle tree paths and create the timestamps for each one of the original files.
+
+
+=== Timestamp verification ===
+The verification of the OTS proof requires both the OTS file and the original file. The user must also have an up-to-date Bitcoin node on their own machine to perform the verification without relying on trusted third parties.
+
+
+=== Show timestamp information ===
+The basic structure of a timestamp is divided into three main sections:
+File hash
+Merkle tree construction
+Bitcoin block header attestationThe timestamp is saved in a binary file to save space and avoid problems of interpretation, encoding and compatibility between systems. Generally, this file has a .ots extension and its magic number is \x00 O p e n T i m e s t a m p s \x00 \x00 P r o o f \x00 \xbf \x89 \xe2 \xe8 \x84 \xe8 \x92 \x94.The info operation presents the content of the timestamp on a human-readable format. In this case, a single attestation of the hello.txt file is shown, which hashes all the way to the Bitcoin block header at block 518387.
+
+
+== Use cases ==
+Applications include defensive publications.
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References =="
+Bitkey,"Bitkey is a Bitcoin cryptocurrency hardware wallet created by Block, Inc., which is owned by Jack Dorsey. Bitkey's physical device is reported to be shipped in early 2024 in 95 countries, priced USD$150. It uses a three-tier security system and supports cloud backups for pass keys. It integrates Square, Cash App and Coinbase. It supports both iOS and Android operating systems.
+
+
+== References =="
+Bitnation,"Bitnation, or crypto nation: 5 , was a cryptocurrency-based project self-described as a ""voluntary nation"", wherein all citizens chose to be citizens, founded in 2014 by Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof. A part of the process for becoming a citizen involved recording vital records, identity, and other legal events through the use of a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. As of August 2022, the bitnation.co domain name had been sold, and the project is considered defunct. 
+
+
+== History ==
+Bitnation founder Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof grew up in a Franco-Swedish family where her father had been stateless for a decade. She was inspired by blockchain technology, and Bitcoin inspired her to extend it into education and national security, which gradually evolved into the backbone concepts of the modern startup company Bitnation. Bitnation was founded on 14 July 2014 by Tempelhof.: 13 
+
+
+== Media ==
+Bitnation was the subject of a Vice piece in September 2016 wherein the author noted that ""because a nation is as much an ideological concept as it is a legal one, one strength of Bitnation lies in its ability to give agency to groups who have been ignored or repressed by modern nation-states.""The Atlantic noted in February 2018 that ""Bitnation [is] proposing a 'peer-to-peer voluntary governance system' to replace the arbitrariness of birth as the decider of one’s citizenship. Blockchain governance could allow for the creation of virtual citizenship and autonomous communities distinct from territorial nation-states.""Bitnation also received notable coverage in The Economist and The Wall Street Journal for its experimental work using blockchain technology to solve the migrant crisis.
+
+
+== Awards and accolades ==
+In April 2017, Bitnation's BRER (Bitnation Refugee Emergency Response) programme was one of those awarded by the Grand Prix 2017, an annual Netexplo Forum prize co-organized by UNESCO.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== Bibliographies ==
+The Googlement: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Starting Your Own Nation (and Changing the World) (2014), Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, Nortia Press (English) ISBN 0988879859
+Swarmwise (14 February 2013), Rick Falkvinge, Chapter 1–6, English, online journal
+
+
+== External links ==
+Krug, Joey. ""Bitnation Public Notary (BPN)"". Bitnation. Retrieved 15 September 2017.
+Tarkowski Tempelhof, Susanne (16 July 2015). ""BITNATION: Year 1 Summary"". Medium. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
+Tarkowski Tempelhof, Susanne; M. Farrell, Jason (2016). ""Bitnation Whitepaper"": 11. Retrieved 14 September 2017. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)"
+Blockscale,"Intel Blockscale was a brand of crypto-mining accelerator ASIC sold by the U.S. chip manufacturer Intel. The Blockscale product debuted in June 2022, and was cancelled by Intel in April 2023. Intel has stated that it will continue to supply chips to existing customers until April 2024.The Blockscale chips were SHA-256 hardware accelerators designed for proof-of-work calculations. According to Intel, they were capable of up to 580 GH/s with a power consumption of up to 22.7 W, and a claimed efficiency of up to  26 J/TH. The product came in three variants: the Blockscale 1120, 1140, and 1160.
+
+
+== References =="
+Proof of work,"Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended.  Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expenditure with minimal effort on their part.  The concept was invented by Moni Naor and Cynthia Dwork in 1993 as a way to deter denial-of-service attacks and other service abuses such as spam on a network by requiring some work from a service requester, usually meaning processing time by a computer. The term ""proof of work"" was first coined and formalized in a 1999 paper by Markus Jakobsson and Ari Juels.Proof of work was later popularized by Bitcoin as a foundation for consensus in a permissionless decentralized network, in which miners compete to append blocks and mine new currency, each miner experiencing a success probability proportional to the computational effort expended. PoW and PoS (proof of stake) remain the two best known Sybil deterrence mechanisms. In the context of cryptocurrencies they are the most common mechanisms.A key feature of proof-of-work schemes is their asymmetry: the work – the computation – must be moderately hard (yet feasible) on the prover or requester side but easy to check for the verifier or service provider. This idea is also known as a CPU cost function, client puzzle, computational puzzle, or CPU pricing function. Another common feature is built-in incentive-structures that reward allocating computational capacity to the network with value in the form of cryptocurrency.The purpose of proof-of-work algorithms is not proving that certain work was carried out or that a computational puzzle was ""solved"", but deterring manipulation of data by establishing large energy and hardware-control requirements to be able to do so. Proof-of-work systems have been criticized by environmentalists for their energy consumption.
+
+
+== Background ==
+One popular system, used in Hashcash, uses partial hash inversions to prove that computation was done, as a goodwill token to send an e-mail. For instance, the following header represents about 252 hash computations to send a message to calvin@comics.net on January 19, 2038:
+
+X-Hashcash: 1:52:380119:calvin@comics.net:::9B760005E92F0DAE
+
+It is verified with a single computation by checking that the SHA-1 hash of the stamp (omit the header name X-Hashcash: including the colon and any amount of whitespace following it up to the digit '1') begins with 52 binary zeros, that is 13 hexadecimal zeros:[1]
+0000000000000756af69e2ffbdb930261873cd71
+
+Whether PoW systems can actually solve a particular denial-of-service issue such as the spam problem is subject to debate;
+the system must make sending spam emails obtrusively unproductive for the spammer, but should also not prevent legitimate users from sending their messages. In other words, a genuine user should not encounter any difficulties when sending an email, but an email spammer would have to expend a considerable amount of computing power to send out many emails at once. Proof-of-work systems are being used by other, more complex cryptographic systems such as bitcoin, which uses a system similar to Hashcash.
+
+
+== Variants ==
+There are two classes of proof-of-work protocols.
+
+Challenge–response protocols assume a direct interactive link between the requester (client) and the provider (server). The provider chooses a challenge, say an item in a set with a property, the requester finds the relevant response in the set, which is sent back and checked by the provider. As the challenge is chosen on the spot by the provider, its difficulty can be adapted to its current load. The work on the requester side may be bounded if the challenge-response protocol has a known solution (chosen by the provider), or is known to exist within a bounded search space.Solution–verification protocols do not assume such a link: as a result, the problem must be self-imposed before a solution is sought by the requester, and the provider must check both the problem choice and the found solution. Most such schemes are unbounded probabilistic iterative procedures such as Hashcash.Known-solution protocols tend to have slightly lower variance than unbounded probabilistic protocols because the variance of a rectangular distribution is lower than the variance of a Poisson distribution (with the same mean).  A generic technique for reducing variance is to use multiple independent sub-challenges, as the average of multiple samples will have a lower variance.
+There are also fixed-cost functions such as the time-lock puzzle.
+Moreover, the underlying functions used by these schemes may be:
+
+CPU-bound where the computation runs at the speed of the processor, which greatly varies in time, as well as from high-end server to low-end portable devices.
+Memory-bound where the computation speed is bound by main memory accesses (either latency or bandwidth), the performance of which is expected to be less sensitive to hardware evolution.
+Network-bound if the client must perform few computations, but must collect some tokens from remote servers before querying the final service provider. In this sense, the work is not actually performed by the requester, but it incurs delays anyway because of the latency to get the required tokens.Finally, some PoW systems offer shortcut computations that allow participants who know a secret, typically a private key, to generate cheap PoWs. The rationale is that mailing-list holders may generate stamps for every recipient without incurring a high cost. Whether such a feature is desirable depends on the usage scenario.
+
+
+== List of proof-of-work functions ==
+Here is a list of known proof-of-work functions:
+
+Integer square root modulo a large prime
+Weaken Fiat–Shamir signatures
+Ong–Schnorr–Shamir signature broken by Pollard
+Partial hash inversion This paper formalizes the idea of a proof of work and introduces ""the dependent idea of a bread pudding protocol"", a ""re-usable proof-of-work"" (RPoW) system.
+Hash sequences
+Puzzles
+Diffie-Hellman–based puzzle
+Moderate
+Mbound
+Hokkaido
+Cuckoo Cycle
+Merkle tree–based
+Guided tour puzzle protocol
+
+
+== Proof of useful work (PoUW) ==
+At the IACR conference Crypto 2022 researchers presented a paper describing Ofelimos, a blockchain protocol with a consensus mechanism based on ""proof of useful work"" (PoUW). Rather than miners consuming energy in solving complex, but essentially useless, puzzles to validate transactions, Ofelimos achieves consensus while simultaneously providing a decentralized optimization problem solver. The protocol is built around Doubly Parallel Local Search (DPLS), a local search algorithm that is used as the PoUW component. The paper gives an example that implements a variant of WalkSAT, a local search algorithm to solve Boolean problems.
+
+
+== Bitcoin-type proof of work ==
+In 2009, the Bitcoin network went online. Bitcoin is a proof-of-work digital currency that, like Finney's RPoW, is also based on the Hashcash PoW. But in Bitcoin, double-spend protection is provided by a decentralized P2P protocol for tracking transfers of coins, rather than the hardware trusted computing function used by RPoW. Bitcoin has better trustworthiness because it is protected by computation. Bitcoins are ""mined"" using the Hashcash proof-of-work function by individual miners and verified by the decentralized nodes in the P2P bitcoin network.The difficulty is periodically adjusted to keep the block time around a target time.
+
+
+=== Energy consumption ===
+Since the creation of Bitcoin, proof-of-work has been the predominant design of Peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. Studies have estimated the total energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining. The PoW mechanism requires a vast amount of computing resources, which consume a significant amount of electricity. 2018 estimates from the University of Cambridge equate Bitcoin's energy consumption to that of Switzerland.
+
+
+=== History modification ===
+Each block that is added to the blockchain, starting with the block containing a given transaction, is called a confirmation of that transaction.  Ideally, merchants and services that receive payment in the cryptocurrency should wait for at least one confirmation to be distributed over the network, before assuming that the payment was done.  The more confirmations that the merchant waits for, the more difficult it is for an attacker to successfully reverse the transaction in a blockchain—unless the attacker controls more than half the total network power, in which case it is called a 51% attack.
+
+
+=== ASICs and mining pools ===
+Within the Bitcoin community there are groups working together in mining pools. Some miners use application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for PoW. This trend toward mining pools and specialized ASICs has made mining some cryptocurrencies economically infeasible for most players without access to the latest ASICs, nearby sources of inexpensive energy, or other special advantages.Some PoWs claim to be ASIC-resistant, i.e. to limit the efficiency gain that an ASIC can have over commodity hardware, like a GPU, to be well under an order of magnitude.  ASIC resistance has the advantage of keeping mining economically feasible on commodity hardware, but also contributes to the corresponding risk that an attacker can briefly rent access to a large amount of unspecialized commodity processing power to launch a 51% attack against a cryptocurrency.
+
+
+== Environmental concerns ==
+
+These miners compete to solve crypto challenges on the Bitcoin blockchain, and their solutions must be agreed upon by all nodes and reach consensus. The solutions are then used to validate transactions, add blocks and generate new bitcoins. Miners are rewarded for solving these puzzles and successfully adding new blocks. However, the Bitcoin-style mining process is very energy intensive because the proof of work shaped like a lottery mechanism. The underlying computational work has no other use but to provide security to the network that provides open access and has to work in adversarial conditions. Miners have to use a lot of energy to add a new block containing a transaction to the blockchain. The energy used in this competition is what fundamentally gives bitcoin its level of security and resistance to attacks. Also, miners have to invest computer hardwares that need large spaces as fixed cost.In January 2022 Vice-Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority Erik Thedéen called on the EU to ban the proof of work model in favor of the proof of stake model due its lower energy emissions. However, a proof of stake model not resisting centralisation as well as proof of work does.In November 2022 the state of New York enacted a two-year moratorium on cryptocurrency mining that does not completely use renewable energy as a power source for two years. Existing mining companies will be grandfathered in to continue mining without the use of renewable energy but they will not be allowed to expand or renew permits with the state, no new mining companies that do not completely use renewable energy will not also not be allowed to begin mining.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bitcoin
+Bitmessage
+Cryptocurrency
+Proof of authority
+Proof of burn
+Proof of personhood
+Proof of space
+Proof of stake
+Proof of elapsed time
+Consensus (computer science)
+
+
+== Notes ==
+^ On most Unix systems this can be verified with echo -n 1:52:380119:calvin@comics.net:::9B760005E92F0DAE | openssl sha1
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Finney's system at the Wayback Machine (archived December 22, 2007)
+bit gold Bit gold. Describes a complete money system (including generation, storage, assay, and transfer) based on proof of work functions and the machine architecture problem raised by the use of these functions.
+Merkle Proof Standardised Format for Simplified Payment Verification (SPV)."
+Algorithmic Contract Types Unified Standards,"Algorithmic Contract Types Unified Standards, abbreviated to ACTUS, are a set of royalty-free, open standards for representing financial contracts. The standards combine (1) a concise data dictionary that defines the contractual terms present in financial contracts with (2) a simple but complete taxonomy of fundamental algorithmic contract type patterns that incorporate elements from that data dictionary that apply to a given contract type such that (3) the cash flow obligations that are established by the contract can be accurately projected, analyzed and acknowledged by all parties to the contract over the life of the contract.   
+Providing an open and royalty-free standard for the data elements and algorithms of financial contracts enables the consistent sharing of accurate financial data by organizations in the financial industry, whether to consolidate views of product lines within an enterprise, to manage obligations between institutions, or to facilitate the collection and consolidation of financial data by regulators. Adoption and uptake of ACTUS is viewed as a public good benefit to create a globally accepted set of definitions capable of representing the preponderance of financial contracts in the real economy. Such standards are regarded as important for transparency and efficiency in financial innovation, risk management, financial regulation, the tokenization of financial instruments, and the development of smart contracts for decentralized finance (DeFi) using blockchain. 
+
+
+== History ==
+The difficulty of defining and analyzing financial data were described by Willi Brammertz and his co-authors in a 2009 book, Unified Financial Analysis: The missing links of finance. The simplicity of the problem is described in an ECB paper, “Modelling metadata in central banks”. This cites the issue of how financial institutions have tried to overcome data silos by building enterprise-wide data warehouses. However, while these data warehouses physically integrate different sources of data, they do not conceptually unify them. For example, a single concept like notional value still might be captured in various ways in fields that might be labeled ‘nominal value,’ ‘current principal,’ ‘par value’ or ‘balance’. Standardization of data would improve internal bank operations, and offer the possibility of large-scale financial risk analytics by leveraging Big Data technology. Key to this is the idea of ""contract types"".The concepts were expanded upon by Brammertz and Allan I. Mendelowitz in a 2018 paper in the Journal of Risk Finance. They describe the need for software that turns natural language contracts into algorithms – smart contracts – that automate financial processes. Financial contracts define exchanges of payments or cash-flows which follow certain patterns. They identify less than three dozen relevant patterns covering most existing contracts. Underlying these contracts there must be a data dictionary that standardizes contract terms. In addition, the smart contracts need access to information representing the state of the world and which affects contractual obligations. This information would include variables such as market risk and counterparty risk held in online databases that are outside the blockchain (sometimes called ""oracles"").
+The idea of the standardized algorithmic representation of financial contracts predates digital currencies but is highly relevant for block-chains or distributed ledgers and the concept of smart contracts. Brammertz and Mendelowitz argue in their paper presented at the 2019 Cardano Summit in Miami that without such a standard, the chaos - already a reality in banks today - would potentiate on blockchains, since on block-chains with Turing complete languages, every contract could be written individually. They further argue that of the four conditions set by Szabo in his article published in 1996, block chains with a Turing complete programming languages fulfill only one, namely Observability. What is not met is Verifiability due to its unstandardized and difficult to read nature especially in the financial sector. The third condition Enforceability is therefore also not met since it is maximized by the combination of Observability and Verifiability. The ACTUS standard fulfills the Verifiability condition for financial contracts wherefore Enforceability is maximized. The fourth condition is Privity, which needs to be solved separately.
+The authors argue that the adoption of a standard for smart contracts and financial data would reduce the cost of operations for financial firms, provide a computational infrastructure for regulators, reduce regulatory reporting costs, and improve market transparency. Also, it would enable the assessment of systemic risk by directly quantifying the interconnectedness of firms.This led to the ACTUS proposal for a data standard alongside an algorithmic standard. Together, these can describe most financial instruments through 31 contract types or modular templates. The research foundation and users' association develop the structure to implement the ideas. The specifications are developed, maintained, and released on GitHub.An ACTUS Financial Research Foundation and the ACTUS Users Association control the intellectual property and development approaches.In October 2021, the ACTUS data standard was added as the second reference after ISO 20022 to a database run by the Office of Financial Research, an arm of the US Treasury.  ACTUS is being used to help define five asset classes (equities, debt, options, warrants, and futures) in the OFR's financial instrument reference database (FIRD). A third reference, the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) messaging standard, was added a year later. Early 2023 ACTUS became a liaison A member of ISO TC68 / SC9.
+
+
+== References =="
+Shiba Inu (cryptocurrency),"Shiba Inu token (ticker: SHIB) is a decentralized cryptocurrency created in August 2020 by an anonymous person or group using the pseudonym ""Ryoshi"". It is inspired by the Shiba Inu (柴犬), a Japanese dog breed, which also serves as the mascot for Dogecoin, another cryptocurrency with meme origins. Some categorize Shiba Inu as a ""meme coin"" There have also been concerns about the concentration of the coin with a single ""whale"" wallet controlling billions of dollars' worth of the token, and frenzied buying by retail investors motivated by fear of missing out (FOMO).Shiba Inu was introduced with a branding that positioned it as a potential 'Dogecoin competitor'. On 13 May 2021, Vitalik Buterin donated more than 50 trillion SHIB (worth over $1 billion at the time) to the India COVID-Crypto Relief Fund.In October 2021, the market price of the cryptocurrency experienced a significant rise, reportedly increasing by 240% within a week. However, at the beginning of November, it faced a decline, reportedly losing approximately 55% of its value by the end of the month.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Meme coin
+Dogecoin
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Sovereign Currency Act of 2018,"Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 is a statute of the Legislature of the Marshall Islands which was passed on February 26, 2018. The Act creates and issues a digital decentralized currency (“cryptocurrency”) that will be used as a legal tender of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI).
+
+
+== Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 ==
+The Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 creates and issues the Sovereign (SOV) its own cryptocurrency. This would lower the dependence on the USD. There are plans for a portion of the cryptocurrency's revenue to go towards radiation-related health care needs following nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958.
+
+
+== Implementation ==
+The Sovereign  cryptocurrency was created through a partnership with Neema, a financial technology startup. Neema will use “Yokwe” protocol to ensure anonymity while also linking each account with a verified government identity that is both encrypted and private. The SOV will be issued by the Ministry of Finance and introduced through an initial coin offering (ICO) at a date yet to be announced. The number of SOV’s in circulation will start at 24 million and will grow by 4% each year. RMI President Hilda C. Heine called the creation of SOV “another step of manifesting our national liberty.” 
+
+
+== Response ==
+In September 2018, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a report warning the RMI not to launch its own cryptocurrency, the Sovereign, with primary concerns with cryptocurrency being a second form of legal tender, that the revenue from the ICO would be smaller than expected, and that proper governance on the cryptocurrency were not adequate.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Petro (cryptocurrency)
+
+
+== References =="
+Stellar (payment network),"Stellar, or Stellar Lumens, is an open-source, decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat money low-cost transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies. The Stellar protocol is supported by a Delaware nonprofit corporation, the Stellar Development Foundation, though this organization does not enjoy 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the IRS.
+
+
+== History ==
+In 2014, Jed McCaleb, founder of Mt. Gox and co-founder of Ripple, launched the network system Stellar with former lawyer Joyce Kim. Before the official launch, McCaleb formed a website called ""Secret Bitcoin Project"" seeking alpha testers. The nonprofit Stellar Development Foundation was created in collaboration with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and the project officially launched that July. Stellar received $3 million in seed funding from Stripe. Stellar was released as a decentralized payment network and protocol with a native currency, stellar. At its launch, the network had 100 billion stellars. 25 percent of those would be given to other non-profits working toward financial inclusion. Stripe received 2 percent or 2 billion of the initial stellar in return for its seed investment. The cryptocurrency, originally known as stellar, was later called Lumens or XLM. In August 2014, Mercado Bitcoin, the first Brazilian bitcoin exchange, announced it would be using the Stellar network. By January 2015, Stellar had approximately 3 million registered user accounts on its platform and its market cap was almost $15 million.The Stellar Development Foundation released an upgraded protocol with a new consensus algorithm in April 2015 which went live in November 2015. The new algorithm used SCP, a cryptocurrency protocol created by Stanford professor David Mazières.Lightyear.io, a for-profit entity of Stellar, was launched in May 2017 as the commercial arm of the company. In September 2017, Stellar announced a benefits program, part of its Stellar Partnership Grant Program, which would award partners up to $2 million worth of Lumens for project development. In September 2018, Lightyear Corporation acquired Chain, Inc and the combined company was named Interstellar.In 2021, Franklin Templeton launched the first “tokenised” US mutual fund using Stellar.
+
+
+== Usage ==
+In 2015, it was announced that Stellar was releasing an integration into Vumi, the open-sourced messaging platform of the Praekelt Foundation in South Africa. Vumi uses cellphone talk time as currency using the Stellar protocol. Stellar partnered with cloud-based banking software company Oradian in April 2015 to integrate Stellar into Oradian's banking platform to add microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Nigeria.Deloitte announced its integration with Stellar in 2016 to build a cross-border payments application, Deloitte Digital Bank.  In December 2016, it was announced that Stellar's payment network had expanded to include Coins.ph, a mobile payments startup in the Philippines, ICICI Bank in India, African mobile payments firm Flutterwave, and French remittances company Tempo Money Transfer.In October 2017, Stellar partnered with IBM and KlickEx to facilitate cross-border transactions in the South Pacific region. The cross-border payment system developed by IBM includes partnerships with banks in the area. The Lumens digital currency was ranked 13th in market capitalization at the time of the IBM partnership.In December 2017, TechCrunch announced Stellar's partnership with SureRemit, a Nigerian-based non-cash remittances platform.On January 6, 2021, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine announced cooperation and partnership with Stellar in development of Ukraine digital infrastructure, after which Stellar value increased by 40%.
+
+
+== Ecosystem ==
+Stellar has an active community ecosystem and supports projects that utilize the Stellar Network with the Stellar Community Fund.
+
+
+== Overview ==
+Stellar is an open-source protocol for exchanging money or tokens using the Stellar Consensus Protocol. The platform's source code is hosted on GitHub.
+Servers run a software implementation of the protocol, and use the Internet to connect to and communicate with other Stellar servers. Each server stores a ledger of all the accounts in the network. 3 nodes are operated by the Stellar Development Foundation, in conjunction with 21 other organizations, providing for a total of 66 validator nodes.  Transactions among accounts occur not through mining but rather through a consensus process among accounts in a quorum slice.  The current network fee is 100 stroops, equivalent to 0.00001 XLM.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Blockchain-based remittances companies
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official Website"
+StraitsX Indonesian Rupiah,"StraitsX Indonesian Rupiah (XIDR) is a digital stablecoin pegged to the Indonesian Rupiah. XIDR is issued by PT Xfers StraitsX Indonesia, which is an Indonesian subsidiary of Fazz Financial Group. In Singapore, as the subsidiary of Fazz Financial Group, Xfers is a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for e-money issuance.
+
+
+== Usage ==
+XIDR runs on multiple blockchains, such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Zilliqa.
+
+
+== Reserves ==
+Each XIDR is backed by one Indonesian Rupiah that is being held and safeguarded in a regulated financial institution in Indonesia.
+
+
+== See also ==
+USD Coin (USDC)
+StraitsX Singapore Dollar (XSGD)
+
+
+== References =="
+StraitsX Singapore Dollar,"StraitsX Singapore Dollar (XSGD) is a digital stablecoin pegged to the Singapore dollar. XSGD is issued by StraitsX, and StraitsX is a trademark of Xfers Pte Ltd, a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for e-money issuance. XSGD is also the world's first Travel Rule compliant stablecoin, which means it follows the guidelines of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the MAS Payment Services Act.
+
+
+== Usage ==
+XSGD runs on multiple blockchains, such as Ethereum, Hedera, Polygon, and Zilliqa.
+
+
+== Reserves ==
+Each XSGD is backed by a Singapore Dollar held in both cash and both MAS Bills.
+XSGD reserves are regularly attested and the monthly attestations can be found on the StraitsX website.
+
+
+== See also ==
+USD Coin (USDC)
+StraitsX Indonesian Rupiah (XIDR)
+
+
+== References =="
+Terra (blockchain),"Terra is a blockchain protocol and payment platform used for algorithmic stablecoins. The project was created in 2018 by Terraform Labs, a startup co-founded by Do Kwon and Daniel Shin. It is most known for its Terra stablecoin and the associated Luna reserve asset cryptocurrency.
+In May 2022, the Terra blockchain was temporarily halted after the collapse of the stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and Luna, in the event that wiped out almost $45 billion in market capitalisation within a week.
+
+
+== Design ==
+Terra is a blockchain that leverages fiat-pegged stablecoins to power a payment system.  For consensus, the Terra blockchain uses a proof-of-stake codesign. Several stablecoins are built atop the Terra protocol, including TerraUSD, which was the third largest stablecoin by market capitalisation before its collapse in May 2022. The Terra blockchain has a fully-functional ecosystem of decentralized applications (or DApps), such as Anchor, Mirror, and Pylon, which utilised the stable-coin infrastructure of Terra.Terra is a group of algorithmic stablecoins, named according to the currencies to which they were pegged—for example, TerraUSD (UST) was pegged to the U.S. dollar. Luna served as the primary backing asset for Terra, also used as a governance token for users to vote on Terra community proposals. UST stablecoins were not backed by U.S. dollars; instead, they were designed to maintain their peg through a complex model called ""burn and mint equilibrium"". This method uses a two-token system in which one token is supposed to remain stable (UST) while the other (LUNA) is meant to absorb volatility.The Anchor Protocol was a lending and borrowing protocol built on the Terra chain. Investors who deposited UST in the Anchor Protocol were receiving a 19.45% yield paid out from Terra's reserves. Due to such a high yield, some critics raised concerns that Kwon's stablecoin model could function like a ""ginormous Ponzi scheme"". Mirror Protocol was another Terra chain project, which designed and offered financial derivatives designed to ""mirror"" traditional listed stocks.
+
+
+== History ==
+In 2018, Do Kwon and Daniel Shin (also known as Shin Hyun-sung) co-founded Terraform Labs in Seoul, South Korea. In 2019, Terraform Labs launched its first cryptocurrency token. Terraform Labs raised more than $200 million from investment firms such as Arrington Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.In January 2022, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) was established as a non-profit based in Singapore, with Do Kwon as director. Terraform Labs allocated a portion of the profit from UST sales to Luna Foundation Guard, to be used as reserves to stabilise the price of UST. As of 7 May, just before UST broke its peg, LFG held reserves of 80,394 bitcoin worth approximately $2.4 billion. Bitcoin was the largest portion of the reserve, though LFG also held various other stablecoins and cryptocurrencies.In February 2022, Terra and the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team announced they had entered into a sponsorship agreement which provided stadium and television branding, as well as the rebranding of the Washington Nationals club and lounge to the ""Terra Club"". The deal was originally proposed to the Terra community by Kwon, referring only to an unnamed ""sports franchise in one of the four major American professional sports leagues"", and the community agreed to pay $38.15 million for a five-year exclusive partnership.The founders Kwon and Shin each owned one share of Terraform Labs, giving each founder 50% of the controlling power. Kwon later enlarged his stock pool to eleven shares, giving him 91.7% ownership and Shin the remaining 8.3%. Shin and Chai Corporation, a Terra-ecosystem payment service company that he founded, announced on 18 May 2022 that Shin no longer held any ownership stock in Terraform Labs. However, the Singaporean Account and Corporate Regulatory Authority revealed that Shin still held 8.3% Terraform Labs ownership, and Chai Corporation announced that Shin was not able to ""finish liquidating his remaining ownership in time"" despite having the same share of ownership as of 18 May. The documents from the Singaporean authority also revealed that as of 18 May, Shin held 51.2% of ownership and Kwon 22.4% of Chai Holdings, the parent company of Chai Corporation.
+
+
+=== Collapse ===
+Beginning on 9 May 2022, the tokens made headlines after UST began to break its peg to the US dollar. Over the next week, the price of UST plunged to 10 cents, while Luna fell to ""virtually zero"", down from an all-time high of $119.51. Before the crash, Luna was one of the top ten largest cryptocurrencies on the market. The collapse wiped out almost $45 billion of market capitalisation in one week.On 13 May, Terraform Labs temporarily halted the Terra blockchain in response to the falling prices of UST and Luna. Despite the company's attempts to stabilise UST and Luna via its bitcoin and other cryptocurrency reserves from the Luna Foundation Guard, they were unable to reestablish the 1:1 peg of UST to USD. As of 16 May 2022, blockchain analysts claim that the expenditure of the LFO bitcoin reserves still remains unclear.Likely causes of the collapse included mass withdrawals from the Anchor Protocol days before the collapse, investor concerns about cryptocurrencies more generally, and a drop in the price of bitcoin. During the collapse, holders converted Terra into Luna via the mint-and-burn system, which caused the price of Luna to collapse due to its increased supply. This in turn destabilised the balancing mechanism between the currencies.On 25 May, a proposal was approved to reissue a new Luna cryptocurrency and to decouple from and abandon the devalued UST stablecoin.  The original blockchain is now called Terra Classic (LUNC), and the original Luna token is called Luna Classic. The new Luna coin is called ""Terra 2.0"" by investors, and has lost valuation in the opening days of being listed on exchanges.In an August 2022 interview on the NFTV series Coinage, months after the collapse, Terra founder Do Kwon remarked that his faith in Terra now ""seems super irrational"". However, he denied that the Terra system was a ponzi scheme.On 23 March 2023 Kwon attempted to travel to Dubai using false Costa Rican documents, while also carrying false Belgian travel documents, but he was intercepted and arrested at Podgorica Airport in Montenegro. A federal grand jury in Manhattan subsequently laid eight charges against Kwon, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy.  The following month, KBS News reported that  prior to the collapse of TerraUSD, Kwon had sent 9 billion won (worth USD $7 million) to the law firm Kim & Chang.
+
+
+== Licensing and regulatory issues ==
+Terraform Labs Pte. Ltd., the company behind Terra, is incorporated in Singapore but did not submit an application for a licence under the Payment Services Act according to The Straits Times. It is also not a notified entity, meaning it has not been granted temporary exemption from holding a licence by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. According to documents filed by Kwon at the Supreme Court of Korea's Registry Office, Kwon filed to dissolve the company's Korean entity on 30 April 2022, and was granted approval on 4 May 2022.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a subpoena to Terraform Labs and Kwon in 2021, with specific regard to Terraform Labs' Mirror Protocol, which designed and offered financial derivatives that virtually ""mirrored"" actual listed stocks. Kwon refused the subpoena, and instead announced he would sue the SEC. Despite his attempts to dispute and avoid investigations from the SEC, a U.S. Court hearing in Manhattan in February 2022 ruled in favour of the SEC's right to continue its investigation into Kwon and Terraform Labs. In February 2023, the SEC charged Terraform Labs and Kwon with fraud.On 18 May, the newly appointed Korean Minister of Justice, Han Dong-hoon, enlarged the economic crimes investigation division of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor's Office, vowing to ""track illegal funds and capital transfers, crack down on tax evasion, audit company finances, compile transaction data, and seize the proceeds of criminal financial activity."" On its first day of operation, the Financial and Securities Crimes Joint Investigation Team singled out the Luna and Terra crisis as its first investigation target.A class action, Patterson v. TerraForm Labs Pte Ltd. et al, was filed against Terraform Labs and others in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on 17 June 2022. In September 2022, a $56.9 million class action was filed at the High Court of Singapore against Do Kwon, Terraform Labs, Nikolaos Alexandros Platias and the Luna Foundation Guard.In June 2022, Yonhap News reported that 15 people, including former Terraform developers for the Anchor lending protocol, had been imposed with travel restrictions by the Korean government. On November 29, 2022, an arrest warrant was issued for Daniel Shin by South Korean prosecutors.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Anchor Protocol whitepaper"
+Tether (cryptocurrency),"Tether (often referred to by its currency codes, USD₮ and USDT, among others) is a cryptocurrency stablecoin, launched by the company Tether Limited Inc. in 2014. As of July 2022, Tether Limited has minted the USDT stablecoin on fourteen protocols and blockchains.It is the largest cryptocurrency in terms of trading volume, commanding 64% of the market share among stablecoins and having surpassed Bitcoin in 2019 to become the most traded cryptocurrency in the world. In 2023, Tether had $84 billion in circulation.Tether Limited is owned by the British Virgin Island-based company iFinex Inc., which also owns the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Creation ===
+In 2012, J. R. Willett published a whitepaper which described the possibility of building new cryptocurrencies on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Willett went on to help implement this idea in the cryptocurrency Mastercoin, which had an associated Mastercoin Foundation (later renamed the Omni Foundation) to promote the use of this new ""second layer"". The Mastercoin protocol became the technological foundation of the Tether cryptocurrency, and one of the original members of Mastercoin Foundation. Brock Pierce became a co-founder of Tether and Tether founder, Craig Sellars, became the CTO of the Mastercoin Foundation.The precursor to Tether, originally named ""Realcoin"", was announced in July 2014 by co-founders Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins, and Craig Sellars as a Santa Monica-based startup. The first tokens were issued on 6 October 2014, on the Bitcoin blockchain. This was done by using the Omni Layer Protocol. Realcoin used bitcoin's computer infrastructure to exchange property and execute contracts without third-party intermediaries, opening up bitcoin’s network to a variety of commercial uses. Realcoin worked with banks, digital-currency exchanges and ATM providers to become ""gateways"" for buying, trading or redeeming realcoins around the world.On 20 November 2014, Tether CEO Reeve Collins announced the project was being renamed to ""Tether"".The company also announced it was entering private beta, which supported a ""Tether+ token"" for three currencies: USTether (US+) for United States dollars, EuroTether (EU+) for euros and YenTether (JP+) for Japanese yen. Tether falsely claimed at launch that ""[e]very Tether+ token is backed 100% by its original currency, and can be redeemed at any time with no exposure to exchange risk"", although this was not true at the time and remains false. The company's website states that it is incorporated in Hong Kong with offices in Switzerland, without giving details, and has never submitted to an independent audit.
+
+
+=== 2015–2016 ===
+In January 2015, the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex enabled trading of Tether on their platform. While representatives from Tether and Bitfinex say that the two are separate, the Paradise Papers leaks in November 2017 named Bitfinex officials Philip Potter and Giancarlo Devasini as responsible for setting up Tether Holdings Limited in the British Virgin Islands in 2014. A spokesperson for Bitfinex and Tether has said that the CEO of both firms is Jan Ludovicus van der Velde. According to Tether's website, the Hong Kong-based Tether Limited is a fully owned subsidiary of Tether Holdings Limited. Bitfinex is one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges by volume in the world.For a while, Tether was processing US dollar transactions through Taiwanese banks which, in turn, sent the money through the bank Wells Fargo to allow the funds to move outside Taiwan. Tether announced that on 18 April 2017, these international transfers had been blocked. Along with Bitfinex, Tether filed suit against Wells Fargo in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit was withdrawn a week later.Tether issues token on Bitcoin (Omni and Liquid Protocol), Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Algorand, SLP, and -OMG Network blockchains.Currently, there are a total of five distinct Tether tokens: United States dollar tether on Bitcoin's Omni layer, euro tether on Bitcoin's Omni layer, United States dollar tether as an ERC-20 token, and euro tether as an ERC-20 token, and added in 2020 United States dollar tether as a TRC-20 token on the TRON network.
+
+
+=== 2017–2018 ===
+From January 2017 to September 2018, the amount of tethers outstanding grew from about $10 million to about $2.8 billion. In early 2018 Tether accounted for about 10% of the trading volume of Bitcoin, but during the summer of 2018 it accounted for up to 80% of Bitcoin volume. More than $500 million of Tether was issued in August 2018.On 15 October 2018 the tether price briefly fell to $0.88 due to the perceived credit risk as traders on Bitfinex exchanged tether for Bitcoin, driving up the price of Bitcoin.The Wall Street Journal reported that in late 2018, Tether Holdings Ltd co-owner Stephen Moore discussed efforts by a major Tether trader in China to “circumvent the banking system by providing fake sales invoices and contracts for each deposit and withdrawal.” The report quoted a Moore email in which he admitted signing these fake invoices and contracts but said he “would not want to argue any of the above in a potential fraud/money laundering case.” Tether released a response calling the Journal report “wholly inaccurate and misleading” but didn't cite any specific inaccuracies.
+
+
+=== 2019–Present ===
+In 2019, Tether surpassed Bitcoin in trading volume with the highest daily and monthly trading volume of any cryptocurrency on the market.As of July 2021, Tether is tied to half of all Bitcoin trades.In May 2022, Tether launched its MXNT token pegged to Mexico's peso as a ""testing ground"" in Latin America.In October 2023, Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer for Tether, was promoted to CEO. He will lead the company starting in December 2023, succeeding current CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde.In October 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tether has been increasingly showing up in investigations tied to money laundering, terror financing and sanctions evasion. The report alleges that Tether appears to have been used in financing Hamas, paying Chinese fentanyl suppliers, funding the North Korean nuclear program and buying sanctioned Venezuelan oil for sanctioned Russian oligarchs. In response, the company published a blog post denying inadequate customer due diligence and screening practices, and describing how they have aided governments with criminal investigations, helping freeze a total of $835 million in assets linked to theft.In June 2023, Tether partnered with El Salvador and invested in the country's renewable energy project. Tether is one of the investors in a first-round of funding for Volcano Energy, a 241 megawatt (MW) renewable energy park.In June 2023, Tether Operations Limited held meetings with governmental structures and signed a memorandum with the Government of Georgia. The partnership will create a special fund for local startups and aid in the development of blockchain technologies in Georgia.
+
+
+== Alleged price manipulation ==
+
+
+=== Academic research ===
+Research by Griffin and Shams found that Bitcoin prices increased after Tether minted new USD₮ during market downturns. They speculated this was an attempt at market manipulation. These findings were contested by the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange who claimed the authors cherry-picked data and lacked a complete dataset. Subsequent researchers found little to no evidence that Tether USD₮ minting events influenced Bitcoin prices, supporting the Bitfinex critique. In 2022, research found that Bitcoin prices only increased when Whale Alert tweeted to the public that Tether had minted USDT, supporting a classic investor response to news announcements. Academic research following the Griffin and Shams study did not conclude that Tether manipulated Bitcoin. The CEO of Tether and Bitfinex commented on the academic debate: ""Bitfinex nor Tether is, or has ever, engaged in any sort of market or price manipulation. Tether issuances cannot be used to prop up the price of Bitcoin or any other coin/token on Bitfinex.""
+
+
+=== Media research ===
+Bloomberg News reporters found irregularities on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, with small market orders moving the market price of Tether as much as larger market orders from 1 May 2018 to 22 June 2018. New York University Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Federal Reserve bank examiner Mark Williams suggested the unusual order sizes were indicative of wash trading by automated trading programs. The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange offered a rebuttal of these claims, stating that Bloomberg News misunderstood the concept of stablecoin and that the market price of Tether was not greatly influenced by market order size because Tether was a stablecoin pegged to the United States dollar. The user responsible for unusual order sizes also confirmed that the oddly specific order sizes and decimal places were ""randomly selected."" The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange rebuttal of the Bloomberg News findings were later supported by academic research concerning the stability of stablecoins.
+
+
+=== Legal research ===
+On 20 November 2018, Bloomberg reported that U.S. federal prosecutors are investigating whether Tether was used to manipulate the price of Bitcoin.According to Tether's website tether can be newly issued, by purchase for dollars, or redeemed by exchanges and qualified corporate customers excluding U.S.-based customers. Journalist Jon Evans states that he has not been able to find publicly verifiable examples of a purchase of newly issued tether or a redemption in the year ending August 2018.
+
+
+== Security and liquidity ==
+Tether claims that it intends to hold all United States dollars in reserve so that it can meet customer withdrawals upon demand. It was unable to meet all withdrawal requests in 2017. Tether purports to make reserve account holdings transparent via external audit; however, Tether never produced an audit showing it had the purported reserve. In January 2018 Tether announced that they no longer had a relationship with their auditor.About $31 million of USDT tokens were stolen from Tether in November 2017. Later analysis of the Bitcoin distributed ledger showed a close connection between the Tether hack and the January 2015 hack of Bitstamp. In response to the theft, Tether suspended trading, and stated it would roll out new software to implement an emergency ""hard fork"" in order to render all of the tokens that Tether identified as stolen in the heist untradeable. Tether has stated that as of 19 December 2017, it has re-enabled limited cryptocurrency wallet services and has begun processing the backlog of pending trades.Tether has been criticized for a lack of transparency and verifiability of its claimed fiat reserves. In 2021, the company was fined by regulators for only maintaining full reserves during 27.6% of the days in the period from 2016 to 2018 as well as for failing to present audits showing sufficient asset reserves.On September 19, 2022, due to an ongoing lawsuit in New York District Court, Bitfinex and Tether (referred to in court records as B/T), were ordered to produce documents showing the backing of USDT, the outcome of which is still pending.On November 20, 2023, Tether reported that together with OKX it had frozen $225 million worth of its cryptocurrency which had been linked to a human trafficking group in Southeast Asia responsible for a global pig butchering scam. Tether claimed the freeze had been done at the request of the US Secret Service, and that it was its largest ever freeze of its token.
+
+
+== Questions about dollar reserves ==
+Tether is not fully backed by fiat reserves, despite false claims by Tether to the contrary. An online critic who goes by the name ""Bitfinex'ed"" has raised questions about the relationship between Bitfinex and Tether in 2017, accusing Bitfinex of creating ""magic Tethers out of thin air"". In September 2017, Tether published a memorandum from a public accounting firm that Tether Limited claimed showed that tethers were fully backed by US dollars; however, according to the New York Times, independent attorney Lewis Cohen stated the document, because of the careful way it was phrased, does not prove that the Tether coins are backed by dollars. The documents also fail to ascertain whether the balances in question are otherwise encumbered. The accounting firm specifically stated that
+
+This information is intended solely to assist the management of Tether Limited ... and is not intended to be, and should not be, used or relied upon by any other party.
+Tether has failed to present audits showing that the amount of tethers outstanding are backed one-to-one by U.S. dollars on deposit despite repeated claims that they would. A June 2018 attempt at an audit was posted on their website in June 2018 which showed a report by the law firm Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan LLP (FSS) which appeared to confirm that the issued tethers were fully backed by dollars. However, FSS stated ""FSS is not an accounting firm and did not perform the above review and confirmations using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles,"" and ""The above confirmation of bank and tether balances should not be construed as the results of an audit and were not conducted in accordance with Generally Accepted Auditing Standards."" Stuart Hoegner, Tether's general counsel said ""the bottom line is an audit cannot be obtained. The big four firms are anathema to that level of risk. We’ve gone for what we think is the next best thing.""
+
+
+== Legal cases ==
+
+
+=== New York Attorney General's case against iFinex ===
+On April 25, 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James (prosecution) filed a lawsuit against iFinex (defendant)—the parent company of Tether Limited and the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange. The prosecution claimed that the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange had been unable to secure a reliable fiat banking relationship, so it had entrusted US$1 billion to the Panamanian payment processing firm Crypto Capital Corp. The prosecution alleged that funds were commingled with corporate and client deposits and that no contract was ever signed with Crypto Capital. The prosecution speculated that Crypto Capital Corp had lost or stolen the money, and executives at Bitfinex and Tether Limited had been unable to recover up to US$850 million of funds. The prosecution accused iFinex, Bitfinex, and Tether Limited of using Tether Limited to cover up the shortfall.On April 26, 2019, iFinex contested claims that funds had been lost or stolen by Crypto Capital Corp, stating that funds had actually been seized and Bitfinex sought release of the funds. Crypto Capital Corp told Bitfinex the seizures were temporary and presented excuses as to why the funds could not be released to Bitfinex (Case Point 33). Crypto Capital Corp stated that: in May 2018, the government of Poland had frozen a Crypto Capital Corp bank account holding at least US$340 million of Bitfinex funds (Case Point No. 33); and between April and July 2018, a Crypto Capital Corp account in Portugal containing around $150 million of Bitfinex funds had also been frozen (Case Point No. 34). The principals of Crypto Capital Corp were later arrested. During the case, iFinex contested claims that Tether Limited had been used to cover up alleged losses, stating that Bitfinex had borrowed US$400 million from Tether Limited due to the inability to access seized funds from Crypto Capital Corp (Case Point No. 38). Bitfinex stated they had fully repaid the loans with interest to Tether Limited by February 5, 2021.On May 16, 2021, New York Supreme Court Judge Joel M. Cohen granted iFinex's motion to modify the injunction because the New York Attorney General's office's accusations were too general and lacked specificity, stating the prosecution's case was ""couched in exceedingly sweeping terms"" and ""injunctions must be specific."" On February 17, 2021, iFinex settled the legal dispute with the New York Attorney General's office. iFinex, Bitfinex, and Tether Limited did not admit any wrongdoing and paid US$18.5 million to settle the case.
+
+
+=== U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ===
+On December 5, 2017, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (prosecution) issued subpoenas to Bitfinex and Tether Limited concerning the backing of minted USD₮. Before February 25, 2019, Tether Limited's terms claimed ""Every tether is always backed 1-to-1, by traditional currency held in our reserves. So 1 USDT is always equivalent to 1 USD"",. After February 25, 2019, Tether Limited revised their terms to instead claim that ""Tether Tokens are 100% backed by Tether’s Reserves"", defining said ""reserves"" as ""traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities.""On April 30, 2019, iFinex (defendant)—the parent company of Tether Limited and the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange—issued an affidavit asserting that minted USD₮ was 74% backed by a narrow definition of cash and cash equivalents, with the remaining 26% supposedly backed by other assets.On October 15, 2021, Tether Limited paid a fine of US$41.6 million for inaccurately claiming that minted USD₮ were 100% backed by fiat USD, when they were not—even by Tether Limited's own affidavit, they were only backed by a combination of fiat USD and other assets such as ""unsecured receivables, commercial papers, funds held by third parties, and other non-fiat assets"" (supposedly at 100% in total). Tether Limited responded by revising their claims to state that ""All Tether tokens are pegged at 1-to-1 with a matching fiat currency and are backed 100% by Tether’s reserves."" Tether Limited released assurance reports from 2017 to 2022 attesting to the 100% backing of minted USD₮. In May 2021, Tether published a report showing that 2.9% of Tether was backed by fiat USD, with over 49.6% backed by commercial paper, and the remaining amount backed by other assets. Tether Limited continues to refuse to allow an independent audit to verify its claims of full backing.
+
+
+== See also ==
+USD Coin (USDC)
+Dai (DAI)
+Pax Dollar (USDP)
+Gemini Dollar (GUSD)
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+What is the Difference Between USDT and USDC"
+The Graph,"The Graph is an indexing protocol for organizing and accessing data from blockchains and storage networks. It allows developers to search, find, publish, and use the public data they need to build decentralized applications. The Graph Network enables the accessibility of decentralized applications through public and open APIs, called subgraphs. The native currency of The Graph is GRT. The Graph has volunteers known as Curators, Indexers, and Delegators who work to process data and share it with Consumers. The Graph offers support to index data from 25 different blockchain protocols including Ethereum, NEAR, Arbitrium, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, Celo, Fantom, and Moonbeam.
+
+
+== History ==
+The Graph was launched on the Ethereum blockchain in 2018 by Yaniv Tal, Brandon Ramirez and Jannis Pohlman. In June 2020, The Graph raised $5 million in a token sale to Framework Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group, Multicoin Capital, DTC Capital, and others. In October 2020, the governance of the network was turned over to an independent network called The Graph Foundation. Eva Beylin was nominated to serve as director.In October 2020, The Graph raised $12 million in a public sale of its native GRT token. In December 2020, the Graph mainnet was launched. In January 2022, The Graph Foundation raised $50 million in a sale of digital tokens to investors led by Tiger Global Management. In February 2022, a group of venture capital firms including Digital Currency Group, Multicoin Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, gumi Cryptos Capital, NGC Ventures, and HashKey announced the launch of a $205 million ecosystem fund to support developers building on ‘The Graph’ protocol.
+
+
+== Grants ==
+In 2021, Sommelier announced a $1 million R&D grant from The Graph Foundation. In December 2021, The Graph awarded a $48 million grant to The Guild to join The Graph as a core developer.
+
+
+== References =="
+Tron (cryptocurrency),"TRON is a decentralized, blockchain-based operating system with smart contract functionality, proof-of-stake principles as its consensus algorithm and a cryptocurrency native to the system, known as  Tronix (TRX). It was established in March 2014 by Justin Sun and since 2017 has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a non-profit organization in Singapore, established in the same year. It is open-source software.
+It was originally an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token, which switched its protocol to its own blockchain in 2018. TRC20 has a fee of 5 trones per 1 USDT coin for the transfer. On some cryptocurrency wallets, users can't withdraw their USDT funds until they have enough money for the network fee.
+
+
+== History ==
+TRON was founded by Justin Sun in 2017. The TRON Foundation was established in July 2017 in Singapore. The TRON Foundation raised $70 million in 2017 through an initial coin offering shortly before China outlawed the digital tokens. The testnet, Blockchain Explorer, and Web Wallet were all launched by March 2018. TRON Mainnet launched shortly afterward in May 2018, marking the Odyssey 2.0 release as a technical milestone for TRON. 
+In June 2018, TRON switched its protocol from an ERC-20 token on top of Ethereum to an independent peer-to-peer network. On 25 July 2018, the TRON Foundation announced it had finished the acquisition of BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service. Upon this acquisition, in August 2018, BitTorrent Founder Bram Cohen also disclosed that he was leaving the company to found a separate cryptocurrency, Chia.By January 2019, TRON had a total market cap of about 1.6 USDT. Despite this market performance, some authors viewed TRON as a typical case of the complex and disordered nature of cryptocurrencies. In February 2019, after being acquired by TRON Foundation, BitTorrent started its own token sale based on the TRON network.In late 2021, Justin Sun resigned as CEO of the TRON Foundation, which was subsequently reorganized as a DAO.In March 2023, Sun and Tron were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for selling unregistered securities related to the sale and promotion of Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BBT) tokens, alleging that Sun and Tron had engaged in wash trading in the secondary market for TRX in order to buoy its price. Eight celebrities, including Akon, Ne-Yo, Austin Mahone, Soulja Boy, Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul and Lil Yachty, were charged with promoting these cryptocurrencies without disclosing that they were sponsored, with all those other than Soulja Boy, and Mahone settling with the FTC for more than $400,000, without admitting or denying the charges.
+
+
+== Architecture ==
+TRON adopts a 3-layer architecture divided into storage layer, core layer, and application layer. The TRON protocol adheres to Google protocol buffers, which intrinsically supports multi-language extension.The TRON protocol, maintained primarily by the TRON Foundation, distributes computing resources equally among TRX holders with internal pricing mechanisms such as bandwidth and energy. TRON provides a decentralized virtual machine, which can execute a program using an international network of public nodes. The network has zero transaction fees and conducts approximately 2,000 transactions per second.The implementations of TRON require minimal transaction fees in order to prevent malicious users from performing DDoS attacks for free. In this respect, EOS.IO and TRON are quite similar, due to the negligible fees, high transactions per second, and high reliability, and as such are regarded as a new generation of blockchain systems. Michael Borkowski, Marten Sigwart, Philipp Frauenthaler, Taneli Hukkinen and Stefan Schulte defined TRON as an Ethereum clone, with no fundamental differences. The transactions per second rate on Tron's blockchain was questioned because it was far below its theoretical claim.
+
+
+== Criticisms ==
+In January 2018, via a Tweet, Juan Benet, the CEO at Protocol Labs, revealed that the white paper of TRON copied portions of the white papers from IPFSbot and MineFilecoin, without a single reference. Researchers from Digital Asset Research (DAR) discovered multiple instances of code copied from other projects in the Tron code base. It is also accused of violating the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 (LGPL) because the project does not mention that its client was derived from EthereumJ, a Java implementation of Ethereum. These accusations were denied by the TRON Foundation, the organization behind the design of the system.In May 2019, the cyber-security testing service HackerOne revealed that just one computer could have brought TRON's entire blockchain to a halt. The revelation showed that a barrage of requests sent by a single PC could be used to squeeze the power of the blockchain's CPU, overload the memory, and perform a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.On 13 June 2022, Tron's algorithmic stablecoin, USDD, lost its peg to the US Dollar, trading at 0.96 per dollar for about a month.In November 2023, Tron was linked to funding of various terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Verge (cryptocurrency),"Verge Currency is a decentralized open-source cryptocurrency which offers various levels of  private transactions. It does this by obfuscating the IP addresses of users with Tor and by leveraging stealth transactions making it difficult to determine the geolocation of its users.Verge Currency has a maximum supply capped at 16.5 billion XVG. It uses the Proof of Work (POW) mining principle with multi-algorithm support and 5 different hash functions: Scrypt, X17, Lyra2rev2, myr-groestl and blake2s.
+
+
+== History ==
+Verge Currency was created in 2014 and originally named DogeCoinDark. It was rebranded to Verge Currency in 2016.Following the bitcoin principle, Verge Currency has a transparent ledger that allows anyone to view all of its transactions, but protects user identities and locations. This was achieved by integrating both Tor to not expose IP addresses and using stealth transactions, formerly known as Wraith Protocol, to hide the value of transactions.
+In April 2018, it was announced that the adult entertainment provider MindGeek would begin accepting Verge Currency as a payment option on its website network.Also during April and May 2018, Verge Currency suffered from timestamp exploit on one of its 5 mining algorithms. This could have resulted in a 51% attack if it had only one algorithm.
+
+
+== References =="
+WhopperCoin,"WhopperCoin was a cryptocurrency launched by the Russian branch of Burger King as a loyalty program in the summer of 2017. It was primarily notable for being the first issuance of branded cryptocurrency by a major company and the first form of loyalty points that could be traded freely; the BBC noted that Burger King was the ""first major corporate brand to issue its own crypto-cash"", with WhopperCoin turning a burger into an ""investment vehicle"". It was hosted on the Waves blockchain platform.The cryptocurrency did not prove successful: while WhopperCoins had traded at prices as high as USD$0.14 in September 2017, by January 2018 the price had fallen to less than USD$0.002, and by September 2019 trading volume had declined to zero.
+
+
+== Implementation ==
+WhopperCoin transactions were hosted on the Waves platform, a rival to Ethereum. Waves ran a blockchain ledger (a distributed record of transactions resistant to tampering or alteration), which tracked ownership of WhopperCoin and recorded transactions. One billion coins were initially issued.WhopperCoins were permitted to be bought, sold or given away freely, which meant that they could be used as financial instruments and traded on exchanges alongside other cryptocurrencies. In June 2017, Burger King Russia had announced that they would begin accepting Bitcoin. In August, Ivan Shestov, the head of external communications at Burger King Russia, referred to WhopperCoin as an ""investment tool"" and was quoted as saying that ""eating Whoppers now is a strategy for financial prosperity tomorrow"".The specifics of implementation were initially unclear; on 24 August, New York magazine and Fortune cited a Russian-language article from Rusbase saying that customers would receive one WhopperCoin for each Whopper purchased and that its initial use would be as a loyalty program where WhopperCoins could be used to purchase menu items. At that time, the company had not established an exchange rate at which WhopperCoins could be used to make Burger King purchases. On 29 August, however, sources began to reflect that one WhopperCoin would be given out for each ruble spent on a Whopper, and that a Whopper would be able to be purchased for 1,700 WhopperCoins. This meant that one free Whopper could be obtained for every ""five or six"" purchased with normal currency. The BBC also added that customers would be able to claim coins by scanning their receipts on a smartphone, with Android and iPhone apps expected to be released in September 2017.
+
+
+== Impact ==
+In September 2017, immediately after its launch, one WhopperCoin was valued at USD$0.14. Previously, Burger King had pioneered the use of cryptocurrency in the fast food industry with its Netherlands branch accepting Bitcoin in 2016. Additionally, reports in June 2017 said that Burger King Russia ""would be accepting bitcoin as payment"". However, at the time of WhopperCoin's launch, CNBC noted that previous attempts toward cryptocurrency adoption by Burger King Russia had been poorly received by the Russian government, with 2016 reports ""suggesting users could even face jail time under proposed legislation"". However, subsequent statements showed support for the idea, including an interview where First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said ""I am a supporter, a cryptoround  [sic] must exist."" However, at the time, no legal framework for cryptocurrency existed in Russia, where it remained illegal to use cryptocurrencies as payment for any goods or services.WhopperCoin was not widely given serious consideration. Upon its release, Fortune contrasted it with ""cryptocurrencies you may actually use"", while New York magazine sardonically praised it as a ""way to satiate both your appetite and your need for rather useless virtual money"". The Verge described Shestov's claim that ""eating Whoppers now is a strategy for financial prosperity tomorrow"" as a ""bit of a stretch""; in September 2017, Business Insider cited it as evidence that the ""ICO craze"" had ""reached its zenith"". Marketing Week said that cryptocurrencies had been ""described at one extreme as gimmicks that simply make good fodder for PR stunts, and at the other as a new economic paradigm"", and described Burger King Russia's move as ""capitalising on the blockchain buzz"".Despite this, WhopperCoin's uniqueness was widely discussed. Adweek praised Burger King's ""knack for hijacking the hype train"" and some pointed to it as a potential new direction for corporate loyalty programs. Garrick Hileman, a research fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, compared them favorably to airline miles programs, which cannot be traded as financial instruments (or, generally, with any entity besides the issuing company and its affiliates); the possibility of trading WhopperCoin against currencies or other assets had the potential to make them ""more compelling than a standard loyalty scheme"". Emin Gun Sirer, an associate professor at Cornell University, said that rewards points were ""actually a good use case for blockchains"" and WhopperCoin was likely the first of many similar programs. In a conversation with the BBC, he cautioned that they also had the potential to be used as a vehicle for ransomware and money laundering.
+
+
+== Demise ==
+Despite initial fanfare, the program was not successful. In January 2018, the price of a WhopperCoin (which had been USD$0.14 in September 2017) had fallen to less than USD$0.002. While the token had a dedicated asset page on Waves' website at its launch in 2017, Verdict reported that ""despite a strong start, the Whoppercoin fad died down fairly quickly"". Although later cryptocurrency initiatives by Burger King would see success (the German branch began accepting Bitcoin in 2019), WhopperCoin did not.
+As of September 2019, WHO trading volume stood at zero. In October 2019, Wired noted that WhopperCoin had ""long lost its sizzle"", along with thousands of similarly ambitious cryptocurrency ventures, many of which it characterized as ""blockchain memes"".
+
+
+== References =="
+Worldcoin,"Worldcoin is an iris biometric cryptocurrency project developed by San Francisco- and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity. Founded in 2019 by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania, it is backed by VC Andreessen Horowitz.
+
+
+== History ==
+In 2021, the company stated that its token (WLD) is intended to be a larger effort to drive a more unified and equitable global economy driven by the internet economy, although it will not be available in the USA. The token will be a Layer 2 Ethereum-based cryptocurrency that leverages the security of the Ethereum blockchain while having its own economy.In October 2021, the project raised an initial $25 million. Within six months, an additional $100 million was raised, pushing the token's value up to $3 billion.In April 2022, a report from MIT Technology Review cited those from the community who accused Worldcoin of ""taking advantage of students"" and ""targeting lower-income communities"", and came to the conclusion that ""it's just cheaper and easier to run this kind of data collection operation in places where people have little money and few legal protections.""In May 2023, TechCrunch reported that hackers had been able to steal login credentials of several of Worldcoin's operators' personal devices including their credentials to the Worldcoin operator app. However, Worldcoin's spokesperson said that no personal user data was compromised, as the operator app does not access user data.Further funding of $115 million was announced in May 2023, to be used for investment into bot detection, research and development, and expanding the Worldcoin project and application. While in beta, Worldcoin was reported to have onboarded approximately two million users.Worldcoin launched out of beta on July 24, 2023 with 11 orb locations in the U.S. and plans for 35 cities in 20 countries.In August 2023, Kenya, one of the first countries where Worldcoin was launched, suspended its enrollment in the country, citing security, privacy and financial concerns. Worldcoin was previously ordered to stop collecting personal data by the Kenyan Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, but did not comply.
+
+
+== Design ==
+Worldcoin hopes to provide a reliable way to authenticate humans online called World ID, to counter bots and fake virtual identities facilitated by artificial intelligence. Worldcoin attempts to recruit new users to join its network by getting their iris scanned using Worldcoin's orb-shaped iris scanner in return for some Worldcoin. Worldcoin claims the distribution mechanism was inspired by universal basic income discussions.
+
+
+== Controversies ==
+The currency has not formally launched in the US and other countries because of concerns by national regulators regarding privacy and potential use of the tokens for fraudulent purposes.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Cardano (blockchain platform),"Cardano is a public blockchain platform. It is open-source and decentralized, with consensus achieved using proof of stake. It can facilitate peer-to-peer transactions with its internal cryptocurrency, ADA.Cardano's development began in 2015, led by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. The project is overseen and supervised by the Cardano Foundation based in Zug, Switzerland. When launched in 2017, it was the largest cryptocurrency to use a proof-of-stake blockchain, which is seen as a greener alternative to proof-of-work protocols.
+
+
+== History ==
+After leaving Ethereum in 2014 Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood set out their plans for Cardano in 2015. Hoskinson had left Ethereum after a dispute with another co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. Hoskinson wanted to accept venture capital and create a company, while Buterin wanted to keep it as a nonprofit organization. Woods and Hoskinson co-founded the business IOHK to develop blockchains for use by corporations, governments, and education institutions.Cardano was initially released to the public in 2017.  That year, IOHK partnered with the University of Edinburgh to launch the Blockchain Technology Laboratory. The lab had six post-doctoral and professorial positions with up to 35 jobs created in total, and was led by Aggelos Kiayias, developer of the Ouroboros protocol.Cardano reached a market cap of $77 billion in May 2021, which was the fourth highest for a cryptocurrency at that time.Advertising agency MBLM ranked Cardano 26th for brand intimacy out of 600 brands in August 2022, in between Ford and Nestlé and the highest rank for a cryptocurrency. Citing an MBLM partner, advertising industry magazine Ad Age said Cardano's high ranking ""can likely be chalked up to the gambling element of crypto"".
+
+
+== Design ==
+
+
+=== Governance ===
+Cardano is controlled by three entities:
+
+Cardano foundation aims to standardize and promote the ecosystem (based in Switzerland).
+IOHK: an engineering company responsible for building the Cardano blockchain.
+Emurgo: responsible for commercial applications.As of 2021, Frederik Gregaard is known to be the CEO of the Cardano Foundation.The platform is named after Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano, while the cryptocurrency itself is named after the English mathematician Ada Lovelace. The Ada sub-unit is the Lovelace; one Ada = 1,000,000 Lovelaces. Cardano differentiates itself from many other cryptocurrencies by focusing on scientific research and working together with universities.
+
+
+=== Technical design ===
+Atypically, Cardano does not have a white paper. Instead, it uses design principles intended to overcome issues faced by earlier cryptocurrencies such as scalability, interoperability, and regulatory compliance. Cardano claims that it overcomes problems found in other cryptocurrencies: mainly that Bitcoin is too slow and inflexible, and that Ethereum is not safe or scalable. Like Bitcoin, Cardano uses a UTXO ledger model, though it is an extended version (EUTXO) to facilitate smart contracts and scripting languages.Cardano uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol named Ouroboros; this is in contrast to Bitcoin and Ethereum, which use proof-of-work protocols (though the latter switched over in 2022). Proof-of-stake blockchains use far less energy than proof-of-work chains. This is achieved by eliminating the computing resources that a proof of work algorithm requires. In February 2021, Hoskinson estimated the Cardano network used 6 GWh annually, less than 0.01% of the 110.53 TWh used by the Bitcoin network as calculated by the University of Cambridge.
+Within the Cardano platform, Ada exists on the settlement layer. This layer is similar to Bitcoin and keeps track of transactions. The second layer is the computation layer and is designed to be similar to Ethereum, enabling smart contracts and applications to run on the platform.The cryptocurrency Ada (ADA) can be stored on Cardano's native digital wallet named ""Daedalus"". The wallet downloads a full copy of the entire Cardano blockchain transaction history. Users face the risk of losing access to funds if the wallet's seed phrase is lost or stolen. The review in Investopedia highlighted the wallet's security and noted the lack of: mobile support, support for other tokens, and ""onramp"" to purchase assets with money.Development phases of Cardano, or ""eras"", are named after notable figures in poetry and computer science: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire. The first three stages implemented a basic blockchain, and then implemented decentralisation and smart contracts. The Basho era focuses on scaling the blockchain. Voltaire, the final era, adds voting and treasury management functionality to the blockchain.Once Voltaire is complete IOHK has said it plans to release the development of the network entirely to the community. The ""Cardano improvement proposal"" CIP-1694 is the first step towards ""on-chain"" governance. It intends to allow ADA token holders to create proposals that may be voted upon by the community and, if successful, implemented. As with other proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies, Cardano offers ""staking"", which allows token holders to set-aside (delegate) tokens to potentially ""validate"" transactions on the same blockchain (see Figure 1). The quantity of tokens staked corresponds with the likelihood of being chosen to validate a transaction, and thus be rewarded by the algorithm with more of the same token. Cardano's Daedalus wallet allows for staking. For Cardano, users participate in ""staking pools"" with other token-holders.
+
+
+== Applications ==
+Applications of the Cardano blockchain include:
+
+In 2018, IOHK signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Ethiopia to consider the use of Cardano in its coffee supply chain. The partnership with the Ethiopian government also investigate other ways to deploy Cardano in the country.
+In 2019, the Ministry of Education in the country of Georgia signed a memorandum of understanding with the Free University of Tbilisi to use Cardano and Atala, IOHK's decentralized identity software, to build a credential verification system for Georgia.
+In 2019, New Balance announced a pilot program on the Cardano blockchain so buyers could track the authenticity of OMN1S Kawhi Leonard basketball shoes.
+In April 2021, IOHK and the Ethiopia Ministry of Education announced plans for an identity and record-keeping system on Cardano and Atala for the country's five million school pupils.
+In 2021, Hoskinson began working with electronic dance music DJ Paul Oakenfold to release an album, Zombie Lobster, on the Cardano blockchain.
+In 2021, IOHK and Dish Network announced a collaboration to investigate the use of distributed ledger technology.
+The Cardano blockchain was cited in Quartz as having the potential to help citizens in Zanzibar, Ethiopia and Burundi get digital IDs.
+World Mobile Token (WMT), a project built on Cardano, offers remote mobile network access in Africa with approximately 150 nodes in East Africa (2022). Mark Cuban is cited as being skeptical about the project and Cardano adoption.
+In 2023 a Ghanaian startup named ""Mazzuma"" received funding from the Adaverse, a Cardano ecosystem accelerator. Massuma(GPT) aims to use AI in its smart contract creation platform.
+
+
+=== Decentralized finance ===
+Cardano implemented decentralized finance (DeFi) services on September 12, 2021, including an upgrade to enable smart contracts and the ability to build decentralized applications (DApps). Also included is Plutus, a smart contract language written in Haskell, and Marlowe, a language designed by Simon Thompson for non-programmers in the financial sector.
+
+
+=== Partner chains ===
+In November 2023 Cardano began introducing sidechains, referred to by the project as ""partner chains"". Sidechains are intended to perform off-chain computations, known as smart contracts, while using the Cardano network for settlement. The first example of such a chain, named ""Midnight"", will make use of the Polkadot (cryptocurrency) framework in combination with Cardano.
+
+
+=== Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) ===
+
+Cardano also enables creating non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Snoop Dogg released several thousand NFTs in a project named ""Baked Nation"" for the Cardano chain in April 2022. In 2023 a digital artist from the UK sold 7,200 individual works of humanoid deer for almost £500,000 on Cardano.
+
+
+== Legal status and regulation ==
+In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a US regulator, issued a complaint against the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken for offering unregistered securities (in violation of the Securities Act) and promising returns on investment for staking in multiple proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies, including Cardano. Without any admission of wrongdoing, Kraken agreed to pay a fine of $30 million and halt its staking program in response.In June 2023, the SEC sued Binance. Among the allegations was that Cardano was a security and so the cryptocurrency exchange was trading illegally in the US. IOG made a statement in response claiming that the filing was inaccurate and asserting that Ada was not a security. The Ada price fell from $0.38 to $0.26 in a day on the FT Wilshire index. Both the Wall Street Journal and The Times linked a fall in the price of Cardano – 19 per cent in June – and a slide for other major coins to the SEC's actions.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Celsius Network,"Celsius Network LLC is a bankrupt cryptocurrency lending company. Headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey, Celsius maintained offices in four countries and operated globally. Users could deposit a range of cryptocurrency digital assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, into a Celsius wallet to earn a percentage yield, and could take out loans by pledging their cryptocurrencies as security. As of May 2022, the company had lent out $8 billion to clients and had almost $12 billion in assets under management.In June 2022, the company gained notoriety when it indefinitely paused all transfers and withdrawals due to ""extreme market conditions"", resulting in steep declines in the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. On July 13, 2022, Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
+
+
+== Business model ==
+The company facilitated lending and borrowing for its users. Depositors earned interest by depositing qualifying cryptocurrencies, with the rate of interest dependent upon the cryptocurrency deposited (e.g., up to 6.2% interest on bitcoin). The company paid the interest in cryptocurrencies, including in its own CEL token. Borrowers paid between zero and 8.95% on bitcoin-backed loans, depending on the loan-to-value ratio. Some of the money that Celsius used to fund the loans came from hedge funds that were looking for higher yields than banks pay.Celsius generated revenue from token sales, lending, bitcoin mining, and discretionary trading of cryptocurrencies. Celsius claimed that up to 80% of its revenue was returned to its user community through interest payments on deposits made through its platform. The company did not charge any fees to its users.On July 7, 2022, former investment manager Jason Stone sued Celsius, alleging that the company ran a Ponzi scheme. On August 23, Celsius sued Stone, alleging that he lost or stole tens of millions of US dollars' worth of cryptocurrency. The independent examiner's report filed on January 31, 2023, as part of the bankruptcy filing, said that an insider at Celsius described aspects of the business model as ""very ponzi like"". In an internal memo, coin deployment specialist Dean Tappen stated ""that his title at Celsius should be 'Ponzi Consultant.'""
+
+
+== History ==
+Celsius was founded in 2017 by Alex Mashinsky, Daniel Leon, and Nuke Goldstein.
+
+
+=== Growth ===
+In March 2018, Celsius raised $50 million in its initial coin offering (ICO) of the CEL digital currency. In April 2018, the CEL cryptocurrency began trading on cryptocurrency exchanges. In advance of the ICO, Celsius listed its currency as a security. In June 2018, Celsius launched its mobile app. In 2019, Celsius completed a $24 million equity round at $140 million valuation.Celsius was a major buyer of its own token, buying CEL interest it owed to customers on the open market. Crypto analysis firm Arkham Intelligence estimated Celsius had spent $350 million on purchases since July 2019.In August 2020, Celsius raised $20 million via an equity crowdfunding to support its operations. In the fall of 2020, the price of Celsius's currency climbed more than 230% in less than a month.In October 2020, the company reported that its CEO, Alex Mashinsky, sold $500,000 worth of CEL tokens in one transaction. In December 2021, Mashinsky tweeted, ""All @CelsiusNetwork founders have made purchases of #CEL and are not sellers of the token."" Based on public data, Arkham Intelligence estimates that Mashinsky sold $44 million worth of CEL through exchanges.In November 2020, Celsius said it had plans to open an office in Australia and to expand its office in Israel.In December 2020, Celsius had $3.31 billion in assets under management. In January 2021, Celsius had more than $4.5 billion in assets.In October 2021, Celsius raised $400 million in new equity from investors. The funding round was led by WestCap, the fund led by former Airbnb executive Laurence Tosi, and CDPQ, Canada's second largest pension fund. The funding round valued Celsius at $3 billion.  At this time, Celsius's office in Israel employed 100 people.In November 2021, Celsius acquired the Israeli cybersecurity company GK8 for $115 million.
+
+
+=== Controversies and regulatory scrutiny ===
+On April 16, 2021, Celsius confirmed that a security breach had occurred in its systems; a third-party server with customer data had been compromised, resulting in a portion of the company's customer list being exfiltrated and a phishing email being sent to Celsius customers.In September 2021, authorities in a number of US states said that Celsius's interest-bearing cryptocurrency accounts constitute an unregistered securities offering. The attorney general of New Jersey ordered Celsius to stop issuing interest-bearing cryptocurrency products via a cease-and-desist order. Texas state regulators filed a notice seeking a hearing in February 2022 to determine whether to take similar action. Kentucky's securities regulator told Celsius to cease and desist from offering its interest-paying accounts in the state. Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky said he was ""very confident"" that none of Celsius's products in the United States were securities. Celsius said it was working with US states in order to provide clarity about its business operations.On October 18, 2021, Celsius received a request for more information from New York Attorney General, Letitia James. Earlier that month, Celsius had US$400 million in new equity funding from investors.On November 26, 2021, Celsius announced that one of its senior employees was the focus of an Israeli police probe associated with prior employment activities; the employee was later suspended.
+
+
+=== Decline and bankruptcy ===
+Celsius had been using the crypto custodian Prime Trust to store some customer assets since March 2020. This relationship ended in June 2021, when Prime Trust's risk team expressed concern about Celsius's strategy of ""endlessly re-hypothecating assets ... lending the same assets over and over and over again to juice yields"".  Prime Trust founder Scott Purcell suggested that re-hypothecating ""would be destined for failure as any sharp market movement in either direction would be catastrophic to such a ridiculously leveraged business model"". Celsius sued Prime Trust in August 2022, accusing the custodian of retaining $17 million worth of assets after the relationship ended.CNBC described Celsius as ""one of the largest players in the crypto lending space"" in the second quarter of 2022. The company had issued loans totaling more than $8 billion, and as of May, it had almost $12 billion in assets under management. In June 2022, Celsius said it had 1.7 million customers and that it offered yields as high as 17% per year.On June 7, in a blog post entitled ""Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead"", Celsius addressed rumors that the company had lost client funds by making poor investments and that it was facing a liquidity crisis. The company dismissed these rumors as the actions of ""vocal actors ... spreading misinformation"". The blog post denied claims that Celsius sustained significant losses as a result of the collapse of Luna in the preceding month.On June 10, during his weekly ""Ask Mashinsky Anything"" session on YouTube, the CEO denied that Celsius was having problems with clients' access to their funds and he suggested that its critics were being paid by competitors. Mashinsky said on the live stream, ""Celsius has billions in liquidity, right, and we provide immediate access to everybody"". Around this time, Mashinsky was questioning skeptical commenters on Twitter, accusing them of spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Celsius.On June 13, the company paused all customer withdrawals ""in order to stabilize liquidity and operations"", citing ""extreme market conditions"". After this announcement, the prices of bitcoin and Ethereum decreased by 12% and 14% respectively from the previous day. Celsius's own CEL token, which had been trading for almost $7 a year prior, was down by one-third after the withdrawal pause announcement, falling to $0.21. The total market value of all cryptocurrencies fell to $983 billion, marking the first time since January 2021 that the cryptocurrency market was collectively worth less than $1 trillion. The news also caused a 10% decline in the share price of Celsius Holdings, an unrelated beverage company, on June 13, due to investor confusion between the two companies' names. The beverage company's shares increased by about 5% the following day.Rod Bolger, who joined Celsius as CFO in January 2022, resigned on June 30. Celsius appointed Chris Ferraro, its head of financial planning, analysis, and investor relations, to succeed Bolger. Celsius Network laid off 150 employees, a quarter of its workforce, in early July.Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 13, one month after pausing withdrawals. A declaration filed the following day reported a $1.2 billion deficit in the company’s balance sheet. Mashinsky said that the company had ""made what, in hindsight, proved to be certain poor asset deployment decisions"". According to the bankruptcy filing, the company had $167 million in cash on hand, which it said would provide ""ample liquidity"" to support its operations during its bankruptcy. Of Celsius's $5.5 billion in total liabilities at the time of its bankruptcy filing, the company owed $4.7 billion to its users, who were listed as unsecured creditors. Celsius's choice of Chapter 11 bankruptcy would prioritize repayments to secured creditors first, then unsecured creditors, then equity holders.Mashinsky resigned as Celsius CEO on September 27, 2022. Chris Ferraro, the former CFO of Celsius, was appointed to replace him as interim CEO.
+
+
+== Aftermath ==
+After Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, Molly White tweeted a list of excerpts from customer letters to the bankruptcy court judge. Among the stories were concerns about how Celsius had frozen their funds and statements about the company's negative impact on customers' lives. On its bankruptcy website, the company said that it intends to offer two options to customers, ""... to recover either cash at a discount or remain 'long' crypto.""Six lawyers specializing in bankruptcies, restructuring, or cryptocurrency told Reuters that there was little precedent for bankruptcies at cryptocurrency companies. ""This could last for years"", said one attorney about Celsius's bankruptcy process.On September 28, 2022, the court ordered Celsius to publish customer lists with financial details to create transparency. Celsius had argued that the customer list had resale value and should therefore be kept secret. The CelsiusNetworth website was created based on court documents that are in the public record. According to CelsiusNetworth, the top three names lost $40.5 million, $38.2 million, and $26.4 million, respectively. Celsius owes users approximately $4.7 billion but lacks the funds to pay them.On December 2, 2022, Celsius announced the sale of GK8, a digital asset custody platform, to the Michael Novogratz-founded company Galaxy Digital Holdings. According to a lawyer representing Celsius's creditors, the proceeds from the sale are expected to go to Celsius's legal fees and former customers.On December 7, 2022, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ordered Celsius to return cryptocurrency worth $50 million to users of its custody accounts. In January 2023, the same judge ruled that about 600,000 customers had deposited cryptocurrency that, per the company's terms of use, belonged to Celsius, making the depositors into unsecured creditors.At a court hearing on February 15, 2023, Celsius stated that it had selected NovaWulf Digital Management to provide guidance for its path out of bankruptcy. The deal is subject to approval by a bankruptcy judge and by Celsius's creditors. Some Celsius creditors objected to the terms of the NovaWulf deal, such as that creditors would need to take a haircut on the assets they had deposited. The unsecured creditor committee (UCC), a recognized group of Celsius creditors, agreed that Celsius should proceed with the NovaWulf deal. According to a bankruptcy filing filed on April 22, 2023, two new groups will compete with NovaWulf to take over Celsius's assets: Fahrenheit, backed by Michael Arrington, former Algorand CEO Steven Kokinos, investment banker Ravi Kaza, and U.S. Data Mining Group and Proof Group; and Blockchain Recovery Investment Committee, backed by the Winklevoss twins' Gemini Trust, fund manager VanEck, Abra and Global X Digital. Arrington had tweeted that Coinbase was part of the Fahrenheit coalition, but later deleted that tweet.On July 13, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement that would ban Celsius Network from handling consumers' assets. Its founders, Alex Mashinsky, Daniel Leon, and Nuke Goldstein, face federal charges. Celsius agreed to pay $4.7 billion, one of the largest settlement amounts in the FTC's history.  Concurrently, the SEC announced charges of its own against Celsius and Mashinsky.On November 9, 2023, Celsius received U.S. bankruptcy court approval for a restructuring plan that will return cryptocurrency to customers and create a new Bitcoin mining firm owned by the Celsius creditors. The company is expected to emerge from Chapter 11 in early 2024 and to be listed in Nasdaq, providing Celsius customers with stake in the new company as part of their bankruptcy recovery. The customers will also receive partial repayment of their cryptocurrency assets.
+
+
+== Reaction to collapse ==
+Celsius's bankruptcy filing ascribed its $1.2 billion deficit to a modern version of a bank run, in which depositors, anxious about the security of their funds, try to withdraw their funds in great numbers. One critic of Celsius told CBS News, ""This was yet another bank run. You're not reinventing anything here. They were promoting their services as a better savings account but in the end you're just another unsecured lender.""The sudden end to customer withdrawals and subsequent bankruptcy led some commentators to highlight the lack of deposit insurance in the cryptocurrency sector. Celsius's terms of use permitted the company to halt trading for its users. Without deposit insurance, no entity is obligated to compensate Celsius's users or to prioritize them more highly than its investors should the company enter liquidation. Securities regulators in five U.S. states announced investigations into Celsius's withdrawal freeze within three days of the company's announcement. Federal entities such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had considered extending deposit insurance to stablecoin investors, but no FDIC protections for crypto investors existed at the time of Celsius's withdrawal freeze.Celsius's collapse exemplified what one commentator called a ""pervasive problem in the crypto industry, where financial services that claim to be decentralized ... are actually centralized entities, with the power to control the flow of crypto assets."" The bankruptcies of centralized cryptocurrency financial institutions like Celsius led some investors to lose trust in centralized storage and to move their funds onto hardware cryptocurrency wallets.
+
+
+== References =="
+Chia (cryptocurrency),"Chia is a cryptocurrency where mining (or farming, in Chia parlance) is based on the amount of hard disk storage space devoted to it rather than processing power as with proof of work cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The platform was created by a California based company called Chia Network Inc. The Chia Network was founded in 2017 by American computer programmer Bram Cohen, the author of the BitTorrent protocol. In May 2021, Chia Network raised a $61 million investment, valuing the company at about $500 million. The same month, the company announced plans to conduct an IPO before the end of 2021. As of 2023, Chia had filed a draft registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission towards an IPO.
+
+
+== Computer data storage shortages ==
+In China, stockpiling ahead of the May 2021 launch led to shortages and an increase in the price of hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD). Shortages were also reported in Vietnam. Hard drive manufacturer Seagate said in May 2021 that the company was experiencing strong orders and that staff were working to ""adjust to market demand"". In May 2021 Gene Hoffman, then president and current CEO of Chia Network, admitted that ""we’ve kind of destroyed the short-term supply chain"" for hard disks. During the first months since Chia's launch, concerns were raised about the prerequisite plotting process drastically limiting a hard drives' lifetime.
+
+
+== References =="
+Chiliz,"Chiliz is a blockchain platform developed by Maltese-based sports company Mediarex. The Chiliz blockchain powers the Socios.com platform, which offers fan tokens to sports fans, enabling them to participate in polls hosted by the clubs, or receive rewards and promotions. The native token Chiliz is used to buy the fan tokens. Alexandre Dreyfus is the CEO of Chiliz and Beatrice Collet is the managing director.
+
+
+== History ==
+Chiliz was launched in 2018 by Maltese-based sports company Mediarex led by CEO Alexandre Dreyfus. Members of the firm's advisory panel include Dr. Christian Mueller, InFront Sports’ vice president, strategy and business development, and Sam Li, Sina Sports’ head of strategic partnerships; with Perform Group's chief strategy officer of Perform Group, John Gleasure, also a shareholder of Mediarex. Other members of the advisory board are Fnatic's CEO Wouter Sleijffers and Team Vitality's CEO Nicolas Maurer.In June 2018, Chiliz raised $65 million in a round led by Binance with other reputed names in the industry like OK Blockchain Capital, FBG Capital, Ceyuan Ventures, and Bancor also investing.  In March 2021, the company announced it will invest $50 million in an expansion to the United States.
+
+
+== Fan Tokens ==
+Fan tokens are digital coins created on the Chiliz blockchain that sports organisations provide to their fans through the app Socios.com. They allow fans to vote on a variety of minor decisions, such as new facilities, kit designs, shirt numbers of new signings, celebration songs, and more. Fan Tokens were first introduced in 2019, with football clubs Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain being the first clubs to launch their official tokens. Sports clubs including Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Manchester City, Inter, Arsenal, AS Roma, Galatasaray, Flamengo, Corinthians and 60 other teams have launched Fan Tokens through Socios.com.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official Website"
+Dai (cryptocurrency),"Dai (or DAI, formerly Sai or SAI) is a stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain whose value is kept as close to one United States dollar as possible through a system of decentralized participants incentivized by smart contracts to perform maintenance and governance functions. Dai is maintained and regulated by MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) composed of the owners of its governance token, MKR, who may propose and vote on changes to certain parameters in its smart contracts in order to ensure the stability of Dai.Together, Dai and MakerDAO are considered the first example of decentralized finance to receive significant adoption.
+
+
+== Overview ==
+Dai is created and destroyed through an overcollateralized loan and repayment process facilitated by MakerDAO's smart contracts in the form of a decentralized application. Users who deposit one of the accepted collateral types (such as Ether) are able to mint new DAI, as a loan, against the value of their collateral. The USD value of the collateral divided by the amount of DAI borrowed is the loan's collateralization ratio; this is calculated using the USD price of a unit of the collateral asset as reported by a set of decentralized oracles. Each loan type has a minimum collateralization ratio, which is usually in the range of 110-200%. If the collateralization ratio of a loan falls below the minimum ratio, anyone may call a certain function of the contract to cause a portion of the collateral to be sold for DAI on a decentralized exchange, which is then used to pay off the debt and pay a reward to the account that called the function. Setting a minimum ratio well above 100% provides enough time to sell the collateral to cover the debt in the event of a flash crash in the price of the collateral asset; generally, the lower a minimum ratio is, the higher the interest rate will be, to offset the systemic risk.Upon repayment of the loan and its accrued interest, the returned Dai is automatically destroyed, and the collateral is made available for withdrawal. In this way the USD value of Dai can be said to be backed by the USD value of the underlying collateral held by MakerDAO's smart contracts. By controlling the types of accepted collateral, minimum collateralization ratios, and the interest rates for borrowing or storing Dai, MakerDAO is able to control the amount of Dai in circulation, and thus its value.The power to propose and implement changes to such variables is granted, through code, to holders of the MKR token. Owners of the governance token are able to vote on proposed modifications in equal proportion to the amount of tokens they hold. The MKR token also serves as an investment in the MakerDAO system. Added interest that borrowers pay back, on top of their loan's principal, is used to buy up MKR tokens from the market and burn them, taking them permanently out of circulation. This mechanism aims to make MKR deflationary in correlation to the revenues from lending Dai.
+
+
+== History ==
+MakerDAO was formed in 2014 by Danish entrepreneur Rune Christensen.On December 18, 2017, Dai was launched on the main Ethereum network. The price of Dai was successfully kept close to one US dollar during its first year of existence, even though the price of Ether, the only collateral available at the time, declined by more than 80% during the same time period.In September 2018, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested $15 million in MakerDAO by purchasing 6% of all MKR tokens.In 2018, MakerDAO formed the Maker Foundation, run from Copenhagen, which serves to help bootstrap the ecosystem by, for example, writing code needed for the platform to function and adapt.In 2019, MakerDAO experienced an internal struggle over whether to integrate more with the traditional financial system. Christensen wanted greater regulatory compliance to allow for assets besides cryptocurrency to serve as collateral for Dai. The struggle led to the departure of MakerDAO's CTO.In March 2020, as a result of extraordinary market volatility at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dai experienced a deflationary deleveraging spiral that, at its peak, caused it to trade for up to USD $1.11 before returning to its intended $1.00 valuation.
+
+
+== Name ==
+According to Rune Christensen, the name of the cryptocurrency is based on the Chinese character 貸, which he translated as ""to lend or to provide capital for a loan"".
+
+
+== See also ==
+Cryptocurrency
+Stablecoin
+Decentralized finance (DeFi)
+Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)
+
+
+== Notes ==
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+makerdao.com"
+Dash (cryptocurrency),"Dash (formerly known as XCoin) is an open source cryptocurrency. It is an altcoin that was forked from the Bitcoin protocol. It is also a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a subset of its users, which are called ""masternodes"".
+
+
+== History ==
+The currency was launched in January 2014 as ""Xcoin"" by Evan Duffield, as a fork of the Bitcoin protocol. It is an altcoin and in its early days it was subject to pump and dump speculation. It was rebranded as Darkcoin, which received press for being used in dark net markets. In March 2015, it rebranded again with the name Dash as a portmanteau of 'digital cash'. As of August 2016, Dash is no longer used in any major dark net markets worth noting.In early 2017 Duffield, who lived in the Phoenix area, and some other people working on Dash took space in a business incubator at Arizona State University. The Dash DAO later funded a blockchain research lab at ASU.As of April 2018, Dash's market capitalization was around $4.3 billion and it was one of the top 12 cryptocurrencies.As of February 2019, Dash was the most popular cryptocurrency in Venezuela according to Der Spiegel.In October 2022 Dash had a valued market capitalization of 450 million USD.
+
+
+== Overview ==
+The main differences between Dash and Bitcoin are as follows:
+
+InstantSend mechanism, which is applied to all transactions by default, ensures that all transactions are confirmed in less than 2 seconds.
+Dash is protected from double-spending due to ChainLocks technology, which makes consensus unambiguous and unreviewable, allowing transactions to be considered fully confirmed after just one block (creating one block takes ~2.5 minutes), even if for some reason InstantSend is inactive, a transaction in Dash can still be finally confirmed extremely quickly.
+The user can utilize an increased level of transaction privacy due to the inbuilt optional CoinJoin feature.
+Dash uses a combination of several cryptographic algorithms rather than just one.
+Dash mining requires less energy.
+Decisions on the further development of the system are not made by individual programmers, but by all members of the Dash network through a Decentralized Governance mechanism.
+In addition to the mining mechanism, Dash uses masternodes, which provides both faster transaction confirmation and increased transaction privacy.
+
+
+== Decentralized governance ==
+Decisions on changes to Dash are made by general voting among the owners of masternodes and evonodes within the Dash DAO. Anyone can submit a Dash-related project for public discussion (submitting a project for voting costs 1 Dash).
+This is how the decision to increase the block size from 1 MB to 2 MB was made. The decision-making process took less than a day.In addition to making key and important decisions about the further development of the Dash blockchain, projects that want to receive funding can be put to a vote. As of early 2024, the Dash DAO treasury budget that can be allocated within 1 cycle (~30 days) is 8,528 Dash.
+
+
+== Dash Emission ==
+Dash, like Bitcoin, has a block reward. The issuance of Dash is algorithmically limited - the reward per block decreases by ~7.14% every 210240 blocks, thus the maximum number of Dash in circulation is less than the maximum number of Bitcoins. The block time of Dash is 2.5 minutes, which means that on average, a decrease occurs every 365 days.
+The final total emission is between 17.74 and 18.92 million Dash.
+The variation arises because it is unknown how much of the 20% block reward reserved for budget proposals will actually be created and allocated, for it depends on future votes within the Dash DAO.After about 192 years, less than 1 Dash will have been created in a full year. After 2209, only 14 new Dash will be created, and in 2477, generation will cease completely.
+
+
+== X11 - Hashing algorithm ==
+Instead of using the SHA-256 or scrypt algorithm, Dash uses 11 different hash algorithms in sequence to prove work completion.X11 is a system of hashing algorithms that uses a chain of 11 algorithms like Cryptographic hash function to prove work. The X11 algorithm was proposed by Evan Duffield, the chief developer of Dash, to make it more difficult to use specialized mining hardware.
+For sequential hashing, last generation CPUs on average give the same performance as GPUs. Running this algorithm on GPUs requires about 30% less electrical power compared to the `scrypt' algorithm and 30% to 50% less resources for heat dissipation. This significantly reduces costs for miners and extends the resources of computer hardware.
+
+
+== Dark Gravity Wave (DGW) ==
+Dark Gravity Wave (DGW) is a mining complexity adjustment algorithm designed to circumvent the flaws in Kimoto's Gravity Well algorithm. It uses a repeated and simple moving average to smoothly adjust the difficulty, which is recalculated for each block. The reward per block does not change strictly with block number, but instead uses a formula based on Moore's Law: 222222222/((Difficulty+2600)/9)2 
+
+
+== InstantSend ==
+«InstantSend» — is a service for instant transactions. In this system, inputs are blocked only for a specific transaction verified by a consensus mechanism in the masternode network. Conflicting transactions are blocked and rejected. If consensus cannot be reached, the transaction is validated using the standard block validation mechanism. InstantSend solves the double spending problem without the long confirmation delay, which occurs in other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
+
+
+== Protection from 51% attack ==
+The Dash Core 0.14.0 release introduced protection against double spending («51% attack») by implementing ChainLocks based on LLMQs (Long Living Masternode Quorums).
+
+
+== Masternodes ==
+Masternodes are special nodes (servers) of the network, which ensure the operation of CoinJoin and InstantSend mechanisms. Masternodes perform standard node functions like hosting a copy of the blockchain, relaying messages, and validating transactions on the network, and in addition act as shareholders, voting on proposals for improving Dash's ecosystem. Masternodes are managed by a community of volunteers without a single centralized governing body. Each time a user intends to use CoinJoin, he or she specifies the number of rounds of mixing (usually two to eight, but more are possible), which greatly increases the degree of anonymity. Next, randomly selected masternodes perform the coin shuffling. The combination of several random independent masternodes increases the assurance that no one has complete information about all inputs and outputs in the transaction process.
+
+In order to avoid a scenario where multiple masternodes on the network are managed by an attacker who wants to expose anonymous transactions, a deterrent is applied: each masternode that connects to the network requires a 1000 Dash collateral. In order to incentivize volunteers to create and manage masternodes, they are rewarded for their work with 60% of the emission or 75% of the miner's reward per created block .
+
+
+=== Evolutional masternodes (Evonodes) ===
+Evonodes — This is a subset of masternodes that, unlike other nodes, will support not only the operation of the core (payment) Dash blockchain, but also the operation of the Dash platform. An evonode is a lot like a regular masternode with the following differences:
+
+
+== CoinJoin ==
+Dash CoinJoin (formerly known as PrivateSend) — is an optional payment mixing function based on the CoinJoin method. Subsequently, the pre-mixing method was improved and integrated into the client programme.
+The current system implementation increases the anonymity of transactions by combining multiple inputs from different users into a single transaction with multiple outputs. This hides the flow of funds and limits the ability to directly trace transactions, but does not guarantee their complete anonymity. A hierarchical list mechanism (based on inputs and outputs) has been proposed to track such transactions, but no practical evidence has been presented to show that such analyses are possible.
+
+Dash has optional privacy and it is incorrect to think of it as an anonymous coin, its overall level of privacy is comparable to bitcoin, as noted on the official Dash Twitter feed on 1 January 2021.CoinJoin mixing involves a number of steps:
+
+Pre-denomination - input transactions are split into the same denominations: 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, and 10 Dash, which prevents tracking by specific amounts.
+The wallet sends a request to the masternode network to mix coins, once the network receives 2 more requests from other people to mix a similar amount, a round of mixing begins.
+The user can choose from 2 to 16 rounds of mixing, more rounds means more privacy
+Each denomination of coins, goes through its own rounds
+Coins do not leave the user's wallet, i.e. mixing in Dash is non-custodial
+Only matching denomination pieces are mixed. For each round of denomination mixing, a new mixing masternode is selected
+The mixing time depends on the size of the amount to be mixed and the number of rounds
+After successful mixing, the coins continue to be stored at new anonymous addresses in the wallet and can be sent via the ""CoinJoin"" tab. To be able to send urgently without waiting for mixing, it is possible to perform the mixing procedure in advance, but it is acceptable only for cases when the payment amount is known in advance or it can be formed from standard denominations.
+
+
+== Block reward allocation ==
+Dash was designed to allow transactions quickly and to have a swift governance structure in order to overcome shortfalls in Bitcoin. Like most cryptocurrencies, Dash has no centralized management - issuance occurs by mining. Unlike bitcoin, which allocates 100% of the block reward to miners, Dash retains a portion of the block reward for use in the decentralized budget system (Part of Dash DAO). During one cycle, namely ~30 days, miners mine blocks with a reduced reward of 80% of the target size, and then once a month a superblock is mined, which generates the amount of Dash needed to fund Dash DAO-approved proposals. In Dash, masternodes and evonodes receive 60% of the target reward size, while miners receive 20%. The superblock size is limited to 20% of the target size of block rewards mined per cycle.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official website 
+Official Discord server
+Official Telegram group"
+Decentraland,"Decentraland is a 3D virtual world browser-based platform. Users may buy virtual plots of land in the platform as NFTs via the MANA cryptocurrency, which uses the Ethereum blockchain. Designers can create and sell clothes and accessories for the avatars to be used in the virtual world.It was opened to the public in February 2020, and is overseen by the nonprofit Decentraland Foundation. In 2017, the platform raised $26 million in its initial coin offering (ICO); by 2022 indy100 reported that it had a $1.2 billion market evaluation. While DappRadar found that as few as 38 users performed currency transactions in a single day, Decentraland claimed that 8,000 people per day used the platform in 2022.Decentraland has received widespread criticism by technology and video game journalists for its technical bugs and mostly empty virtual world.
+
+
+== History ==
+Decentraland was created by Argentinians Ari Meilich and Esteban Ordano, and has been in development since 2015. When it launched in 2017, parcels of digital land sold for about $20, and mana tokens sold for $0.02. The game's first map, Genesis City, was made up of 90,601 parcels of land. It raised $26 million in its initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017.In April 2021, during a surge in popularity for NFTs, parcels sold for between $6,000 and $100,000. Because of the relatively small pool of mana, the currency is volatile, spiking to as high as $5.79 after events like Facebook's rebrand to Meta.In November 2021 a virtual real-estate company purchased a plot of land in Decentraland for $2.43 million.Users have minted NFTs of avatars with slurs in their names, and at one point the name ""Jew"" was for sale for $362,000. In November 2021 the community held a vote on whether to add ""Hitler"" to the banned names list, but there were not enough votes for the decentralized autonomous organization's (DAO) smart contract to execute.In late 2021 and early 2022, major brands appeared in Decentraland or bought ""properties"" in it. These include Samsung, Adidas, Atari, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Miller Lite. Sotheby's held its first metaverse auction, and in March 2022, Decentraland hosted Metaverse Fashion Week in which major fashion brands appeared, including Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, Elie Saab, Nicholas Kirkwood, Perry Ellis, Imitation of Christ, and Estée Lauder. Music artists including Deadmau5 and Grimes held concerts in the platform.In October 2022, indy100 reported that Decentraland had a market valuation of $1.2 billion.In October 2022 the DappRadar tracking site reported that the Decentraland platform was seeing fewer than 1,000 users performing currency transactions on the site each day, with one particular 24-hour period having only 38 such users. Decentraland later claimed that ""active users"" were only users that had unique blockchain wallet addresses that interact with its system, and that users that did not have wallet addresses weren't counted. Sam Hamilton, Creative Director at Decentraland, said by their own metrics the platform was used by an average of 8,000 people per day. The Verge compared this number unfavorably with the 2009 PC game Left 4 Dead 2, which had 18,000 active users playing the game at one point during the same month.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+In March 2020, Luke Winkie, writing for PC Gamer, described the game as ""rickety"", noting numerous bugs and the game's ""brutally long loading times"", as well as hard-locks related to the game's cryptocurrency-based authentication process. Winkie described the platform as having a strongly libertarian political bent, saying ""Decentraland is a truly fascinating concept. It peels back like an onion, revealing a Randian fever-dream built with Roblox textures"".According to Eric Ravenscraft of Wired, activity on the platform is unclear, with the world mostly empty and with a number of concurrent users of around 1,600 in 2021, a figure that might include inactive users who remain logged on. Ravenscraft wrote that Decentraland was buggy with poor moderation, and said that it felt reminiscent of an early access game.In January 2022, a video clip of a rave in Decentraland was posted to Twitter by DJ Alex Moss. The clip went viral and was widely mocked on social media. Zack Zwiezen, writing for Kotaku,  unfavorably compared the clip to similar virtual concerts and parties in AdventureQuest 3D, Fortnite, Roblox, and VR Chat, and described the look of the game itself as similar to “a fictional game that was tossed together in a few hours for an episode of CSI: Whatever City, in which the investigators are trying to solve a murder that involves some 'new' and 'popular' online world."" Prompted by the clip, Jason Koebler of Vice investigated other raves held on the platform, and described the experience as mostly empty and plagued by technical bugs.In January 2022, Zachariah Kelly, writing for Gizmodo, reviewed a virtual version of Melbourne Park created in Decentraland to promote the Australian Open. Kelly praised the 3D models created for the project, as well as the platform's ability to run in a browser, but poor draw distance and other issues made it feel ""clunky"" and lacking in activity. Kelly was also skeptical of the necessity for blockchain and NFTs. Kelly Revisited Decentraland's Australian Open space several days later, to review the closing concert. He said his experience was plagued by technical issues, and that footage of the event taken by others were unfavorably compared to online concerts held on other platforms, such as Fortnite.In April 2022, Business Insider review, Lisa Han praised the world's architecture and minigames, though criticized the emptiness of the world and its glitches and technical issues along with the game's removal of a quest log feature and the limitations of user interaction with Decentraland's architecture.In August 2023, Finance Research Letters found that Decentraland investors typically fell into four categories: those drawn to self-expression and aesthetics; those seeking community and social engagement; speculators focused on investment; and enthusiasts of technological innovation. [29]
+
+
+== See also ==
+Metaverse
+Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+Source code"
+Diem (digital currency),"Diem (formerly known as Libra) was a permissioned blockchain-based stablecoin payment system proposed by the American social media company Meta Platforms. The plan also included a private currency implemented as a cryptocurrency.
+The launch was originally planned to be in 2020, but only rudimentary experimental code was released.The project, currency and transactions would have been managed and cryptographically entrusted to the Diem Association, a membership organization of companies from payment, technology, telecommunication, online marketplace and venture capital, and nonprofits.
+Before December 2020, the project was called ""Libra"", although this was changed to Diem following legal challenges regarding its name and logo.The project generated backlash from government regulators in the European Union, the USA, other countries, and among the general public over monetary sovereignty, financial stability, privacy, and antitrust concerns which ultimately helped kill the project.The Diem Association (originally the Libra Association) shut down in January 2022 and sold the project to Silvergate Bank. Silvergate wrote off their Diem investment in January 2023.
+
+
+== History ==
+Morgan Beller started working on cryptocurrency and blockchain at Meta in 2017, and was initially the only person working on Meta's blockchain initiative.Meta vice president David A. Marcus moved from Facebook Messenger to a new blockchain division in May 2018. First reports of Facebook planning a cryptocurrency, with Marcus in charge, emerged a few days later. By February 2019, there were more than 50 engineers working on the project. Confirmation that Facebook intended a cryptocurrency first emerged in May 2019. At this time it was known as ""GlobalCoin"" or ""Facebook Coin"".The project was formally announced on June 18, 2019, under the name Libra. The creators of the coin are listed as Morgan Beller, David Marcus and Kevin Weil (Novi's VP of Product). The first release was planned for 2020.On July 15, 2019, Facebook announced the currency would not launch until all regulatory concerns have been met and Libra had the ""appropriate approvals"". On September 18, 2019, during a meeting with top Senate Democratic leaders, Mark Zuckerberg said that Libra would not be launched anywhere in the world without first obtaining approval from United States regulators. In October 2019 multiple companies left Libra Association: PayPal left on 4 October, eBay, Mastercard, Stripe, Visa and Mercado Pago followed on 11 October, and Booking Holdings on 14 October.According to a November 2020 report in the Financial Times, Libra will be launching a slimmed down plan that includes the cryptocurrency being a stablecoin backed by the US dollar rather than a multiple currency collection. The newspaper also reported that the cryptocurrency will now be called Diem, which is Latin for ""day"". In December 2020, Libra was rebranded as Diem, and Libra Association renamed Diem Association. As of December 2020, Diem Association had 27 members.In January 2022, it was reported that the Diem Association was winding down, with Diem's assets being sold to the California based Silvergate Capital for a reported $200 million. Facebook was also reported to have planned to launch the token in the U.S. with it being issued by Silvergate although the Federal Reserve and the United States Department of the Treasury were not supportive of the project.In January 2023, Silvergate announced in their earnings call for Q4 2022 that they were writing down their entire investment in Diem. Silvergate Bank was shut down in March 2023.
+
+
+== Currency ==
+The plan for the Libra token was to be backed by financial assets such as a basket of currencies, and US Treasury securities in an attempt to avoid volatility. Facebook announced that each of the partners would inject an initial US$10 million, so Libra had full asset backing on the day it opened. As of January 2020, Libra is said to have dropped the idea of a mixed currency basket in favor of individual stablecoins pegged to individual currencies.Libra service partners, within the Libra Association, will create new Libra currency units based on demand. Libra currency units will be retired as they are redeemed for conventional currency.
+Initial reconciliation of transactions will be performed at each service partner, and the blockchain's distributed ledger will be used for reconciliation between service partners. The intent is to help prevent everyone but members of the Libra Association from trying to extract and analyze data from the distributed ledger.
+In contrast to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin which use permissionless blockchains, Libra is not decentralized, relying on trust in the Libra Association as ""a de facto central bank"".In September 2019, Facebook announced that the reserve basket would be made up of: 50% United States dollar, 18% Euro, 14% Japanese yen, 11% Pound sterling and 7% Singapore dollar.Libra considered using coins based on individual national currencies on the network, alongside the basket-based Libra token. This was first mooted publicly by David Marcus in October 2019, and by Mark Zuckerberg in his October 2019 Senate testimony. The idea was promoted again in March 2020.On April 16, 2020, Libra announced plans to create an infrastructure for multiple cryptocurrencies, the preponderance of which will be backed by individual fiat currencies, and said the association was in talks with regulators from Switzerland for a payments license.In May 2021, Diem announced that it had withdrawn its application to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority and said that it would instead seek approval with the US treasury to register as a money services business.
+
+
+== Diem Association ==
+Facebook established the Libra Association (later renamed to Diem Association) to oversee the currency, founded in Geneva, Switzerland. As of December 2020, Diem Association includes:
+
+Payments: PayU Checkout.com
+Technology and marketplaces: Facebook's subsidiary Novi Financial, Farfetch, Spotify, Shopify
+Taxis: Lyft, Uber
+Telecommunications: Iliad SA
+Blockchain: Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Xapo
+Venture capital: Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures, Slow Ventures, Temasek Holdings
+Nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions: Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Women's World Banking, Heifer InternationalSeven other companies had been named as Libra Association members in the initial June 2019 announcement, but left before the first Libra meeting on 14 October 2019: Booking Holdings, eBay, Mastercard, Mercado Pago, PayPal, Stripe and Visa Inc. Visa chairman and CEO Alfred F. Kelly clarified in July that Visa had not joined, but had signed a nonbinding letter of intent; and that ""no one has yet officially joined."" He said that factors determining whether Visa would, in fact, join included ""the ability of the association to satisfy all the requisite regulatory requirements."" Vodafone joined the association in October 2019, but left in January 2020, saying they preferred to work on their mobile banking subsidiary M-Pesa.Press coverage around the initial Libra announcement noted the absence of Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon and of any banks. Banking executives had been reluctant to join due to uncertainties surrounding regulation and feasibility of the scheme.In late February 2020, e-commerce site Shopify and cryptocurrency brokerage Tagomi joined.
+The association hopes to grow to 100 members with an equal vote.In late April 2020, the payment processing company, Checkout.com, announced they would be joining the association. In May 2020, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings, cryptocurrency investor Paradigm and private equity firm Slow Ventures announced they would join the association.Libra Association was renamed to Diem Association on December 1, 2020, as part of the rebranding from Libra to Diem.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+The project faced criticism and opposition from central banks. The use of a cryptocurrency and blockchain for the implementation was questioned.
+
+
+=== European Union regulatory response ===
+The first regulator response to Libra came within minutes of the launch announcement, from French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, who was being interviewed on French radio station Europe 1. He said that Libra could not be allowed to become a sovereign currency, and would require strong consumer protections.Le Maire then warned the French Parliament of his concerns about Libra and privacy, money laundering and terrorism finance. He called on the central bank governors of the Group of Seven to prepare a report on Facebook's plans.Bank of England governor Mark Carney said there was a need to keep an ""open mind"" about new technology for money transfers, but ""anything that works in this world will become instantly systemic and will have to be subject to the highest standards of regulation.""German MEP Markus Ferber warned that Facebook could become a shadow bank. His colleague MEP Stefan Berger sees Libra's power potential as a threat to the economic stability of the euro zone and its democracies: Libra could make Facebook its central bank. Berger argues in favor of the development of a European stablecoin in order to be able to offer a secure alternative to the Facebook currency. Berger will be in charge of the European report of Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) which will serve as base for a regulatory framework for crypto-assets.On September 13, 2019, Le Maire stated that France would not allow development of Libra in the European Union, as would be a threat to the monetary sovereignty of states. He also spoke about the potential for abuse of marketing dominance and systemic financial risks as reasons for not allowing stablecoins to operate yet within the EU.According to a Reuters report, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said following a video conference of G7 finance ministers that Germany and Europe cannot accept Diem currency entry into the market while the regulatory risks are not adequately addressed. Scholz stated that he does not support private-sector digital currencies, and his remarks could be detrimental to Diem and JPMorgan Coin.
+Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for An Economy that Works for People, stated at the Digital Finance Outreach 2020 Closing Conference that the European Union is preparing a new cryptocurrency regime that may include stricter requirements for ""global stablecoin"" projects like Libra. In addition, Dombrovskis stated in his address that stablecoins that function on a global scale can ""present new concerns"" — they can disturb financial and monetary stability.
+
+
+=== United States regulatory response ===
+US regulators and politicians expressed concerns within hours of the mid-2019 announcement. Maxine Waters, Chairperson of the United States House Committee on Financial Services Committee asked Facebook to halt the development and launch of Libra, citing a list of recent scandals and that ""the cryptocurrency market currently lacks a clear regulatory framework"". The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Democrats sent a letter to Facebook asking the company to stop development of Libra, citing concerns of privacy, national security, trading, and monetary policy.Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before Congress on 10 July 2019 that the Fed had ""serious concerns"" as to how Libra would deal with ""money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.""President Donald Trump tweeted on 12 July 2019 that ""If Facebook and other companies want to become a bank, they must seek a new Banking Charter and become subject to all Banking Regulations.""US regulators contacted Visa, PayPal, Mastercard and Stripe, asking for a complete overview of how Libra would fit into their anti-money-laundering compliance programs.Since several participants left the project in late 2019, the Libra Association worked to address concerns from United States regulators with the development of a ""Libra 2.0"" blueprint.According to CNBC, in 2021, Diem reportedly withdrawn its application for a Swiss payment license, intending to instead move its activities to the United States. Diem announced that it would relocate its operating headquarters from Geneva to Washington with an intend to establish its payment system from the United States.
+
+
+=== Other countries ===
+David Marcus told the US Senate that the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner would oversee privacy for Libra, but the commissioner said that it had not heard from Facebook at all.The government of Japan began the process of investigating Libra and doing an analysis on the effect on Japan's monetary policy and financial regulation.  In July 2019, Japanese officials formed a working committee, consisting of the Bank of Japan, the Ministry of Finance and the Financial Services Agency, to coordinate policies to address Libra's impact on regulation, monetary policy, tax, and payments settlement. The working group will coordinate measures to handle Libra's influence on regulation, monetary policy, tax, and payments settlement. This will be done before the Group of Seven meeting in France between 24 and 26 August 2019.Data protection regulators internationally issued a statement asking Facebook to protect personal data of users, and to detail Libra's planned practices for handling personal data, in the light of ""previous episodes where Facebook's handling of people's information has not met the expectations of regulators, or their own users.""Finance Watch describes Libra as a ""huge risk to public monetary sovereignty"" and ""concludes that Libra is a bad idea – for its users, for the stability of our financial system, and last but not least for our democracy.""On September 16, 2019, officials from the Libra consortium, including J.P. Morgan and Facebook, met with officials from 26 central banks, including the Federal Reserve and Bank of England, in Basel, Switzerland and the meeting was chaired by European Central Bank board member Benoît Cœuré, a vocal Libra critic.
+
+
+=== Privacy concerns ===
+Industry observers have speculated whether Libra will provide meaningful privacy to its users. Facebook's plan is to let its subsidiary Novi Financial manage Libra for Facebook users, and Facebook executives have stated that Novi will not share account holder's purchase information with Facebook without authorization. However, the system is also planned to include a friend-finder search function, and the use of this function will constitute permission for Novi to combine the account holder's transaction history with their Facebook account.In August 2019, according to CNBC, top data protection officials including Democratic FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra, U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, EU Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli, and other top regulators from Australia, Canada, Albania, and Burkina Faso in a joint statement expressed doubts over Facebook's proposed digital currency project Libra (Diem). According to CNBC, Facebook confirmed that governments and regulators throughout the world were scrutinizing Libra.In general, consumer advocates and public interest groups have opposed Diem on privacy grounds and rejected the tethering of financial services to mass surveillance.
+
+
+=== Antitrust concerns ===
+Scholars have highlighted several antitrust risks associated with Diem, namely, a risk of collusion between association members, a risk of tying between Diem and Novi, and a risk of exclusivity agreements if Novi is required to use Diem within Facebook environment.
+
+
+=== Fake Libra websites ===
+Facebook tries to police inaccurate information and fake Libra websites on its platform. According to The Washington Post, nearly a dozen fake accounts, pages, and groups on Facebook and Instagram advertised themselves as legitimate centres for the Libra digital currency, in some cases trying to sell discounted Libra which was not yet accessible. Numerous of the counterfeits used the Facebook logo, images of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Libra's official marketing material. The growth of fake pages and groups devoted to Libra added to Facebook's difficulties with global authorities.
+
+
+== Legal issues ==
+Diem Association (formerly Libra Association) faced legal challenges as both the name and the logo of the digital currency are already in use within different territories.
+Finco Services Inc filed a lawsuit with New York Southern District Court against Facebook, Inc., Novi Financial, Inc., Jlv, LLC and Character SF, LLC for an alleged trademark infringement arising out of the use by the latter of a logo similar to the start-up bank operated by Finco Services, Inc. The plaintiff requested a preliminary and permanent injunctive relief as well as monetary relief from the defendants. A settlement conference in this matter is scheduled for March 26, 2020 in the United States Courthouse, while the parties did not consent to conducting the proceedings before a magistrate judge and requested to be tried to a jury.In Europe, Libra Association filed an application with the European Union Intellectual Property Office for the registration of the word ""LIBRA"" as a verbal trademark. The proceeding already received five oppositions to registration from four European companies based mainly on the alleged likelihood of confusion with their prior trademarks. The opposing companies are Lyra Network, Libra Internet Bank, Libri GmbH and Advanced New Technologies Co., Ltd. In April 2020, the parties will reach the adversarial part of the opposition proceedings, unless a settlement is reached during the cooling-off period.
+
+
+== Implementation ==
+
+
+=== Blockchain consensus ===
+Diem will not rely on cryptocurrency mining. Only members of Diem Association will be able to process transactions via the permissioned blockchain.
+Diem hopes to begin transitioning to a permissionless proof-of-stake system within five years; although their own materials admit that no solution exists ""that can deliver the scale, stability, and security needed to support billions of people and transactions across the globe through a permissionless network.""
+
+
+=== Software ===
+Diem source code is written in Rust and published as open source under the Apache License on GitHub.
+In June 2019, Elaine Ou, an opinion writer at Bloomberg News, tried compiling and running the publicly released code for Libra. At the time, the software did little more than allow fake coins to be put in a wallet; almost none of the functionality outlined in the white paper was implemented, including ""major architectural features that have yet to be invented."" Ou was surprised that Facebook ""would release software in such a state"".
+
+
+=== Digital wallet ===
+In June 2019, Facebook announced plans to release a digital wallet called Calibra in 2020, as a standalone app and also to integrate it within Messenger and WhatsApp. In May 2020, Calibra was renamed Novi. As of February 2021, Novi and Diem were not released yet and do not have a set release date.
+
+
+=== Move ===
+Move was the Diem blockchain's proposed smart contract and custom transactions language. It was planned to be a statically-typed programming language, compiled to bytecode.
+The Move language syntax was never released. An example Intermediate representation of the language is shown in the Move white paper:
+
+
+== See also ==
+Beenz – an earlier attempt at an Internet-wide digital currency
+Facebook Credits
+Flooz – an earlier attempt at an Internet-wide digital currency
+List of online payment service providers
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website"
+Nano (cryptocurrency),"Nano (Abbreviation: XNO; sign: Ӿ) is a cryptocurrency characterized by a directed acyclic graph data structure and distributed ledger, making it possible for Nano to work without intermediaries. To agree on what transactions to commit (i.e., achieving consensus), it uses a voting system with weight based on the amount of currency an account holds.Nano was launched in October 2015 by Colin LeMahieu to address the Bitcoin scalability problem and was created to reduce confirmation times and fees. The currency implements no-fee transactions and achieves confirmation in under one second.
+
+
+== History ==
+Colin LeMahieu started the development of Nano in 2014 under the name ""RaiBlocks"". A year later, RaiBlocks was distributed for free through a captcha-secured faucet. In 2017, after 126,248,289 RaiBlocks were distributed, the faucet shut down. This fixed the total supply to 133,248,297 RaiBlocks, after addition of a 7,000,000 RaiBlocks developer fund.
+
+
+=== BitGrail hack ===
+On February 9, 2018, an Italian cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail announced its hack and eventual shutdown. Users were prevented from accessing assets stored on the platform, which was collectively worth 17 million Nano. The victims then launched a class-action lawsuit against BitGrail owner Francesco Firano for recoupment, inside the Florence Courthouse. The exchange was ruled to be guilty in January 2019, as it was found to fail at implementing safeguards and reporting losses. The Italian police branch Network Operations Command (Italy) alleged the Bitgrail founder had conducted fraud. Nano prices had been around $10 prior to the hack and after the hack fell to $0.10.
+
+
+== Design ==
+Nano uses a block-lattice data structure, where every account has its own blockchain for storing transactions. It is the first cryptocurrency to use a directed acyclic graph data structure, by having a ""block"" consisting of only one transaction and the account's current balance.Consensus is reached through an algorithm similar to proof of stake. In this system, the voting weight is distributed to accounts based on the amount of Nano they hold; accounts then freely delegate this weight to a peer (node) of their choice.If two contradictory transactions are broadcast to the network, indicating a double-spend attempt, nodes will vote for either transactions. Afterward, they broadcast their vote to the other nodes for strictly informational purposes. The first to reach 67% of the total voting weight is confirmed, while the other transaction is discarded.
+
+
+== See also ==
+IOTA (technology)
+
+
+== References =="
+NEO (cryptocurrency),"Neo is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency and application platform used to run smart contracts and decentralized applications. The project, originally named Antshares, was founded in 2014 by Da HongFei and Erik Zhang and rebranded as Neo in 2017. In 2017 and 2018, the cryptocurrency maintained some success in the Chinese market despite the recently-enacted prohibition on cryptocurrency in that country.
+
+
+== Technical specifications ==
+The Neo network runs on a proof-of-stake decentralized Byzantine fault tolerant (dBFT) consensus mechanism between a number of centrally approved nodes, and can support up to 10,000 transactions per second. The base asset of the Neo blockchain is the non-divisible Neo token which generates GAS tokens. These GAS tokens, a separate asset on the network, can be used to pay for transaction fees, and are divisible with the smallest unit of 0.00000001. The inflation rate of GAS is controlled with a decaying half-life algorithm that is designed to release 100 million GAS over approximately 22 years.X.509 Digital Identities allow developers to tie tokens to real-world identities which aid in complying with KYC/AML and other regulatory requirements.
+
+
+== History ==
+In 2014, Antshares was founded by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang. In the following year, it was open-sourced on GitHub and by September 2015, the white paper was released.A total of 100 million Neo were created in the genesis block. 50 million Neo were sold to early investors through an initial coin offering in 2016 that raised US 4.65 million, with the remaining 50 million Neo locked into a smart contract. Each year, a maximum of 15 million Neo tokens are unlocked which are used by the Neo development team to fund long-term development goals.Neo was officially rebranded from Antshares in June 2017, with the idea of combining the past and the future.Neo3 or N3 was first announced by Erik Zhang in 2018 as an upgrade to the previous Neo protocol (now known as Neo Legacy). Certain new features do not have backward compatibility with the Neo Legacy blockchain. N3 was implemented and launched with a new genesis block.In March 2018, Neo's parent company Onchain distributed 1 Ontology token (ONT) for every 5 NEO held in a user's cryptocurrency wallet. These tokens were intended to be used to vote on system upgrades, identity verification mechanisms, and other governance issues on the Neo platform.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official Website"