A short video I made to explain the "so what" of taproot in 10 minutes.  If you like it, please subscribe to my new youtube channel :)

Interesting discussion between Elon and Vlad (RobinHood CEO)

I have a new Lightning app that anyone can use to long or short bitcoin automatically depending on some account's tweet.

https://kriptode.com/ifttl/index.html

It's inspired by all the tweets that say how nouriel or peterschiff start talking about bitcoin when we hit the bottom of a correction. Price usually skyrockets from there. 

Anyway, I hope you like and use it and let me know what you think, 

Z

http://predictions.etleneum.com/

You can create or join a prediction and win sats! 

Of course it's centralized and the market maker resolves the bet but at least it has no shitcoins and does not pretend there's such a thing as decentralized oracle. 

Enjoy

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain often advertises how it can upgrade using hard forks (usually indicating how easy it is). 

It sounds all well, but in order to do this, you must have centralized control over the chain such that these hard forks can be pushed down to all clients.  If clients (i.e. miners) don't upgrade their code, then they will be working on the old chain while everyone else moves on.

With centralization comes risk.  The risk that a person or entity in control can act in a way that is not a consensus decision.  This is exactly the risk that has materialized on BCH.

Amaury Séchet is the lead developer of Bitcoin ABC (the reference implementation for BCH).  He announced that in November 2020 there will be an upgrade on BCH.

He plans to try another "fix" for the BCH difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) which by the way suffers from low hashpower in comparison to BTC - and miners "gaming" the chain.  I'm not going to comment on the issues with the DAA here - the second change is the real point of issue.

The second improvement is the addition of a new Coinbase Rule.

How can the coinbase rule be "improved" you ask?

The Coinbase Rule improvement is as follows: All newly mined blocks must contain an output assigning 8% of the newly mined coins to a specified address.

And who owns that address?  - yes, the developers (Amaury).  Basically, they are taxing each new block with an 8% tax rate. 

Ask yourself - how can this be the consensus.  Well, it isn't.  And I hope it is clear at this point that BCH is NOT a decentralized currency.

Does this sound like Bitcoin to you?

Hello everyone!

I thought I should write a quick post since I haven't done so in a while.  I'm still alive ;)  

In the past few weeks, I've been busy working on a project related to COVID risk.  I've learned quite a bit recently about virology and how to model epidemics.  One of the most notable things was the bimodal nature of the disease (where many cases are asymptomatic) means it is challenging to contain or know the prevalence.

Now that there are a few serology studies released, we are beginning to see that the disease has affected more people than previously reported.  The good news there is that the infection fatality rate (IFR) is likely not as high as the worst-case estimates, but it's still very significant for the older population.  If someone told you that 1 out of every 5-10 older adults who get the disease would die, then maybe we can begin to appreciate it's severity.  Not that younger people are free of risk either.  The latest estimates have reported that 1 out of every 100 people who get the disease will die from it.

That brings me to much of what I observe and read about in terms of younger people unafraid of the disease, not taking precautions, or engaging in risky behaviour.  Just because younger people are less likely to die, they still spread the virus and kill others.

Hopefully, everyone is safe.  I am curious to hear about your personal experiences where you are.

~ Z

I'm following up my 2 other shitcoin to Lightning apps with a new one:

Nano to LN

I see so many nano shills and it's supposed to be fast so I may as well give them a chance to convert their token to real money. 

Other to LN apps:

XLM to LN

BAT to LN

Greetings everyone,

I thought I would write a quick progress update on the status of getting LN transactions up again.

I've implemented all of the fixes for the deposits and withdrawals.  Theoretically, I could re-enable now.  However, I am going to fix up some other aspects as well, which will further improve the safety of funds. 

Here is what I am doing:

• I am making user tips more robust.  Anonymous tips (via LN) now have the same funds safety checks to ensure that the intended user gets the funds.
• I am making voting more robust.  Again - I am going to ensure proper funds synchronization when a user spends funds on votes as when a user makes a withdraw.  Although this part doesn't touch the Lightning Network, I'm going to improve it anyway.  In the process, you will notice that voting will be much more ... zippy.  This improvement is both a safety and performance improvement.

Once I have these two other improvements complete and tested, I will be turning LN transactions back on.

Hello everyone,

I noticed strange activity on the ZapRead LN node.  I have stopped it for the time being.  Apologies for the inconvenience.  I will investigate but hopefully there is no issue.  

It looks like some kind of bot activity making withdraws.  

I'll follow up with an update once I sort it out.