Yep, Dubai has launched a national crypto-currency and they were thinking of a name and came out with "em....Cash". However it is not the moment to get all excited, basically, as state currency is not decentralised and perhaps is no different from paying with a credit card, except that is far cooler.

The initiative includes a wide variety of public institutions that will be connected to the system in what a appears a very strong support. Perhaps we are looking here at eGovernment initiative in what is one of the most dynamic economies of the region and I think it may very well serve as a bench to test the efficiency that these systems could bring to the financial public sector.

I don´t quite understand however the technical side, since this news states that "the blockchain deployed is compatible with both public and permissioned blockchains using open-source Hyperledger and public Ethereum tech."


https://www.ccn.com/dubai-to-launch-blockchain-payments-with-state-digital-currency-emcash/

There are many news about Malta and the blockchain. It seems that the country is really making serious moves and preparing the a regulatory system to impulse the Blockchain.
"Legislative action
On July 4, the Maltese parliament passed three bills to set a regulatory framework and drive innovation in blockchain-like technologies. The government hopes these laws will attract foreign financial tech companies to establish themselves in the country."

These are some news related to the case:

- Blockchain summit in November. Here.
- Malta in CNN news: "Wants to become the Blockchain islands"
- Bills passed here.

And the interesting thing is that they are starting by providing full clarity, which could be done by any country, is just that most seem "to busy".

Today I listened to a podcast that spoke about the prediction markets (the podcast was in the "Everything EOS", I was trying to learn about that chain, but they also spoke about this other topic).

So, the argument was that prediction markets were able to align the need of the people that were informed and prepared with the interests of the average Mike out there. So this is how:

- It has been proven that recurring to predictions in groups is quite successful when trying to predict results or events. For example, the winner of a race, the next president, etc...
- In prediction markets you have to "put your money where your mouth is". So you don´t simply say that "The L.A. Lakers will win", you also put a collateral, a bet basically on it.

That means that only people who have some idea of what is going on will "stake" and they will for sure try to get it right.

The only "coin" I know that deals with this is Augur, and I am interested in knowing about others.

There are many news about the ETFs proposals that are being discussed by the US SEC. The creation of these will have a strong influence in Bitcoin and many people said that the futures over bitcoin could potentially tame Bitcoin and ETFs may have an even stronger effect.

For me is easier to understand if I use a football comparison: Let´s say that I bet 4 million on a game, so if the Red Team wins, I will make 4 millions of profit. The manipulation could occur if buying the referee and perhaps a few key players only costs 1 million. So:

- I bet 4 million.
- I spend 1 million in bribes.
- I get 8 million once I win.

With bitcoin or other coins you don´t have to bribe, you just buy and rise the price or sell if you need it to be low and then you make your profit with the leverage of the derivatives. e.g. Raising the price of bitcoin on a certain day would cost 1 million. If you used leveraged derivatives you will get x5 the increase and that can be more than the million you´d put in.

There is a long article here about the topic, and some historical references here and here. The references date back to BC.

"Jumping forward to Mesopotamia in the late 1700s B.C., trade and commodity security became dictated by rulers’ codes, which functioned as some of the first recorded contracts. Like those by Hammurabi of Babylon, "

I was curious about this name, so I decided to dig a bit into this topic. I feel it may be interesting for other to know where this expression came from, so here´s what I found.


PONZI comes from Charles Ponzi. This Italian guy was born in 1882 and died in 1949, so 62 years old, not bad in those times with the two World Wars in the middle. The scheme was based on "investing" in postal reply coupons.

A postal reply coupon was designed to allow people to send a letter from any country to another without having to buy local stamps. For example, you live in Australia and send a letter to your mom in Germany. You send her a postal reply coupon so she can redeem it for enough German stamps to send you a letter back.

In theory, the money would be made with the difference in costs between the cost of the coupon in one country and others. You would pay 5 Australian dollars, but the coupon in USA may be worth more because it is more expensive to send the letter from there. So you would get in the USA stamps for a value that is higher than those 5 AUS, thus making a profit.

But in reality the profit is not nearly enough to make this a real business, so Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi (full name of the guy) was paying old investors with money from new investors. That is, I will pay you with the money I get from the next guy. The question is until when can I keep the whole scheme going forward.

The most ridiculous thing about these schemes is that they are still happening. The most world-wide known recently has been the Bernard Madoff scheme. While Carlo "Ponzi" rised 20 million USD, Mr Madoff reached around 50 million. However, the former is much larger than the recent one, since 20 millions at that time were like 1000 today.


I am glad I looked into this. You can learn more here and here.

With a BTC price of around 6700 today, it seems that that is less than 14 USD for a instant raking-up if I am not wrong. It´s not a lot so I will keep it in mind in case I decide I need to be a member.

As for the first, I think that a newbie can do pretty much the same as any other no matter their experience. The best thing is to actually use bitcoin and ask the on-line commerce to accept bitcoin. You don´t need to know a lot to do it.

Also I do talk about bitcoin and alts with my friends, mostly about the people who have made quite a bit of money with crypto, perhaps is not the ideal way of spreading the word, but anyone can read and have a view on the news.

I don´t have a mission as such, I do want to profit from this new technology and I am just choosing which way may be best. I think the forum is going to help me with my choice and maybe produce some income (although I have already figured out that is not going to be noticeable as I am not into Facebook nor Youtube)

A cold storage for the majority of your funds is an option that can be considered safe for most of the people. Otherwise, you may want to invest on a hardware ledger.

I think I will start my portfolio participating in airdrops and then selling for ethereum. Bitcoin is too expensive although is very know and good.