Month: May 2022

NEO 3.0 will be the biggest upgrade to the Chinese smart contract blockchain yet. Here’s what to expect.

It all started with a simple question asked in the aes4 Telegram channel: “Anyone know when NEO 3.0 is coming out?”

To really answer that, I think it’s important for people to know just how long that question has been out there. Briefly, some backstory and history…

In a Distant Bull Market, Far, Far Away

NEO was actually created in 2014 by co-founders Da Hongfei and Eric Zhan under the name Antshares. In 2017 Antshares was rebranded to NEO and the journey began.

NEO quickly became known as the Chinese Ethereum because of its similarities with the use of smart contracts. It’s a reference the NEO team doesn’t like as they feel Ethereum is Ethereum and NEO is a step above. Regardless, people still refer to NEO as the Chinese Ethereum and the team doesn’t bother wasting time anymore trying to alter how people perceive them.

The main focus at NEO is on creating the vision of the NEO Smart Economy Ecosystem. And more importantly Next-Gen Internet. But that’s a story for another time; today we’re focused on NEO 3.0. Note that it’s 3.0, meaning there was a 2.0. NEO 2.0 is what many people in crypto currently know and will remember as a failed lacklustre blockchain that wasn’t able to achieve what its creators had in mind. There are numerous articles out there for you to peruse and learn more about that chapter, but as far as NEO are concerned, that was the past and although they acknowledge it, they prefer to look forward to 3.0. So that’s what we will do too.

A New NEO Emerges

Going back one last time to 2018, Da Hongfei and the team decided that NEO, although still making great progress, had fallen short of what they wanted the project to be. They recognised that the current blockchain would not be able to perform to the standards and ideas that lay ahead. It was then decided that NEO would develop a fresh blockchain starting with a new genesis block to create NEO 3.0.

For me personally, this announcement solidified my position in NEO. At the time, many other projects had fallen short of their promises but still tried to play things off by drawing focus to smaller victories. NEO didn’t try to blow smoke up people at all. They stated exactly what the public was saying and that is that NEO was not achieving what was being promised. So they simply decided to start over again and get it right.

Enter the bear market crash, granting the NEO team’s undivided attention to starting over. The results are the NEO 3.0 blockchain. The amount of “offtime” work NEO has put in isn’t hard to see with a multitude of partnerships and collaborations being released, one of which being the newly formed Poly Network.

Interoperability on Steroids

In brief, Poly Network is a cross-chain interoperability protocol that supports Ethereum, NEO, Ontology, Cosmos-SDK and will eventually include the Bitcoin blockchain, allowing interoperability and atomic cross-chain transactions. This is important because it sets up the next move.

On September 23, 2020 NEO will have another key piece of the NEO economy being launched in the form of Flamingo. In a nutshell, Flamingo is NEO’s entrance into the defi realm but with a twist. Because of the newly created Poly Network already announced that allows cross-chain interactions, Flamingo will allow users to not only use NEO assets in the pools but also various Ethereum-based options among others. This opens the door for a much broader user base and brings extra exposure to what is shaping up to be a very exciting new chapter in NEO’s history books. And best of all, we haven’t even gotten to 3.0 yet.

3.0 was set to be released earlier this year originally, but they aren’t going to release anything this time until it meets the team’s rigorous standards. As a result, the release has been pushed back to Q4, 2020. It’s been hinted that the launch could even fall into Q1 2021, but at the time of writing 3.0 has been listed as 90% complete so we will see.

The important thing is that NEO are focused on being at the top. I expect there to still be issues with 3.0, because let’s face it, all of this tech is so new and cutting edge that being absolutely perfect out of the gate is rarely ever achievable. But I’m encouraged with how NEO has handled the shortfalls of 2.0 and have no doubt, should there be any major deficiencies in 3.0, they will not be accepted and a fix or even a 4.0 wouldn’t be out of the picture.

If you’re looking for a quick overview of what has been happening with NEO, head over to NEO.org and check out the August monthly update. More and more people can’t help but take note of NEO’s new surge as they are steadily making moves up the charts of CoinMarketCap and are currently sitting in 17th. Further moves upward are expected as more news is released and we inch closer to the full release of NEO 3.0.

As the resident techie for my friends and family, I’ve gotten a lot of questions over the years about Bitcoin. It’s been on the news, it’s made people rich, it’s a means of buying drugs, and hackers are out to steal it. But what is it? Do I need some? How do I get it? Who made it? To get started answering those questions, let’s lay some groundwork.

Bitcoin is a digital asset. And like any other asset, whether it be a dollar bill, a house, a rare trading card, or a family heirloom, it has value.

There are only 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist. In fact, there are more millionaires in the world than there are Bitcoins, which means that even if you have more than a million dollars, you may never get to own a whole Bitcoin. And it’s because of its scarcity – and because of the features that make it useful, which we’ll get to in a bit – that people have invested in it. You can think of Bitcoin similar to how you think of gold. There’s only so much of it in the world, which makes it rare. And because the supply is limited, as demand goes up – more people wanting to own it – the value goes up.

But can’t we just make more Bitcoin? The US treasury just minted two trillion dollars for COVID relief! The answer is no. The limit on how many Bitcoin can ever exist is written right into the code itself. It’s like the first commandment of Bitcoin: There shall never be more than 21 million Bitcoin.

So if there are 21 million out there, how do you get some? How did anyone get any? We’ll get there, but some backstory first.

When Bitcoin was created, there was a concern: If one person or group controls how Bitcoin is transacted, or holds the passwords to everyone’s accounts, then it would never be an autonomous system. It may seem crazy, but if your bank one day decided to close its doors, you might be entitled to FDIC insurance, but that’s about it. You have no recourse. Your funds are constantly at risk because they are being held and managed by someone else. That is the risk of a centralized system. The creators of Bitcoin wanted to avoid that.

So Bitcoin was built differently. It was decided that Bitcoin would be completely decentralized. Instead of having a single group or bank move money, the creators of Bitcoin decided that it would put that control into the hands of every user of Bitcoin. We control who owns, who sends, and who receives Bitcoin. And for 11 years since it was turned on in 2009 by an unknown software developer(s), it has never been controlled by a single person or group.

Here’s how it works:
When Bitcoin is sent from one account (often called a wallet) to another, the sender via his computer notifies as many Bitcoin users as possible that they’re trying to send money.
The other users’ computers that are notified then continue to broadcast that message out to even more computers.
Any transactions they deem to be invalid (i.e. I tried to send $10 Billion to myself or tried to send Bitcoin that I didn’t own) are thrown out and don’t continue on to other computers.
Over time, the computers using Bitcoin have accumulated a bunch of transactions and they bundle them into what’s called a Block.
A copy of the new Block containing all the latest transactions is then broadcast to all the computers using Bitcoin to add to their list of all the Blocks that came before them.
These Blocks, in order, create a chain where each one is aware of what transactions came before it. This is where the term Blockchain comes from.

This whole process happens roughly every 10 minutes around the entire world! Now I know this can feel a bit overwhelming, but I promise we can simplify this with a real world example. Let’s imagine how rumors get spread in high school…

I tell my closest friends that Jon and Jane went on a date (Bitcoin is sent and I notify some computers using Bitcoin)
My closest friends tell their friends (They notify some other computers, trying to spread it to everyone)
If anyone that heard the rumor knows it’s not true (Jane was at work), they say so and don’t continue to spread the rumor. They tell people not to share the rumor; it’s incorrect. (Invalid transactions are thrown away)
People hear a lot of stories over a couple days about other people going on dates (Multiple transactions that are heard are accumulated in a Block)
Someone writes a Facebook post about all the crazy stuff that happened that week (The finalised Block is broadcast across the Bitcoin users’ computers)
The Facebook post, and all the rumours within, are memorialised as part of our social history and become past facts while we continue to date more people and start more rumours (The Blocks are added to the Blockchain which is a history of all transactions)

This is how Bitcoin keeps the record straight without having a single institution in the middle controlling it. Instead, that responsibility falls to us, the users. Now unlike rumours in high school, which are fickle things, there are millions of computers running these checks in tandem with one another to make sure that everything happening, all the Bitcoin being sent, is valid. But there are two more important key features that make this all so powerful:
You don’t have to be a part of checking the transactions or dedicating a computer to it to own or send Bitcoin
If you do take part in validating the Bitcoin transactions being made (also called mining), you earn Bitcoin by doing it.

Which brings us back to the earlier question: How do you get some? Well, there are two ways: You buy some from someone else, or you mine it yourself! Keep in mind though, there are millions of computers mining Bitcoin out in the world. You only earn roughly the fraction of what value you provide to the network. Right now, you’re likely to spend more on the electricity running your computer than what the Bitcoin you’d earn is worth.

There are a bunch of websites where you can buy Bitcoin and they’re out of scope for this post, but you can just look up this site’s “Exchange Review” section and choose a site that’s reputable. You can buy it with a credit card or by depositing funds from a bank account, but be aware that the movement of cryptocurrency is like any other asset: You’ll need to report on any gains to the IRS if you are American, or check your local regulations with your accountant for more information.

After all that explanation we’ve answered how Bitcoin works, and how you can buy / earn some, as well as what makes it valuable. But there’s one final question: What is a Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is simply a number and an address. Address XYZ owns this much Bitcoin. And the Blockchain is the mechanism through which we host that whole list. To show you what I mean, here’s a wallet that holds almost 80,000 Bitcoin (almost $800,000,000 on the day of writing). And here’s a wallet that’s never had any money in it. Now even though we know the balances of these wallets, we don’t know who owns them, which is why Bitcoin can be used anonymously. When you own Bitcoin, all you know is the address of the funds, and the password to that wallet. I’ll dive deeper into what makes the password and address so special and secure in an upcoming article, but by having those 2 pieces of information, you can send and receive Bitcoin.

And there you have it : Bitcoin is a system for sending and receiving value that’s controlled by no one. What started as an exploration of decentralised money that was worth less than a fraction of a cent has turned into a global phenomenon. On May 22, 2010, someone paid 10,000 Bitcoin for 2 Papa Johns pizzas. That’d be almost $100 million today. Who knows what they’ll be worth in the future.

And finally, remember : if you’re interested in owning some and just want to get started, you don’t have to buy a whole Bitcoin! Bitcoins can be bought and sold as fractions. You can still buy 1 / 100,000,000th – the unit known as Satoshi – of a Bitcoin for less than a penny today.

GLOSSARY

Bitcoin – A decentralized system that facilitates sending the digital asset, Bitcoin
A Bitcoin – A single unit of the denomination used in the Bitcoin system
A Satoshi – The smallest portion of Bitcoin one can own in a wallet (1/100,000,000 of a Bitcoin)
Wallet – A password / address associated with a balance that you can send / receive Bitcoin to and from
Block – A list of transactions that have been bundled together from a 10 minute period
Blockchain – The full history of blocks that contain all Bitcoin transactions
Mining – The process of earning Bitcoin by validating transactions

Hello everyone. This is my very first post on aes4 and I am excited to be able to share my thoughts, analysis and trading setups on this platform!

In the past, most of it would be in the form of tweetstorms, so you can get a feel for my style by going on my Twitter profile and checking older posts. However from now on, aes4 – alongside Tradingview – will be the main platform where I’ll be sharing everything from specific thoughts on current events to deep dives using technical, fundamental and quantitative methods to try to interpret the current market conditions, based on five years of trading experience. I’ll try to share my “Market Snapshots” almost daily, while deep dives will be coming out on the traditional market weekly open. Alright,enough with the intro, let’s take a look at the markets!

Things got overheated in crypto and we just got a correction. A few days ago I mentioned how ETH and BTC would probably squeeze small-mid caps, and yesterday I had mentioned that we were getting near a top based on TA and by how crazy things were getting in DeFi. So far I don’t see anything that says the bull market is over, however yes I can see BTC going to 10.5-10.8k over the next 1-2 weeks and potentially to 9.5-9.8k in case we get a strong USD bounce.

Stocks are also in a massive uptrend, but even I, a massive stock bull am starting to think that we could see a strong correction before stocks go into the final parabolic stage. That along with a USD correction could easily push BTC into the 9-10k zone. Essentially what worries me the most in terms of my bullish thesis is the DXY going above 96-97, something that could potentially do a lot of damage in crypto and most other markets. Yes I’ve been bullish everything other than the USD, but I am really not of the opinion that the USD is going to die any time soon.

For now it is clear that many alts are in correction mode and many have probably topped for quite some time. In my opinion this correction will probably last another week before the market starts going crazy again, and by that I mean the majority of coins going up and not just DeFi. Older and non ERC coins/tokens have been suffering due to the fact that so many new coins are coming on the market fresh, straight on uniswap, sucking liquidity from cexes markets. Their returns have been much smaller than DeFi and this trend could last for a lot longer.

The truth is that alts have been in a bull market against Bitcoin since September 2019, and in a really strong bull market since mid May 2020 which is quite a long time, yet the trend seems to be getting stronger, not weaker. We’ve seen lots of crazy things with tons of coins going up 5-10-20-100x or more, yet the total crypto market cap is still very low. The altcoin marketcap is still 70% below its ATH and only 15% higher from where it was in late June 2020, while the overall fundamentals and quantitative data are telling me that the market is 20x better than back then. So to me it is more of a question as to whether Bitcoin, Ethereum or other coins will have a better relative performance, and if so, what would the best entries be.

Trying to look at the bigger picture and not short term movements, as my long term thesis really hasn’t changed, I’ll give everything a week to settle. As the old adage goes: the trend is your friend until it’s not.