Mastercard is preparing to make a huge announcement allowing any of its customers and banks on its payments network to incorporate crypto into their assets. This will include Bitcoin wallets, credit and debit cards that earn rewards in Crypto and digital assets, plus loyalty programs where airline or hotel points can be converted into bitcoin.
To do so, the payments network is working with Bakkt, the crypto firm recently spun off by Intercontinental Exchange, which will be the behind-the-scenes provider of custodial services for those who sign up, executives at the two firms told CNBC.
"We want to offer all of our partners the ability to more easily add crypto services to whatever it is they're doing," Sherri Haymond, Mastercard's executive vice president of digital partnerships, said in an interview. "Our partners, be they banks, fintechs or merchants, can offer their customers the ability to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency through an integration with the Baktt platform."
The announcement could lead to a significant expansion in the ways regular Americans earn and spend bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Mastercard runs one of the dominant global payments networks along with Visa and has relationships with more than 20,000 financial institutions around the world. There are 2.8 billion Mastercards in use, according to the company.
Interest in bitcoin has remained high as the original cryptocurrency surged this year, hitting a record price above $60,000 this month. U.S. regulators have allowed the fund industry to offer a bitcoin-linked ETF for the first time this month, while big institutional investors like bond giant Pimco have said they were considering trading crypto.
That interest has led Mastercard clients to ask the network for help in providing crypto services, according to Haymond. That way, banks can keep customers on their own platforms rather than seeing dollars migrate to crypto exchanges, she said. Shares of Bakkt, which began trading as a public company last week, surged an incredible 234% on the news. Mastercard and Bakkt were set announce their partnership later Monday at the annual Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas.
Besides providing crypto wallets and credit cards for banks, the partnership means that even merchants and restaurants can begin to offer rewards in bitcoin instead of traditional points, according to Bakkt CEO Gavin Michael. Existing points can be converted into crypto at rates set by the participating companies, giving customers the ability to earn a yield, he said.
"We're lowering the barriers to entry, allowing people to take something like your rewards points and trade them into crypto," Michael said in an interview. "It's an easy way to get going because you're not using cash, you're putting something that's an idle asset sitting on your balance sheet, and we're allowing you to put in to work."
Starting with a basic understanding of cryptocurrencies
To get things rolling , before we dig in let’s make sure we've got some basic understanding in regards to what cryptocurrencies actually are. A cryptocurrency is a unique, virtual medium for exchanging capital. They use unique cryptographical functions and blockchain technology to conduct online transactions, securely and fast. Cryptocurrencies are completely decentralized, they’re not controlled by any one individiual and in theory they’re immune to government control.
Individuals can exchange cryptocurrencies online with very few (if any) processing fees. This advantage makes them much more appealing than traditional currencies and financial institutions for exchanges. There's lots of benefits to trading cryptocurrencies. Here are some of the primary reasons why people chooe to invest or trade crypto:
USER AUTONOMY: Digital currencies grant users increased autonomy over their own funds, much more than fiat currencies. Users are also able to control how they spend their money without dealing with an intermediary authority like a bank or government.
SECURITY: Exchanges are made with both public and private keys. This approach keeps things secure and also helps to keep transfer fees low.
TRANSPARENCY: Blockchain technology involves an online ledger that can be sent to all devices. This online ledger makes it easy to verify transactions and encourages all users to be honest.
DISCRETION: Purchases can be discrete. User can voluntarily publishes their transactions, but purchases are never associated with personal identity, much like cash-only purchases, and cannot easily be traced back to the user.
ACCESSIBILITY: Because users are able to send and receive using only a smartphone or computer, crypto is theoretically available to populations of users without access to traditional banking systems, credit cards and other methods of payment.
Storing and Securing Cryptocurrencies
Now that we have some understanding what cryptocurrencies are all about, lets look at how we can safely store our assets using wallets. Its important that we take this seriously and do our homework as keeping our crypto safe should be one of the main priorities for any investor or trader because it is essential to have your crypto wallet before buying any cryptocurrencies. You will need to store your coins within your secure personal wallets. Its not reccomended that investors leave their crypto on exchanges, although they allow users to hold purchased coins within assigned exchange wallets, it’s recommended that you withdraw your crypto and hold them in private wallets. This protects you and your investments from hackers and theft. It is also worth noting that wallet compatibility also needs to be considered. Some crypto wallets to choose from include but are not limited to:
• Coinbase Wallet
• Exodus Wallet
• Jaxx Liberty Wallet
• KeepKey Wallet
• Guarda Wallet
• Nano ledger
• Myetherwallet
• Trust wallet
• Metamask
Before you dive in head first and select a wallet, theirs a few important things to note, which will help you stay on the safe side of crypto:
Only use wallets from a legit source: A growing number of wallets from less reputable sources that offer attractive features are malware in disguise. Nathan Wenzler, senior director of cybersecurity at Moss Adams has identified a number of these landmines which can result in the entire loss of your crypto portfolio.
Cold wallets are reccomened:
Moving onto a basic understanding of Investing and Trading
There is a difference between investing and trading. Investing entails building wealth gradually over an extended period of time through the buying and holding of currencies and stocks. Trading, on the other hand, involves more frequent buying and selling of currencies or stocks, with the goal of generating faster returns. When investing, the currency or stock is often held for a long period of time in contrast to trading, which is more frequent and can be upto multiple times a day.
For small, retail investors, investing over an extended period of time is far more suitable than trading, because trading involves a near constant monitoring of the currency or stock. Meaning its much more time consuming and will need a lot more effort, exposure to more elements of risk, emotion and a larger stack of capital is also required to trade sufficiently to make the risk to reward worthwhile. Trading also requires far more experience, knowledge and confidence.
Taking the time to understand some basic principles of trading and investing, how the markets work and what direction suits your own circumstances and minset is important. We can guarantee that most new investors and traders are desperate to make their first trades once they have learnt how buy their first cryptocurrency, we’ve all been their and know that feeling. Because its our feelings and emotions that drive us to make decisions and most likely as a new investor or trader you will make the wrong decisions. Now that’s not in all a bad thing because you learn from your mistakes and there is no better way to learn how to invest and trade than by making mistakes, which are inevitably unavoidable.
But by having some understanding of basic investing, trading and market principles before you start will limit those first nasty, costly mistakes and blunt the learning curve allowing newbies to survive the initial baptism by fire. By having some knowledge before you proceed will also assist in understanding why and how mistakes were made and will give new investors and traders a quicker and less costly learning process.
Do you know the basics of blockchain technology and Bitcoin? Do you understand how exchanges, wallets, private keys, public keys and Authenticators work?
If you can’t answer these basic questions, you’ll be in trouble quick. So Take some time to prepare yourself, it’s essential to learn the basics. You can navigate our website and find plenty of information to help you get started. But you will defiantly need to find information from multiple sources as this space is vast and now is the time that you’ll start get a clear picture if this is for you or not.
Researching, reading and educating yourself in the crypto space is by far the most important process your going to undertake. So if your too impatient to simply have or take time to read and learn, then you will stack the odds against yourself and the chances of failing will be much higher. Just as the chances of succeeding will be much higher if you prepare yourself with the correct learning and understanding of the space before diving in.
Many experienced investors have been trading, reading, networking, researching and growing their wealth of knowledge consistently, leading to huge amounts of experience. Not only have they chose to dedicate time to learning and understanding to improve their chances of success. But they have used their time management skills wisely to optimise the time they have and fully dedicated themselves to reaching their targets and goals. Not only do they claw as much time into the process as they can, but the time they do dedicate is laser focused with no distractions.
Tip: Many more experienced Investors and especially traders keep themselves very fit physically and mentally meaning they have strict diets and routines to suit their chosen work loads. They don’t indulge in fast food, alcohol or drugs and limit or completly cut out social media, so as to claw back as much time into perfecting their time and focus to investing and trading. So if you think this is going to be a walk in the park, take a look around at what your going up against, because if your not prepared, in top shape, physically and mentally, you will get steamrolled by people who are.
Take action
Every day, potential investors miss out because they aren’t confident about how to get started and this is normal because of course with a lack of experience a lack of confidence is only to be expected. It wouldn’t be normal for someone to be confident on a subject in which they have no experience in. Even experienced investors miss out on opportunities that could bring significant profits simply from not staying active and taking action. But why are a lot of new investors lacking confidence in general? It could be mainly due to being scared to make mistakes, but what they don’t understand is, that the only way to learn, is by making those mistakes, especially in crypto!
We recommend during the early stages of investing and trading, where most of the mistakes will take place, that smaller amounts of capital are used to control and limit the damage that all the mistakes will make, not only on peoples wallets, but on their mind sets. This is where most people fail, because they have not approached the task at hand with the right mindset and havnt done the basic research and tried to get an understanding of the market or how crypto works. This is exactly where most people get burnt out mentally due to huge losses from stupid mistakes that could have been either avoided or made far less serious from having done some basic research to understand the task at hand. limiting the damage of the mistakes will protect your capital from running dry and keep a balanced mindset that is able to carry on and conquer the task at hand. At this stage we reccomend people take their time to fully understand the space and by taking action and making mistakes is the only way its going to happen.
Tip: Taking Action will result in experience over the course of time and experience will result in better decision making. In fact the experience is all about learning from the mistakes you make. So not only should people not be afraid to make mistakes, but they should aim to adjust their mindsets so as to not be scared to make mistakes, but to embrace and own those mistakes and most importantly, learn from them! limiting the damage of the mistakes will protect your capital from running dry and keep a balanced mindset that is able to carry on and conquer the task at hand.
Formulise investment strategies that suit you
Now that you have spent some time learning and getting an understanding of the space, you can start to formulise and adopt strategies that you feel will suit you, this once again in many cirumstances is only attainable by trial and error and we all know practice makes perfect, so keep that capital on a leash for now, so it can be fully utizlized when you actually have a better idea what you're doing! We are going to break this section into two parts starting with investing.
The best thing about investment strategies is that they’re flexible. If you choose one and it doesn’t suit your risk tolerance or schedule, you can certainly make changes. But try to make sure you try to fully utilize each strategy by taking the time to understand the characteristics of each and how they suit you're budget, schedule and skill. You'lll be in a far better position to choose one that’s right for you over the long term without the need to incur the expense of changing back and forth without making any progress atall.
Once you've found a solid investment plan its a good idea to start tracking your investments using a portfolio manager or tracker, we've got multiple templates at TGH so feel free to reach out for a free fully customizable excel template which you can change to tender your own investment requirements. We reccomend that your portfolio should only consist a maximum of 10-15 coins and tokens, any more and you'll struggle to keep track of all the prices, updates, announcements and over time you'll end up losing out on potential returns. We're talking about been as effecient and effective as possible, using the finite amount of time and resources we have at our disposal. Over time you'll start to find a balance as the crypto game becomes second nature, youll become quicker, sharper and then you'll be able to take on more investments and trades. So try starting with 5 investments and learn to track all the news, announcements, updates, as well as follow the twitter accounts closely and join the communities. Most newbies make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew and end up never finding their potential because they got swamped, then burnt out. If you think tracking investments effeciently is an easy practice, then simply try consistently tracking 5 projects for a month, using the above method, we think youll have a shock. Now imagine tracking 15 or even 20, some new investors have over 30 coins and end up forgetting what they bought, at what price, in which wallet, they miss the rallys and end up either selling on consolidation periods or even worse forgetting all together.
So once again its really important to try to understand, how to play the game from a strong position, then slowly putting yourself into more venrable, stressful situations and growing with them at a rate you can actually sustain, the difference between the people who make it in crypto and the people who dont is exactly this. The people who made it, understood how to understand the game, where as the people who didnt make it, got burnt out or broke because they didnt understand what they were getting into. These lessons may seem obvious, but if you truly focus and try to employ what we have spoke about in this article, then we guarentee you will be around long term.
Lastly we would like to stress the importance of networking and communicating with others who are in a similar situation, or more advanced than you. Theres an old saying "if you put 6 retards in a room and join them, in time you'll be the seventh". Its really important to network with the right people, not just in crypto but in any industry or areas of interest, our ideas and thoughts are influenced by others, so been around smart, experienced, clued up individuals is one of the most important aspects to progress in any area, but especially crypto! This is one of the fundemental reasons why we created the TGH community, to share ideas and grow with like minded individuals, so feel free to join us and make the most of our free community, to ask, share and learn with others who are on the same journey, we hope this article helped.
Kind regards
The TGH team.
Defi (Decentralized finance) has taken the blockchain and crypto industries by storm over the last few years, but do most blockchain and crypto users even understand what DeFi is? We hope to give an easy to understand explination on what DeFi is and why its currently taking the blockchain and crypto space by storm!
Decentralized Finance (also referred to as DeFi) is a blockchain-based form of finance that does'nt rely on central financial intermediaries such as brokers, exchanges or banks to handle traditional financial instruments and instead utilizes smart contracts on the blockchain. DeFi platforms allow people to lend or borrow funds from others, speculate on price movements on assets using derivatives, prediction markets, trade, insure, earn interest in savings with decentralized protocols. Which has grown exponentially since 2018, we will now go on to explain just how much DeFi has grown since 2018 and why we expect it to continue its parabolic growth!
The total DeFi market cap is currently 150 billion, in 2018 the market cap was a mere 100 million. Thats a 1000x rise in 3 years! But heres the best part .... from 2019-2020 it doubled growing from 5.5 billion in January 2019 to 10 billion in January 2020. From 2020-2021 it tripled gaining even more ground, as we saw it increase from 10 billion in to 30 billion & this year it has already quadrupled reaching a staggering 150 billion in TVL value, at its current exponential growth rate we expect to see the DeFi sector reach a staggering 750 billion by january 2023!
But why is the DeFi sector growing so rapidly? What are some of the causes leading retail, instutional and corperate investors piling their capital into decentralized protocols? Well its simple, as governments continue to print fake money and support a broken financial system - which is currently valued 450 trillion dollars in fiat assets (real estate not included) hyper inflation has already kicked in, leading to more demand for #Defi solutions, to recover retail savings, as well as instutional and corperate balance seets which have seen sharp declines in value due to the inflation of fikat money.
Jan 2018 – 100 million
Jan 2019 – 5.5 billion
JAN 2020 – 10 billion
Jan 2021 – 30 billion
Current - 150 billion
Jan 2022 – 180 billion (Projected value)
Jan 2023 - 750 billion (projected value)
We expect more and more demand will start to appear as retail investors, institutions, corperations and now even banks start to utilize DeFi. We have already seen a paradigm shift in the markets, now we expect the banking industry will follow, as it does the DeFi sector will continue to grow more rapidly!
As the crypto world focuses on the Bitcoin rally and other trending cryptocurrencies, another type of digital asset has been silently gaining traction in the background. A lot of investors are scratching their heads over the new trend which is NFT's (non‑fungible tokens) and before we move on, anyone dismissing this as a false craze or worthless punt, dont be fooled these things can demand some serious value!
It’s worth noting that non‑fungible digital assets have existed for years, in the form of domain names, for example, if you are seeking a popular domain name that someone else has, then it becomes a valuable asset! Non Fungible Token is really an indvidually unique blockchain token that gives the wallet holder exclusive ownership of that asset! unlike LINK for example where every token is basically the same and you only care about the quantity, every NFT is unique in itself, so when people publish art as an NFT that means that specfiic piece is only owned by you!
Brandon Smith CEO of BONDLY explained in detail what value NFT's have and may have in the future, during a recent TGH AMA session!
"the thing is Art and even Digital Lands are just the start to this revolution, because its easy to comprehend your CryptoKitty being an NFT, but within 9 months NFT could be running your whole online profile! Instead of an NFT being an Item an NFT becomes your digitial identity, so your youtube account you use an NFT to login rather than a simple username and password. Why does this matter? Because theres a HUGE HUGE market that's forming around digital business sales (outside of crypto) for things like Instagram and Youtube accounts.
So for example how many of you know this insta account : https://www.instagram.com/daquan/ Well it was recently sold for a huge amount to a major media company, if you go on the page you might thing "ok this is just stolen memes, whats the big deal" well to Warner media it was $110m of a big deal! My partner Harry , Bondly COO , and I have been buying and selling digital businesses like Daquan over the past 2 years and we know this market is over $74B right now! but what many don't realize is that trading these as assets is completely possible with NFT so NFT would be the trustless way to transfer ownership of Daquan to another party and this is coming in the next 9 months"
Lots of usecases have arisen so far and they’re even being touted as the future of the gaming industry, the art industry, and even in some cases the real estate business! But what are they? What can they be used for, how do they work, and what are some of the best known projects in the industry today? To give some prespective Companies like The Sandbox are starting to push boundaries with their LAND sale which is coming out soon. Many of the original properties they had listed for pennies are now valued at $20k+++"
So as seen above, lots of exciting use cases for non‑fungible tokens (NFTs) are cropping up all the time, especially now as this is a hot topic, you will find many projects utilizing them and trying to take advantage of the use case and in some cases you may find projects even just trying to take advantage of the hype, so tread carefully as per usual and do your due diligence!
How to read Etherscan contracts by The Gem Hunters
Many users in the Defi space have fallen victim to exploits used within Token Contracts that in turn lead to them losing a lot of money. This is most commonly seen on Uniswap, due to anyone being allowed to launch a Contract, as long as they have the technical know how and the Ethereum to afford it. Unfortunately, this leads to the creation of many Contracts that are malicious in nature.
Thankfully, a vast majority of scammers can be identified by using Etherscan. The following steps can be used to determine whether or not a Contract is malicious. In order to show the difference between a good contract and a bad one, this tutorial will first give an example of what a clean contract looks like, and then malicious examples will be given.
CLEAN CONTRACT EXAMPLE:
1. Go to etherscan.io
2. Enter the Contract Address into the search bar (double check you have the correct address)
2a. if you do not know the Contract Address, you can obtain it through Dextools, CMC, or CG
2b. remember that the Token Address page and the Contract Address page are different, make sure to be on the Contract Address page.
Below is an example of the Token Address page for Bondly:
This is an example of the Contract Address page for Bondly (the address highlighted in yellow above):
3. Click on the Contract button highlighted in yellow above
4. Select Read Contract as shown below:
5. You now have access to read the contract functions that are available, they should look like this:
What to do now?
This is the part where it gets tricky, because there are an infinite number of possible functions that could be included into a smart contract. In the example for Bondly above, there are only 8 functions present for the main token, which is a sign of a clean contract. All 8 of those functions are necessary for the token to exist on the blockchain, and they aren’t functions that could rug the user.
In the case that you’re searching for a different token, you can still use these exact same steps to read the contract. There are a few red flags that are common in scam contracts, and these will be outlined below. Now that we know how to access and look at the contract functions, we can determine which are potentially malicious. There will not be any contract addresses shared in the examples because someone might just buy it anyways.
MALICIOUS CONTRACT EXAMPLES:
1. Mint function - this function allows the minting of more tokens, thus increasing the supply and potentially allowing the minter to dump those tokens on the market. This is one of the most common rugs that crashes a price. Disclaimer: Some tokens have mint functions that are dependent upon elastic supplies, but unless a reason for minting, or a programmed rule set, is present, there should not be a mint function. It is important to check who the owner of the mint function is: if the owner is the dev, that’s obviously a red flag; if the minter is a contract based on volume/price, that would be decentralized and significantly less likely to be a scam.
2. Whitelist function - this function should really only be present if the project has a randomized presale that requires the whitelisting of addresses to ensure there is not oversubscription. If the project did not have a presale, and still has this function in the contract, it can be potentially be used to prevent any address not on that whitelist to be unable to sell. I.e. you can buy but cannot sell.
3. Freeze function - this function does as the name implies, and can physically freeze trading of the asset at any time. Although simple, it effectively prevents people from selling the pooled tokens, locking the Ethereum and the secondary token until unfrozen.
3a. if there is also a Transfer Ownership function, and the Contract Creator has control of the freeze function, then they could potentially freeze the contract and then send the ownership to the burn address. This effectively kills the Eth and the other token, leaving them to the burn pool forever.
4. Not a specific function, but the more functions that a token has, the more likely that one can be used as an attack vector. Unless the token’s project has a need for the function, it should not just be arbitrarily added to the code.
Non-Contract Red Flags:
1. An overwhelming large max supply, or, one address with an overwhelming large percentage of the supply. It’s common to see the address that deployed the contract have most of the supply, which is a large red flag.
2. A Univ2 pool that is significantly smaller than the largest individual holder (this does not include staking contracts because they are the accumulation of a multitude of address inputs). This is a sign of skewed distribution, and the potential for a whale to wreck the ecosystem gets higher.
Note: The difference between a normal address and a contract address is this symbol next to the address:
*The symbol highlighted in yellow indicates that the address is a contract. If the symbol is not there, then the address is a personal address. If contracts appear that have large quantities of tokens, it’s important to know what they are for (like staking, or vesting, or locked team tokens, etc.)
3. An anonymous team can be a red flag, but anonymity should be looked at through the lens of the product. If the product is sound, safeguards are in place, and the developers are transparent about the code/answer questions effectively, then anonymity shouldn’t be a negative factor. In the case of anonymity and the presence of other red flags, the risk increases significantly.
Closing Remarks:
Overall, Defi contracts on Ethereum are definitely high risk in comparison to investments anywhere else. However, knowing the basics of how contracts function, and being able to recognize the red flags that signal a potential scam, can help reduce that risk. There is always risk when interacting on the blockchain, but investing in contracts that don’t have malicious code will prevent more losses, and will likely help your gains in the long run.
How to stay Crypto safe
How to stay crypto safe and secure by TGH
Crypto can be a scary place, especially for new comers, everywhere you lookthere’s reports of scams, hacks and malicious activity! One of the key rolesTGH has played since its birth in 2018 has been to keep investors safe byhelping them take precautions to keep their own funds and data safe. We willstart off with some basic security that everyone should follow if they wish tokeep their crypto secure, stick with it as we will slowly move from basic toadvanced as we progress! Don’t forget we’re here to help, feel free to reachout at any time for extra information or questions you may have! Basic securityTips
1. Never share your passwords.
2. Never reuse passwords.
3. Always use (2FA) two factorauthentication when given the option and DON’T use text 2FA.
4. Back or write down your 2FArestore codes somewhere safe.
5. Never share your backuppassphrase, recovery seeds or private keys with anyone.
6. Store cold storage wallets andbackup wallet passphrases, in fireproof safes.
7. Don’t post your email address,home address or phone number on social media.
8. Never leave your crypto onexchanges.
9. Use smaller transaction sizesand different exchanges to cover for mistakes & hacks.
10. Always use a VPN & antivirus and keep them upto date.
11. Always backup your wallet.
12. Never open web links withoutchecking what it is your opening first.
13. Triple check addresses beforesending funds.
14. Spread funds over multiplewallets incase you get hacked.
15. Remember to only risk whatyou can afford to lose.
16. Never put large amounts ofcapital into projects that look too good to be true.
17. Maintain your privacy!
18.Avoid public WiFi.
Ok so we have shared the mostbasic security tips that we feel everyone should abide to, but even with thehelp of the TGH community we are sure we have missed a few, so if you can thinkof any we missed let us know on twitter or telegram! Moving on we will covermore moderate security tips which will include tips on how you can keep yourfunds safe and secure! Moderate Security Tips
1. Use Etherscan to check walletaddresses or contract addresses before sending or purchasing tokens
2.Send test transactions beforesending larger amounts of funds onto new networks.
3. Use metamask to checkrecipient wallet addresses before sending funds from exchanges or wallets thatdon’t have the auto check feature.
4. Use verified crypto walletsthat’s have been certified safe, i.e Bitcoin core, Metamask, trust wallet,Myetherwallet.
5. You can review and revoke yourtoken approvals using these links. https://etherscan.io/tokenapprovalchecker& https://app.unrekt.net/ they are mainly used to disconnect fromsuspicious token farms or scams. 6. Don’t watch porn or open malicious sites ona device you are using to trade or access funds. 7. Don’t connect your Telegramto any airdrop bots unless your 100% sure they are legit
6. Never approve new tokens orcontracts before fully understanding what they are or where they came from,once again use the relevant explorers to check to check details on contracthistory, number of current holders, wallet addresses and price history.
We will continuously add to the above, if you have any suggestions please contact us via telegram or twitter.
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Welcome to the TGH Live AMA with milestoneBased! We'd like to thank the team for attending and sharing info with the community today 😄
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
To get started, let's hear what milestoneBased is all about! What are the goals for your ecosystem, and what inspired it all?
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
https://t.me/TheGemHuntersTG/1572432
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
https://t.me/TheGemHuntersTG/1572434
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Love the video intro, really well said
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
It's just coming from my head, so if something is unclear, dooo let me know, I will elaborate! It is a complex project, so you may not understand everything right away. We say it with confidence, because we presented it to silicon valley investors, and they absolutely LOVED the concept, more over, if you guys are in crypto long enough, in 2018 Vitalik had a DAICO conccept, which is basically what milestoneBased is, but we have a product! 😅
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
That's the ringer right there, but we have a product, love it haha
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
Actually we are starting mB with crypto startups and crypto VCs because this area needs it at the moment the most. But further down the road we see application of mB with conventional world as well.
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
The team behind milestoneBased has members with impressive experience in crypto already; could you introduce the team and your backgrounds, as well as what brought you all together?
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
https://t.me/TheGemHuntersTG/1572463
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
https://t.me/TheGemHuntersTG/1572464
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
There is Andrew Zubko, he is CTO at milestoneBased and he is also CTO at Applicature, which is incubating company. Actually Andrew is a guru of smart contracts and crypto industry pioneer with significant achievements in this field
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Wan coin lmao Applicature and Gamestation is dope tho, really huge experience there!
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
yeah, I felt it in my gut that it was a scam, even though I knew nothing about crypto back then!
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
There is Victoria, https://t.me/milestoneofficial/36, she is like a god mother of mB. She is engaged with the product since 2018, from the very roots of the platform.
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
🍻🍻🍻 amazing you guys have been developing for 3 years now, longer than many protocols have even been alive 😂
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
And we are all currently in Dubai for the strategy session!
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
I can show you the views 😅
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
There is myself, I am doing all the marketing, buidling relations with influencers, and all the stuff to raise awareness about the product. Since we are getting of the stealth mode now you'll be hearing about us more and more.
https://t.me/TheGemHuntersTG/1572483
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
I am also engaged with Triall.io and we have Ferrum Network with us and Ian Friend as advisor! Hartej Sawney from Zokyo as advisor.
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Legendary view, wow, that's incredible mate!
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
And Ian Arden, he is a co founder and CEO at Applicature. I know Ian for 8-9 years already. He’s a passionate technologist and engineer, a visionary that has contributed to hundreds of blockchain projects and scaled multiple companies.
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
😄 incredible, love that you guys came from all over the crypto sphere, good meld of skills
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
MilestoneBased at its core is trying to make the world of Blockchain easier, more accessible, and more equitable for business and startups. What kind of tools have you created to help developers get started, and what advantages does the milestoneBased protocol have over existing competitors?
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
hm hm hm - the question should be how many times per day you are visiting https://t.me/milestoneBased =)
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
https://t.me/TheGemHuntersTG/1572509
Sergio Karavanets
So milestoneBased is a platform to help startups and VCs. Developers will use it as a part of startup's team ( if I understood your question correct)
VCs and early-stage investors achieve greater capital efficiency, collaboration, security, transparency, and data-driven insights.
Startup teams become more motivated and milestone focused for strengthened performance.
As of tools:
milestoneBased uses DAO and escrow smart contract tools, to automate and improve roadmap management. An ability to make governance by community via proposals and voting in combination with milestone management is something that has never been done before thus it's going to bring capital efficiency to the next level.
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
If I understand right, the community actually votes on the next goals and the next milestones, (like dates, funds management, etc)?
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
Absolutely correct! Yeah, it is about aligning the interests of the community, investors and the team!
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Next let's dive into the token behind the milestoneBased protocol; what are the utilities/tokenomics of the token, and when will the token go live? Is there a sale that users can take part in?
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
This is where I will write, cause you need to be able to revisit this easily!
1. Yes, there will be a token launch, because it is a fundamental project in crypto.
2. There is no pre-sale, seed or private sale, because, we are well-funded internally by our founders, whose tokens are locked for years. And we don't want the sell pressure from private investors.
You will be able to buy tokens when we list it straight on DEX, best is to follow the channel, cause the earlier you buy, the better price, since no dump possibility. It is close to Fair Launch. But it is not a Fair Launch as BTC had, cause we have some tokens for the team and advisors and value add, which of course have lock ups and vestings.
Sergio Karavanets
we will release the Power Launch manifesto shortly
Ihor | CEO milestoneBased
Not regarding the token real quick. Here are the main utilities:
1. Commission payments within the system (discounted if paid in our tokens)
2. Tiered based access to features
3. Governance of our project and other projects - if you want to influence any project on our platform, you need our tokens
4. Liquidity mining
5. Staking
6. Rewards for value adding
Also, we take design thinking approach towards identifying the utility. Besides the items on our roadmap will introduce an opportunity for even more utilities.
Our roadmap is till 2028 btw and that is only on our website!
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Never seen one past 2024-ish
Sergio Karavanets
Let me add to vision a bit! Imagine the world with inexpensive and efficient capital. The world where CEOs and founders focus on the transparent management of their companies instead of constant chase for funding. The world with infinite liquidity where companies get funded based on their past performance and predictive analytics. Imagine that the funding process is based not on the relations and parties thrown, but it’s automated and designed based on an AI machine learning algorithm that knows just fair data points.
and for those who just joined us
Welcome to milestoneBased
🎯 What's mB?
We are a technology platform that revolutionizes milestone collaboration and the funding process between investors and startups using the power of a blockchain DAO and smart contracts.
🚀 What's the vision?
Creating a world where decentralized networks fuel the next generation of startup growth, making business and society better.
mB project summary:
▪️ Industry: VCs and startups
▪️ Established: 2018
▪️ Product stage: testing/DEMO on the other projects by our incubating company Applicature
▪️ Token launch: Q1 2022
▪️ Launch strategy: Power launch
Website (https://www.sale.milestonebased.com/)
Platform (http://www.milestonebased.com/)
Twitter (https://twitter.com/milestonebased)
Tg group (https://t.me/milestoneBased)
Tg channel (https://t.me/milestoneofficial)
Medium (https://milestonebased.medium.com/)
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Brilliant website work btw, you can obviously tell you've been developing for awhile, the graphics and examples are super clean!
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Considering your goals, mBT needs to be both secure and well connected in order to succeed. Can you share with us some of the partnerships you've created, and how they'll help mBT in the long run. You mentioned Ferrum and Zokyo and Applicature, but for those unfamiliar with what they do?
We are excited to announce another Strategic Partner - Ferrum Network 🔥
'Having such an experienced partner at our side helps us quickly test hypotheses and receive informed feedback. And recent news about getting its own category on CoinMarkeCap makes us super proud to be associated with Ferrum' - Says Ihor Savchuk, CEO @milestoneBased.
It's going to be legendary 🎇
👉Read more: https://bit.ly/3nCDIXe
Help us to spread the news on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/MilestoneBased/status/1462779000892313612
#mB
and this one
🔥 One of the leading smart contract auditors in the space joins #milestoneBased family. 🔥
Welcome our partner Zokyo aboard.
'We are happy to have our smart contracts backed by Zokyo. They have proved the top quality of their work over the many years in collaboration with Applicature, so we are confident that the future of milestoneBased is in safe hands.’- Ihor Savchuk, CEO at milestoneBased.com
👉 Read more: https://bit.ly/30kJqnK
Help to spread the news on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/MilestoneBased/status/1458877539695353865
#mB
Sergio Karavanets
And of course there is Applicature.com. Leading blockchain development agency. They've incubated milestoneBased.
We're definitely familiar with Ferrum that was a great move imo, and then props on the Zokyo score btw, 99% audit score 💎
We have also got a number of MoUs signed with projects that are eager to utilize milestoneBased. So we are keeping these announcements for our commmunity=)
Aside of strategic ones we've gotten around 25 MoU signed with plenty of crypto startups that are willing to utilize our platform for future roadmap management. The announcements are coming shortly
COMRADE KEEGAN | TGH
Lastly, what would you say is your highest priority going forward? With an impressive roadmap underway, (and 3 years of development already!) are there any updates we should keep an eye on soon, or any updates you'd like to share now?
Sergio Karavanets
Currently we are finishing with testing/DEMO stage with several products by our incubating company Applicature. After making sure the platform has passed all the essential tests we are moving to the Beta launch. Next phase is a Beta version which will be run in the closed invite only mode to learn the functionality needs of certain business segments and add them to the product roadmap. It's a classic product-market fit stage. In the meantime, we’re preparing for the utility token launch. milestoneBased token is designed to be utilized within the system as a means of payment for platform usage by VCs and startups.
We would like to finish the AMA by thanking the MB team for attending and sharing information on their new project, for more information on Milestonebased, please find the links below!
Website (https://www.sale.milestonebased.com/)
Platform (http://www.milestonebased.com/)
Twitter (https://twitter.com/milestonebased)
Tg group (https://t.me/milestoneBased)
Tg channel (https://t.me/milestoneofficial)
Medium (https://milestonebased.medium.com/)
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Crypto can be a scary place, especially for new comers, everywhere you look there’s reports of scams, hacks and malicious activity! One of the key roles TGH has played since its birth in 2018 has been to keep investors safe by helping them take precautions to keep their own funds and data safe. We will start off with some basic security that everyone should follow if they wish to keep their crypto secure, stick with it as we will slowly move from basic to advanced as we progress! Don’t forget we’re here to help, feel free to reach out at any time for extra information or questions you may have! Basic security Tips
1. Never share your passwords. 2. Never reuse passwords. 3. Always use (2FA) two factor authentication when given the option and DON’T use text 2FA.
4. Back or write down your 2FA restore codes somewhere safe. 5. Never share your backup passphrase, recovery seeds or private keys with anyone.
6. Store cold storage wallets and backup wallet passphrases, in fireproof safes. 7. Don’t post your email address, home address or phone number on social media.
8. Never leave your crypto on exchanges. 9. Use smaller transaction sizes and different exchanges to cover for mistakes & hacks.
10. Always use a VPN & anti virus and keep them upto date. 11. Always backup your wallet.
12. Never open web links without checking what it is your opening first. 13. Triple check addresses before sending funds.
14. Spread funds over multiple wallets incase you get hacked. 15. Remember to only risk what you can afford to lose.
16. Never put large amounts of capital into projects that look too good to be true. 17. Maintain your privacy! 18. Avoid public WiFi.
Ok so we have shared the most basic security tips that we feel everyone should abide to, but even with the help of the TGH community we are sure we have missed a few, so if you can think of any we missed let us know on twitter or telegram! Moving on we will cover more moderate security tips which will include tips on how you can keep your funds safe and secure! Moderate Security Tips
1. Use Etherscan to check wallet addresses or contract addresses before sending or purchasing tokens 2. Test transactions before moving large funds onto new networks.
3. Use metamask to check recipient wallet addresses before sending funds from exchanges or wallets that don’t have the auto check feature.4. Use verified crypto wallets that’s have been certified safe, i.e Bitcoin core, Metamask, trust wallet, Myetherwallet.
5. You can review and revoke your token approvals using these links. https://etherscan.io/tokenapprovalchecker & https://app.unrekt.net/ they are mainly used to disconnect from suspicious token farms or scams. 6. Don’t watch porn or open malicious sites on a device you are using to trade or access funds. 7. Don’t connect your Telegram to any airdrop bots unless your 100% sure they are legit
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Mastercard is preparing to make a huge announcement allowing any of its customers and banks on its payments network to incorporate crypto into their assets. This will include Bitcoin wallets, credit and debit cards that earn rewards in Crypto and digital assets, plus loyalty programs where airline or hotel points can be converted into bitcoin.
To do so, the payments network is working with Bakkt, the crypto firm recently spun off by Intercontinental Exchange, which will be the behind-the-scenes provider of custodial services for those who sign up, executives at the two firms told CNBC.
"We want to offer all of our partners the ability to more easily add crypto services to whatever it is they're doing," Sherri Haymond, Mastercard's executive vice president of digital partnerships, said in an interview. "Our partners, be they banks, fintechs or merchants, can offer their customers the ability to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency through an integration with the Baktt platform."
The announcement could lead to a significant expansion in the ways regular Americans earn and spend bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Mastercard runs one of the dominant global payments networks along with Visa and has relationships with more than 20,000 financial institutions around the world. There are 2.8 billion Mastercards in use, according to the company.
Interest in bitcoin has remained high as the original cryptocurrency surged this year, hitting a record price above $60,000 this month. U.S. regulators have allowed the fund industry to offer a bitcoin-linked ETF for the first time this month, while big institutional investors like bond giant Pimco have said they were considering trading crypto.
That interest has led Mastercard clients to ask the network for help in providing crypto services, according to Haymond. That way, banks can keep customers on their own platforms rather than seeing dollars migrate to crypto exchanges, she said. Shares of Bakkt, which began trading as a public company last week, surged an incredible 234% on the news. Mastercard and Bakkt were set announce their partnership later Monday at the annual Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas.
Besides providing crypto wallets and credit cards for banks, the partnership means that even merchants and restaurants can begin to offer rewards in bitcoin instead of traditional points, according to Bakkt CEO Gavin Michael. Existing points can be converted into crypto at rates set by the participating companies, giving customers the ability to earn a yield, he said.
"We're lowering the barriers to entry, allowing people to take something like your rewards points and trade them into crypto," Michael said in an interview. "It's an easy way to get going because you're not using cash, you're putting something that's an idle asset sitting on your balance sheet, and we're allowing you to put in to work."
Starting with a basic understanding of cryptocurrencies
To get things rolling , before we dig in let’s make sure we've got some basic understanding in regards to what cryptocurrencies actually are. A cryptocurrency is a unique, virtual medium for exchanging capital. They use unique cryptographical functions and blockchain technology to conduct online transactions, securely and fast. Cryptocurrencies are completely decentralized, they’re not controlled by any one individiual and in theory they’re immune to government control.
Individuals can exchange cryptocurrencies online with very few (if any) processing fees. This advantage makes them much more appealing than traditional currencies and financial institutions for exchanges. There's lots of benefits to trading cryptocurrencies. Here are some of the primary reasons why people chooe to invest or trade crypto:
USER AUTONOMY: Digital currencies grant users increased autonomy over their own funds, much more than fiat currencies. Users are also able to control how they spend their money without dealing with an intermediary authority like a bank or government.
SECURITY: Exchanges are made with both public and private keys. This approach keeps things secure and also helps to keep transfer fees low.
TRANSPARENCY: Blockchain technology involves an online ledger that can be sent to all devices. This online ledger makes it easy to verify transactions and encourages all users to be honest.
DISCRETION: Purchases can be discrete. User can voluntarily publishes their transactions, but purchases are never associated with personal identity, much like cash-only purchases, and cannot easily be traced back to the user.
ACCESSIBILITY: Because users are able to send and receive using only a smartphone or computer, crypto is theoretically available to populations of users without access to traditional banking systems, credit cards and other methods of payment.
Storing and Securing Cryptocurrencies
Now that we have some understanding what cryptocurrencies are all about, lets look at how we can safely store our assets using wallets. Its important that we take this seriously and do our homework as keeping our crypto safe should be one of the main priorities for any investor or trader because it is essential to have your crypto wallet before buying any cryptocurrencies. You will need to store your coins within your secure personal wallets. Its not reccomended that investors leave their crypto on exchanges, although they allow users to hold purchased coins within assigned exchange wallets, it’s recommended that you withdraw your crypto and hold them in private wallets. This protects you and your investments from hackers and theft. It is also worth noting that wallet compatibility also needs to be considered. Some crypto wallets to choose from include but are not limited to:
• Coinbase Wallet
• Exodus Wallet
• Jaxx Liberty Wallet
• KeepKey Wallet
• Guarda Wallet
• Nano ledger
• Myetherwallet
• Trust wallet
• Metamask
Before you dive in head first and select a wallet, theirs a few important things to note, which will help you stay on the safe side of crypto:
Only use wallets from a legit source: A growing number of wallets from less reputable sources that offer attractive features are malware in disguise. Nathan Wenzler, senior director of cybersecurity at Moss Adams has identified a number of these landmines which can result in the entire loss of your crypto portfolio.
Cold wallets are reccomened:
Moving onto a basic understanding of Investing and Trading
There is a difference between investing and trading. Investing entails building wealth gradually over an extended period of time through the buying and holding of currencies and stocks. Trading, on the other hand, involves more frequent buying and selling of currencies or stocks, with the goal of generating faster returns. When investing, the currency or stock is often held for a long period of time in contrast to trading, which is more frequent and can be upto multiple times a day.
For small, retail investors, investing over an extended period of time is far more suitable than trading, because trading involves a near constant monitoring of the currency or stock. Meaning its much more time consuming and will need a lot more effort, exposure to more elements of risk, emotion and a larger stack of capital is also required to trade sufficiently to make the risk to reward worthwhile. Trading also requires far more experience, knowledge and confidence.
Taking the time to understand some basic principles of trading and investing, how the markets work and what direction suits your own circumstances and minset is important. We can guarantee that most new investors and traders are desperate to make their first trades once they have learnt how buy their first cryptocurrency, we’ve all been their and know that feeling. Because its our feelings and emotions that drive us to make decisions and most likely as a new investor or trader you will make the wrong decisions. Now that’s not in all a bad thing because you learn from your mistakes and there is no better way to learn how to invest and trade than by making mistakes, which are inevitably unavoidable.
But by having some understanding of basic investing, trading and market principles before you start will limit those first nasty, costly mistakes and blunt the learning curve allowing newbies to survive the initial baptism by fire. By having some knowledge before you proceed will also assist in understanding why and how mistakes were made and will give new investors and traders a quicker and less costly learning process.
Do you know the basics of blockchain technology and Bitcoin? Do you understand how exchanges, wallets, private keys, public keys and Authenticators work?
If you can’t answer these basic questions, you’ll be in trouble quick. So Take some time to prepare yourself, it’s essential to learn the basics. You can navigate our website and find plenty of information to help you get started. But you will defiantly need to find information from multiple sources as this space is vast and now is the time that you’ll start get a clear picture if this is for you or not.
Researching, reading and educating yourself in the crypto space is by far the most important process your going to undertake. So if your too impatient to simply have or take time to read and learn, then you will stack the odds against yourself and the chances of failing will be much higher. Just as the chances of succeeding will be much higher if you prepare yourself with the correct learning and understanding of the space before diving in.
Many experienced investors have been trading, reading, networking, researching and growing their wealth of knowledge consistently, leading to huge amounts of experience. Not only have they chose to dedicate time to learning and understanding to improve their chances of success. But they have used their time management skills wisely to optimise the time they have and fully dedicated themselves to reaching their targets and goals. Not only do they claw as much time into the process as they can, but the time they do dedicate is laser focused with no distractions.
Tip: Many more experienced Investors and especially traders keep themselves very fit physically and mentally meaning they have strict diets and routines to suit their chosen work loads. They don’t indulge in fast food, alcohol or drugs and limit or completly cut out social media, so as to claw back as much time into perfecting their time and focus to investing and trading. So if you think this is going to be a walk in the park, take a look around at what your going up against, because if your not prepared, in top shape, physically and mentally, you will get steamrolled by people who are.
Take action
Every day, potential investors miss out because they aren’t confident about how to get started and this is normal because of course with a lack of experience a lack of confidence is only to be expected. It wouldn’t be normal for someone to be confident on a subject in which they have no experience in. Even experienced investors miss out on opportunities that could bring significant profits simply from not staying active and taking action. But why are a lot of new investors lacking confidence in general? It could be mainly due to being scared to make mistakes, but what they don’t understand is, that the only way to learn, is by making those mistakes, especially in crypto!
We recommend during the early stages of investing and trading, where most of the mistakes will take place, that smaller amounts of capital are used to control and limit the damage that all the mistakes will make, not only on peoples wallets, but on their mind sets. This is where most people fail, because they have not approached the task at hand with the right mindset and havnt done the basic research and tried to get an understanding of the market or how crypto works. This is exactly where most people get burnt out mentally due to huge losses from stupid mistakes that could have been either avoided or made far less serious from having done some basic research to understand the task at hand. limiting the damage of the mistakes will protect your capital from running dry and keep a balanced mindset that is able to carry on and conquer the task at hand. At this stage we reccomend people take their time to fully understand the space and by taking action and making mistakes is the only way its going to happen.
Tip: Taking Action will result in experience over the course of time and experience will result in better decision making. In fact the experience is all about learning from the mistakes you make. So not only should people not be afraid to make mistakes, but they should aim to adjust their mindsets so as to not be scared to make mistakes, but to embrace and own those mistakes and most importantly, learn from them! limiting the damage of the mistakes will protect your capital from running dry and keep a balanced mindset that is able to carry on and conquer the task at hand.
Formulise investment strategies that suit you
Now that you have spent some time learning and getting an understanding of the space, you can start to formulise and adopt strategies that you feel will suit you, this once again in many cirumstances is only attainable by trial and error and we all know practice makes perfect, so keep that capital on a leash for now, so it can be fully utizlized when you actually have a better idea what you're doing! We are going to break this section into two parts starting with investing.
The best thing about investment strategies is that they’re flexible. If you choose one and it doesn’t suit your risk tolerance or schedule, you can certainly make changes. But try to make sure you try to fully utilize each strategy by taking the time to understand the characteristics of each and how they suit you're budget, schedule and skill. You'lll be in a far better position to choose one that’s right for you over the long term without the need to incur the expense of changing back and forth without making any progress atall.
Once you've found a solid investment plan its a good idea to start tracking your investments using a portfolio manager or tracker, we've got multiple templates at TGH so feel free to reach out for a free fully customizable excel template which you can change to tender your own investment requirements. We reccomend that your portfolio should only consist a maximum of 10-15 coins and tokens, any more and you'll struggle to keep track of all the prices, updates, announcements and over time you'll end up losing out on potential returns. We're talking about been as effecient and effective as possible, using the finite amount of time and resources we have at our disposal. Over time you'll start to find a balance as the crypto game becomes second nature, youll become quicker, sharper and then you'll be able to take on more investments and trades. So try starting with 5 investments and learn to track all the news, announcements, updates, as well as follow the twitter accounts closely and join the communities. Most newbies make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew and end up never finding their potential because they got swamped, then burnt out. If you think tracking investments effeciently is an easy practice, then simply try consistently tracking 5 projects for a month, using the above method, we think youll have a shock. Now imagine tracking 15 or even 20, some new investors have over 30 coins and end up forgetting what they bought, at what price, in which wallet, they miss the rallys and end up either selling on consolidation periods or even worse forgetting all together.
So once again its really important to try to understand, how to play the game from a strong position, then slowly putting yourself into more venrable, stressful situations and growing with them at a rate you can actually sustain, the difference between the people who make it in crypto and the people who dont is exactly this. The people who made it, understood how to understand the game, where as the people who didnt make it, got burnt out or broke because they didnt understand what they were getting into. These lessons may seem obvious, but if you truly focus and try to employ what we have spoke about in this article, then we guarentee you will be around long term.
Lastly we would like to stress the importance of networking and communicating with others who are in a similar situation, or more advanced than you. Theres an old saying "if you put 6 retards in a room and join them, in time you'll be the seventh". Its really important to network with the right people, not just in crypto but in any industry or areas of interest, our ideas and thoughts are influenced by others, so been around smart, experienced, clued up individuals is one of the most important aspects to progress in any area, but especially crypto! This is one of the fundemental reasons why we created the TGH community, to share ideas and grow with like minded individuals, so feel free to join us and make the most of our free community, to ask, share and learn with others who are on the same journey, we hope this article helped.
Kind regards
The TGH team.
How to stay Crypto safe
How to stay crypto safe and secure by TGH
Crypto can be a scary place, especially for new comers, everywhere you lookthere’s reports of scams, hacks and malicious activity! One of the key rolesTGH has played since its birth in 2018 has been to keep investors safe byhelping them take precautions to keep their own funds and data safe. We willstart off with some basic security that everyone should follow if they wish tokeep their crypto secure, stick with it as we will slowly move from basic toadvanced as we progress! Don’t forget we’re here to help, feel free to reachout at any time for extra information or questions you may have! Basic securityTips
1. Never share your passwords.
2. Never reuse passwords.
3. Always use (2FA) two factorauthentication when given the option and DON’T use text 2FA.
4. Back or write down your 2FArestore codes somewhere safe.
5. Never share your backuppassphrase, recovery seeds or private keys with anyone.
6. Store cold storage wallets andbackup wallet passphrases, in fireproof safes.
7. Don’t post your email address,home address or phone number on social media.
8. Never leave your crypto onexchanges.
9. Use smaller transaction sizesand different exchanges to cover for mistakes & hacks.
10. Always use a VPN & antivirus and keep them upto date.
11. Always backup your wallet.
12. Never open web links withoutchecking what it is your opening first.
13. Triple check addresses beforesending funds.
14. Spread funds over multiplewallets incase you get hacked.
15. Remember to only risk whatyou can afford to lose.
16. Never put large amounts ofcapital into projects that look too good to be true.
17. Maintain your privacy!
18.Avoid public WiFi.
Ok so we have shared the mostbasic security tips that we feel everyone should abide to, but even with thehelp of the TGH community we are sure we have missed a few, so if you can thinkof any we missed let us know on twitter or telegram! Moving on we will covermore moderate security tips which will include tips on how you can keep yourfunds safe and secure! Moderate Security Tips
1. Use Etherscan to check walletaddresses or contract addresses before sending or purchasing tokens
2.Send test transactions beforesending larger amounts of funds onto new networks.
3. Use metamask to checkrecipient wallet addresses before sending funds from exchanges or wallets thatdon’t have the auto check feature.
4. Use verified crypto walletsthat’s have been certified safe, i.e Bitcoin core, Metamask, trust wallet,Myetherwallet.
5. You can review and revoke yourtoken approvals using these links. https://etherscan.io/tokenapprovalchecker& https://app.unrekt.net/ they are mainly used to disconnect fromsuspicious token farms or scams. 6. Don’t watch porn or open malicious sites ona device you are using to trade or access funds. 7. Don’t connect your Telegramto any airdrop bots unless your 100% sure they are legit
6. Never approve new tokens orcontracts before fully understanding what they are or where they came from,once again use the relevant explorers to check to check details on contracthistory, number of current holders, wallet addresses and price history.
We will continuously add to the above, if you have any suggestions please contact us via telegram or twitter.
Defi (Decentralized finance) has taken the blockchain and crypto industries by storm over the last few years, but do most blockchain and crypto users even understand what DeFi is? We hope to give an easy to understand explination on what DeFi is and why its currently taking the blockchain and crypto space by storm!
Decentralized Finance (also referred to as DeFi) is a blockchain-based form of finance that does'nt rely on central financial intermediaries such as brokers, exchanges or banks to handle traditional financial instruments and instead utilizes smart contracts on the blockchain. DeFi platforms allow people to lend or borrow funds from others, speculate on price movements on assets using derivatives, prediction markets, trade, insure, earn interest in savings with decentralized protocols. Which has grown exponentially since 2018, we will now go on to explain just how much DeFi has grown since 2018 and why we expect it to continue its parabolic growth!
The total DeFi market cap is currently 150 billion, in 2018 the market cap was a mere 100 million. Thats a 1000x rise in 3 years! But heres the best part .... from 2019-2020 it doubled growing from 5.5 billion in January 2019 to 10 billion in January 2020. From 2020-2021 it tripled gaining even more ground, as we saw it increase from 10 billion in to 30 billion & this year it has already quadrupled reaching a staggering 150 billion in TVL value, at its current exponential growth rate we expect to see the DeFi sector reach a staggering 750 billion by january 2023!
But why is the DeFi sector growing so rapidly? What are some of the causes leading retail, instutional and corperate investors piling their capital into decentralized protocols? Well its simple, as governments continue to print fake money and support a broken financial system - which is currently valued 450 trillion dollars in fiat assets (real estate not included) hyper inflation has already kicked in, leading to more demand for #Defi solutions, to recover retail savings, as well as instutional and corperate balance seets which have seen sharp declines in value due to the inflation of fikat money.
Jan 2018 – 100 million
Jan 2019 – 5.5 billion
JAN 2020 – 10 billion
Jan 2021 – 30 billion
Current - 150 billion
Jan 2022 – 180 billion (Projected value)
Jan 2023 - 750 billion (projected value)
We expect more and more demand will start to appear as retail investors, institutions, corperations and now even banks start to utilize DeFi. We have already seen a paradigm shift in the markets, now we expect the banking industry will follow, as it does the DeFi sector will continue to grow more rapidly!
As the crypto world focuses on the Bitcoin rally and other trending cryptocurrencies, another type of digital asset has been silently gaining traction in the background. A lot of investors are scratching their heads over the new trend which is NFT's (non‑fungible tokens) and before we move on, anyone dismissing this as a false craze or worthless punt, dont be fooled these things can demand some serious value!
It’s worth noting that non‑fungible digital assets have existed for years, in the form of domain names, for example, if you are seeking a popular domain name that someone else has, then it becomes a valuable asset! Non Fungible Token is really an indvidually unique blockchain token that gives the wallet holder exclusive ownership of that asset! unlike LINK for example where every token is basically the same and you only care about the quantity, every NFT is unique in itself, so when people publish art as an NFT that means that specfiic piece is only owned by you!
Brandon Smith CEO of BONDLY explained in detail what value NFT's have and may have in the future, during a recent TGH AMA session!
"the thing is Art and even Digital Lands are just the start to this revolution, because its easy to comprehend your CryptoKitty being an NFT, but within 9 months NFT could be running your whole online profile! Instead of an NFT being an Item an NFT becomes your digitial identity, so your youtube account you use an NFT to login rather than a simple username and password. Why does this matter? Because theres a HUGE HUGE market that's forming around digital business sales (outside of crypto) for things like Instagram and Youtube accounts.
So for example how many of you know this insta account : https://www.instagram.com/daquan/ Well it was recently sold for a huge amount to a major media company, if you go on the page you might thing "ok this is just stolen memes, whats the big deal" well to Warner media it was $110m of a big deal! My partner Harry , Bondly COO , and I have been buying and selling digital businesses like Daquan over the past 2 years and we know this market is over $74B right now! but what many don't realize is that trading these as assets is completely possible with NFT so NFT would be the trustless way to transfer ownership of Daquan to another party and this is coming in the next 9 months"
Lots of usecases have arisen so far and they’re even being touted as the future of the gaming industry, the art industry, and even in some cases the real estate business! But what are they? What can they be used for, how do they work, and what are some of the best known projects in the industry today? To give some prespective Companies like The Sandbox are starting to push boundaries with their LAND sale which is coming out soon. Many of the original properties they had listed for pennies are now valued at $20k+++"
So as seen above, lots of exciting use cases for non‑fungible tokens (NFTs) are cropping up all the time, especially now as this is a hot topic, you will find many projects utilizing them and trying to take advantage of the use case and in some cases you may find projects even just trying to take advantage of the hype, so tread carefully as per usual and do your due diligence!
How to read Etherscan contracts by The Gem Hunters
Many users in the Defi space have fallen victim to exploits used within Token Contracts that in turn lead to them losing a lot of money. This is most commonly seen on Uniswap, due to anyone being allowed to launch a Contract, as long as they have the technical know how and the Ethereum to afford it. Unfortunately, this leads to the creation of many Contracts that are malicious in nature.
Thankfully, a vast majority of scammers can be identified by using Etherscan. The following steps can be used to determine whether or not a Contract is malicious. In order to show the difference between a good contract and a bad one, this tutorial will first give an example of what a clean contract looks like, and then malicious examples will be given.
CLEAN CONTRACT EXAMPLE:
1. Go to etherscan.io
2. Enter the Contract Address into the search bar (double check you have the correct address)
2a. if you do not know the Contract Address, you can obtain it through Dextools, CMC, or CG
2b. remember that the Token Address page and the Contract Address page are different, make sure to be on the Contract Address page.
Below is an example of the Token Address page for Bondly:
This is an example of the Contract Address page for Bondly (the address highlighted in yellow above):
3. Click on the Contract button highlighted in yellow above
4. Select Read Contract as shown below:
5. You now have access to read the contract functions that are available, they should look like this:
What to do now?
This is the part where it gets tricky, because there are an infinite number of possible functions that could be included into a smart contract. In the example for Bondly above, there are only 8 functions present for the main token, which is a sign of a clean contract. All 8 of those functions are necessary for the token to exist on the blockchain, and they aren’t functions that could rug the user.
In the case that you’re searching for a different token, you can still use these exact same steps to read the contract. There are a few red flags that are common in scam contracts, and these will be outlined below. Now that we know how to access and look at the contract functions, we can determine which are potentially malicious. There will not be any contract addresses shared in the examples because someone might just buy it anyways.
MALICIOUS CONTRACT EXAMPLES:
1. Mint function - this function allows the minting of more tokens, thus increasing the supply and potentially allowing the minter to dump those tokens on the market. This is one of the most common rugs that crashes a price. Disclaimer: Some tokens have mint functions that are dependent upon elastic supplies, but unless a reason for minting, or a programmed rule set, is present, there should not be a mint function. It is important to check who the owner of the mint function is: if the owner is the dev, that’s obviously a red flag; if the minter is a contract based on volume/price, that would be decentralized and significantly less likely to be a scam.
2. Whitelist function - this function should really only be present if the project has a randomized presale that requires the whitelisting of addresses to ensure there is not oversubscription. If the project did not have a presale, and still has this function in the contract, it can be potentially be used to prevent any address not on that whitelist to be unable to sell. I.e. you can buy but cannot sell.
3. Freeze function - this function does as the name implies, and can physically freeze trading of the asset at any time. Although simple, it effectively prevents people from selling the pooled tokens, locking the Ethereum and the secondary token until unfrozen.
3a. if there is also a Transfer Ownership function, and the Contract Creator has control of the freeze function, then they could potentially freeze the contract and then send the ownership to the burn address. This effectively kills the Eth and the other token, leaving them to the burn pool forever.
4. Not a specific function, but the more functions that a token has, the more likely that one can be used as an attack vector. Unless the token’s project has a need for the function, it should not just be arbitrarily added to the code.
Non-Contract Red Flags:
1. An overwhelming large max supply, or, one address with an overwhelming large percentage of the supply. It’s common to see the address that deployed the contract have most of the supply, which is a large red flag.
2. A Univ2 pool that is significantly smaller than the largest individual holder (this does not include staking contracts because they are the accumulation of a multitude of address inputs). This is a sign of skewed distribution, and the potential for a whale to wreck the ecosystem gets higher.
Note: The difference between a normal address and a contract address is this symbol next to the address:
*The symbol highlighted in yellow indicates that the address is a contract. If the symbol is not there, then the address is a personal address. If contracts appear that have large quantities of tokens, it’s important to know what they are for (like staking, or vesting, or locked team tokens, etc.)
3. An anonymous team can be a red flag, but anonymity should be looked at through the lens of the product. If the product is sound, safeguards are in place, and the developers are transparent about the code/answer questions effectively, then anonymity shouldn’t be a negative factor. In the case of anonymity and the presence of other red flags, the risk increases significantly.
Closing Remarks:
Overall, Defi contracts on Ethereum are definitely high risk in comparison to investments anywhere else. However, knowing the basics of how contracts function, and being able to recognize the red flags that signal a potential scam, can help reduce that risk. There is always risk when interacting on the blockchain, but investing in contracts that don’t have malicious code will prevent more losses, and will likely help your gains in the long run.
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