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I wanted to introduce you guys to a technology which may change the future of our planet much more than Bitcoin will. It may even make Bitcoin obsolete. If you know how Blockchain works, this topic should interest you. ––––––––––– So... Does expending huge amounts of resources to solve math problems that nobody really cares about make the world a better place? Does "7 transactions a second maximum" sound like future world currency technology? Is it fair that approximately every 10 minutes one single computer likely part of a supercluster wins the lottery and decides which transactions get to be included in the next block? Is waiting for 1 hour for confirmation of a payment that even then isn't 100 % guaranteed sound viable in today's age, let alone in 20 years from now? I'd say no, no, no, and no. But is there an alternative? Yes. It's called Hashgraph. ––––––––––– Hashgraph is a Distributed Ledger Technology much like Blockchain, yet very different – and much better. In a nutshell, in Hashgraph every node (the client, like your computer running the program) tells random other nodes the data it has (transactions, coordinates, or other data), plus information it randomly received from other nodes. It's called "Gossip protocol" for obvious reasons and is not a new invention. So my node A sends my transaction to another node B, then A and B send to C and D, next round four nodes send out my information (exponential, so it only takes 20 iterations for 1 million nodes to know my transaction). Also, the nodes tell each other what they heard other nodes telling other nodes together with the timestamps, so they "gossip about gossip." The benefit of that gossip about gossip is that every node has all the data every other node has. This also demonstrates the fairness in Hashgraph, because all nodes are equal in power and no single node decides which transactions get to be included. To decide on the correct order of the transactions, a voting system is used. But instead of sending votes all around in the network of who has seen which data when and to "vote for it", we can just forget about that part because everyone already knows how everyone "would" vote if there was a an actual vote – hence it's called "virtual voting" and is, together with the Gossip protocol, what makes Hashgraph incredibly efficient. It's extremely efficient and fast, plus fair and secure. In fact, it's much more efficient, faster, fairer and securer than Blockchain! It's a straight upgrade. It was invented 5 years ago by Leemon Baired of http://www.swirlds.com/ and they have only been public about this technology since September 2017. ––––––––––– You want to learn more? See their website (above) or check out the following resources: Hidden Secrets Of Money Episode 8 featuring Bitcoin and Hashgraph (video) Overview of Swirlds Hashgraph (article) How Hashgraph Consensus Works (presentation) Swirds' Leemon Baird Talks Hashgraph (lecture) ––––––––––– It may sound like I'm here to advertise, but I am of course in no way affiliated to them. I just have recently stumbled across Hashgraph in The Hidden Secrets of Money and have been learning much about it. I find Hashgraph fascinating as this seems to solve all the problems that Bitcoin currently has. Most notably the extreme energy expense (between 1/2000th and 1/1200th of world's electricity!) and limited scalability. Maybe you guys find this interesting, too? Have you heard about it before? What are your thoughts? Cheers!

as some interested may already know, there is a major debate going on in the crypto-currency world. The failed smart contract dao that collected 150 millions in Ethers from users, caused 1/3 of funds to be drained out and remaining 2/3 to be blocked for a month - the deadline is in less than 3 days. Here is the countdown: https://slacknation.github.io/medium/11/11.html Some say the code has been tested only few days and that the same people are involved that were among responsible for the huge hole that DAO had in it (more, they were warned about one developer from the team that the exploit may be there, but he was ignored). There is also an ethical issue of bailing out a failed contract/company and users that invested in it. Ethereum the cryptocurrency/decentralized app network is a commercial enterprise after all, so many people have invested their funds in this enteprise and are now pushing for violating the contract that they all agreed on. It could be an interesting discussion for a philosophical debate, but is also opening some other possibilities. Maybe that's what Ethereum suppose to be, this interventionist currency, that is giving more "safety" and that opens some room for its competitors. I was trying to find any alternatives for the ethereum, that is now turning not only into socialist mess, but many programmers have serious doubts is the fork be even successful, what will the miners decide (yes the miners decide on which blockchain to mine - old one or the new one! Its all pretty crazy) Finally I found some Ethereum alternative and made a small BAILOUT video as a joke, but people liked it so I remastered it and published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6tJhaoQsYc I like that it is kinda grassroots and I know there is some "smart money" accumulating it at current 0.05$ per coin level. Of course I am not telling anyone to buy, there is rightfully much mistrust in new altcoins cryptocurrency projects, but accually the ethereum brought what I always dreamed of and bitcoin was missing - decentralized apps and selling computer-power and I missed it, because I was concentrated on other projects. Now that Ethereum is in serious trouble and looks like it may kneel in front of special interest groups (again - miners will eventually decide) I am very much interested in its free alternatives. Anyone that is interested in it or in being part of the project is invited to: ("slack") https://krypton.rocks/ I dont know if there are any other alternatives to Ethereum (if You know of any please let me know) when it comes to smart contracts, I think Krypton is the only one tradable on exchanges so far.

Hey, guys! Let me start with acknowledging the fact that I'm not a technical person and I don't have enough brain power to fully understand the complications of technological advancements such as Ethereum. I just have a gut feeling it's going to change the world. I would really appreciate if you took a look at it and shared some of your thoughts on the matter. Here's a great article http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/ethereum-offers-platform-for-decentralized-enterprise-applications/376337 Thank you!

I have a small amount of namecoin that I wish to dump and am looking for a good exchange to do it. If it turns out the overhead of using an exchange to convert namecoin to bitcoin is not cost effective I will try to accomplish the exchange by soliciting willing individuals. That is my immediate motivation, but I need to decide on a good exchange to sign up with anyway, looking towards the future. With that in mind, what exchange(s) do you use and why?

So far, this video has been the most informative regarding the basic pros and cons of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. There has been too much misinformation and not enough attempt for a level evaluation of cryptocurrency (never mind the precious metal discussion).