A mobile app, developed by uPort, will allow the residents of the city to connect their identities to a cryptographic address on the Ethereum blockchain. The developer of the application has close ties to the minds behind the Ethereum itself – ConsenSys. All of the personal information will be preserved on the Ethereum blockchain.

The application in question is meant to incorporate a selection of municipal services and allow the residents to pay fees, manages e-signatures and generally navigate their digital urban landscape with unprecedented ease.

The idea is to create an elegant and intuitive solution for the residents – a single ‘digital passport’ for a wide variety of applications. And, according to the city mayor – Dolfi Müller – the city does not want to be involved in the centralization of said identity. Instead, this will be done on the blockchain.

Zug, of course, was one of the pioneers that started accepting Bitcoin as payment for municipal services. That move provided the city with quite a bit of positive coverage, so the experiment was deemed a success, and the city embraced cryptocurrency, earning its ‘Crypto Valley’ nickname. And the core philospohy behind the desicion has not change since then:

With Bitcoin, we’re sending a message. We in Zug want to get out in front of future technologies.
Dolfi Müller

A new Ethereum-based digital ID system will be launched and tested in early 2018, but the initiative enjoys support both from the government and local advocacy groups like ‘Crypto Valley Association’. The pilot development was also aided by the Zurich-based tech firm ti&m and the Institute of Financial Services Zug (IFZ) at the Lucerne University of Economics.

The original fork that separated Ethereum Classic from Ethereum proper was the consequence of a massive hack. It all started with the DAO (Distributed Anonymous Organisation) – a capital venture of a kind that gave ether-holders an opportunity to purchase DAO tokens. Those were used to determine the investment strategy of the fund. The investors could leave at any point, but would have to wait 28 days to withdraw their ether.

Unfortunately, hackers have found a way to exploit the weakness in the system and stolen more than $50 million in ether. This nearly killed Ethereum. Needless to say, something had to be done. And the clock was ticking – the hacker would be able to get away with investor’s money in 28 days.

The debate that took place was more philosophical than practical. While the majority agreed to reverse the hack and transfer the funds back, a part of the community felt that this betrayed the very idea of the blockchain. It should have been an unassailable monolith, and not even this hack was cause enough to change that in their eyes.

This was an irreconcilable difference that caused the hard fork. Most have moved on with Ethereum (including the developers of the platform – Gavin Wood and Vitalik Buterin), but select few remained loyal to their principles and named the resulting currency Ethereum Classic.

So, which one is better? Ethereum has certainly found success, not only recovering from the devastating loss, but moving on to become the cryptocurrency with the second biggest market cap after bitcoin. Rising as high as $700, it has outshined its sibling, but both currencies have their zealots.

While Ethereum seems to be a much safer bet with a clear path forward, many believe that the choice between the Ethereum and Ethereum Classic has a lot more to say about the personal’s ideology than their business acumen.

Any international proceeds will be viewed as illegal and highly suspect by the government, which puts a lot of the investors in the region into a rather precarious position. However, the situation is not as clear as it the Kuwait’s officials would like the public to believe. Their official stance is far from the open-minded approach of the neighboring Bahrain, but they lack the regulatory power to back up the prohibition.

The ministry (along with the Central Bank of Kuwait) do not have the authority to actually punish any cryptocurrency trading. Since any transactions take place over the internet, the crypto-market seems to be out of reach for both institutions at the moment.

Still, the lack of government support or even acknowledgement does increase the risks for investors in an already volatile market.

On one hand, aggressive tactics of buying large quantities and selling them off after huge price hikes might work out in the short term, on the other – that is not the main purpose or even an idea behind these currencies. Contrary to the belief of the establishment experts (some would call it wishful thinking), digital currencies are more than a fleeting trend and a massive bubble. They are the way of the future, offering unprecedented flexibility and security for the regular users.

Sooner or later, fiat currencies are going to be replaced by the cryptocurrencies we are seeing now, maybe not in their current iteration, but the shift is inevitable. This is why, ignoring massive price fluctuations might be a better solution in the long term. It is neither the most exciting nor the most original advice. It does, however, take into account the larger picture and the world where the cryptocurrencies are not the curious oddity for the few, but the boring everyday reality for the many.

Litecoin (LTC), being the fifth most prominent cryptocurrency in the world, enjoyed a very impressive rise for the last two months, surpassing the $300 mark. Some would argue that the software engineer arrived at this sudden decision at a very convenient time, and the sale should have been very profitable for the Litecoin developer.

His statement, however, shifts the focus away from the financial aspect of the transaction and cites ethical concerns:

…it is conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence. I have always refrained from buying/selling LTC before or after my major tweets, but this is something only I know. And there will always be a doubt on whether any of my actions were to further my own personal wealth above the success of Litecoin and crypto-currency in general.

 

Whatever his reasons for selling his private reserve, Lee continues to work on the Litecoin and claims that his passion and dedication to the project have not waivered.

The easiest way to wrap your head around the concept of the blockchain is to view it as a ledger. That’s what it essentially is – a giant ledger that holds the records of all the operations in the system. This database is also completely public and accessible to anyone who is interested in the matter.

Turns out, all we need in order to transfer money around the globe is the information about the transaction to be entered into a specific register. Currently, that register is handled by the third parties (like banks and other financial institutions), which is not ideal for a number of reasons. Essentially, you entrust your identity and financial security to someone else.

Blockchain is the best way to avoid that.

In it, every transaction is recorded by every member of the community, making the resulting ledger completely transparent. Simple enough, right? But wait, that’s not the main draw of the technology. Every now and again, all the available records are compared, and they should be absolutely identical. No inconsistencies are tolerated. After that, the information is encrypted with the help of a hash function. This makes the data extremely hard to decode. Then, the data is sealed in a block. And after it is sleaed, the idea is to never alter it in any way.

This creates a permanent public record, available to all participants and completely decentralized at the same time. These blocks stack and, in turn, create something we call the blockchain.

But what is the real profitability of this instrument, taking into account volatility? The staking mechanism in a nutshell Proof-of-Stake is a much more energy efficient algorithm than the Proof-of-Work used in the Bitcoin network. Nodes do not have to race to solve cryptographic riddles: the system itself chooses who can “mine” the next block and receive a reward.

At the same time, the chances of a node to become a validator in each cycle depend on the size of its stake, that is, the number of locked coins. The stake also serves as a guarantee that the node will “play by the rules”. Otherwise, he will lose a certain percentage of frozen coins (this mechanism is called “slashing”).

Staking is a mechanism for delegation of coins, which allows a node to increase its stake and, accordingly, income. The owner of the coins (delegator) at the same time receives a part of the additional income. It is important to distinguish staking from crypto loans. In the first case, you only delegate validation rights, but do not transfer the coins themselves. A smart contract ensures that no one steals your coins.

In the case of loans, there is a real transfer of the asset itself, and your interests are guaranteed with a collateral that exceeds the amount of the loan. How to Calculate Real Staking Yield The aggregator site Staking Rewards has more than 100 staking coins, and the nominal interest rate can exceed 50% per annum: However, as an investor, you should not be concerned about the nominal, but the actual yield.

And it depends primarily on the dynamics of the price of the coin. If the asset depreciates, then the nominally high income will turn out to be a “soap bubble”.

How to calculate actual ROI? You need to multiply the nominal yield by the price change. In mathematical form, it looks like this. Let’s say that P0 is the price of the coin at the time the stake was created, and P1 is the final price at the time the stake was liquidated.

It is possible to express P1 as kP0, where the coefficient k=P1/P0.

Further, let’s assume that S0 is the initial number of coins in the stake, and S1 is the number of coins at the time the stake was liquidated, that is, including the accumulated interest.

You can express S1 as iS0, where the coefficient i=S1/S0. The coefficient is the nominal rate of return, expressed not as a percentage, but as a decimal fraction.

For example, if the rate is 7%, then i=1.07.

With the help of simple mathematical transformations (which we will omit in order to save space), we get that ROI = i*k. For example, if the rate of return is 10% and the price has increased by 20%, then ROI = 1.1*1.2=1.32 or 32%. It is important to note that this calculation does not take into account the commission of the staking site.

These include both exchanges (such as Binance, KuCoin, and Waves.Exchange) as well as specialized sites such as Stake.Fish and Stake.US.

The nominal yield of any asset on different platforms, already taking into account the commission, can be viewed on the same site.

Should I invest in staking? Staking, like any investment vehicle, involves risk. However, if you choose the right coin, you can really get a high passive income. In this regard, staking is preferable to, say, buying tokens in an IEO.