Crypto in Plain English - by cryptohunt.it

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

Cryptohunt is dead.

There, we said it. We promised you some big news throughout the week and this is it.

But here’s the deal: Bad news, it is not. At all.

Cryptohunt has evolved and we are excited to share our new name with you:

Learn.xyz

We will reveal more in the coming weeks, but you can already point your browser to it and try it out.

But why the change? Well, most of you have told us that they like all the new content: AI, quantum computing, or how to use Discord. But as a small team, we have a hard time covering it all. Or we should say “had” - because we have a new team mate.

Her name is LUMI.

Lumi is not what you think. Lumi is an artificial intelligence, and dare we say, much smarter than us. Type anything into learn.xyz and Lumi will create the a fun learning course for you.

Want to know why Bitcoin is doomed? Why bananas are bent? What the future of space travel is? Any topic, any language, Lumi got you.

It’s quite magical, so play around with it. And as far as this podcast is concerned, we are taking a break for the rest of the week to figure out what is the best format going forward.

But if you think you’ll miss this, email [email protected] with two simple words: Miss you.

This podcast was produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3. Thank you all, thank you more than 55k listeners. I myself learned something new for every one of the 373 episodes until hear.

Copywriting of all but 2 episodes was done by the phenomenal Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, design is done by Carmen Rincon, and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and now learn.xyz and I was your host of this daily show. We ill be back.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

A new, and as is typical, unpronounceable technology is in crypto town. It is called ERC-4337. But despite the awkward name, this one is paradoxically meant to improve your life a ton.

The problem it tackles? That it is currently way too easy to lose your crypto forever.

As things are today, every crypto wallet on all the major blockchains is protected by a secret key only you have. This key is so complicated that you can’t possibly remember it - and not surprisingly this leads to many people losing it. Ever heard of those people who lost millions in Bitcoin? They didn’t lose the money, they lost their keys. The result? The same.

ERC-4337 puts an end to this by allowing other means of accessing wallets - for example by assigning people you trust as those who can trigger a recovery. Another option is to have multiple owners of a wallet, so there is always someone who has access.

And as bad as that name is, this could be a major step towards making crypto go mainstream because handling those keys is such a bad experience with such potentially dire consequences.

Might we just suggest a better name so the world will understand? How about “recoverable wallet”? As always, you’ll be the judge!

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3.

Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman, design is done by Carmen Rincon, and my name is Christian Byza, Co-Founder of Cryptohunt and I am your host of this daily show.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

Today, the main event of one of crypto’s largest conferences is kicking off. We are, of course, talking about Eth Denver.

So what is it and why all the fuzz?

EthDenver, as the name gives away, is an event that originally focused on the Ethereum blockchain, and – you probably didn’t see that one coming – happens every year in Denver.

But it’s unlike traditional conferences or conventions that tend to just be in one building complex. Instead, the events of Eth Denver are spread all over town, and organized not by a single team, but anyone who wants to participate.

In a way, that captures the spirit of decentralization that many blockchains try to achieve on a technical level. But it also allows for a really diverse event: Anything from tech talks to meeting investors is part of people’s agenda. To stay entertained and relaxed, there are DJ chill lounges, food trucks, and even a child care center.

And it is thanks to this wide range of things happening organically, and all over the literal map, that Eth Denver has become much more than just about Ethereum. Many other blockchains and their fans attend and enjoy spirited exchanges – definitely something the crypto space could use more of if you ask us.

It is an event true blockchain enthusiasts don’t usually miss out on. We are saying usually, because we are also going through a crypto winter, and it remains to be seen just how many enthusiasts are still flocking to Denver. But however many there end up being:  expect it to be a great event. And of course, we also have boots on the ground. If you want to say hi, email us at [email protected].

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

If you’ve been surfing the internet at all these days, you’ll come across a new trend: Companies using .xyz as their domain endings. But what’s up with that?

Traditionally, you would expect a website to use a .com – after all, that’s where the first wave of internet companies was born… hence the name dot-com-boom. And this one is no different.

But dot-XYZ has turned into the new wave of dot-coms, ever since it was launched in 2014. It all started with crypto companies eyeing the new ending because they could still find easily memorable website names there. But what was once just for rebels, misfits, and innovators, has since turned so cool that it attracts the mainstream: Jack Dorsey’s Block, which is the parent company of payments giant Square, uses it now, for example. Google parent Alphabet resides at ABC.xyz too.

But, popularity among all sizes of businesses aside – what do people associate with .xyz, in a world where .com stands for established internet businesses?

Many think of a new wave of innovating tech companies - the new kids on the block, ready to disrupt tomorrow, those building on new technologies like Web3 and artificial intelligence. And simply those companies who want to show they are not the establishment.

It sure is hip to be square again. We are in exciting times, and it feels like a new wave of transformative technologies is coming our way. And keep an eye out for big news from us as well: Like we promised last week, we’ll reveal a secret we’ve been working on for the last few months.

And it is not to late to tell a friend about this podcast, so that they hear about this secret, too. Tanks so much for spreading the word for us! My name is Christian Byza, and I am the host of this daily show.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

It’s that time again. Here’s yet another new, complicated word for crypto enthusiasts to throw at you: Ordinals. Bitcoin Ordinals to be precise.

And if you don’t know what’s going on, we think you should: Because they’ve been pushing Bitcoin’s price back up quite a bit.

To understand ordinals, we’ll have to make a quick trip down the memory lane of this podcast and look at NFTs, non-fungible tokens. In a nutshell, they are the blockchain version of a digital collectible, like a baseball card, but in the cloud. And because each NFT unique, they are non-fungible, or not interchangeable.

Ok. Back to ordinals. They are a way to achieve the same with Bitcoin. The reason it has taken years longer than on other blockchains to achieve this, is that Bitcoin can’t do anything other than move Bitcoin money around. In the words of the crypto crowd: it only supports fungible tokens - meaning that each is exchangeable for the other. Think of dollar bill and another one - completely exchangeable. Same with two Bitcoins.

The trick here is that the digital collectible is saved in the transaction memo of a Bitcoins transaction itself. Originally, the intent was to put the purpose of the transaction there - like “this Bitcoin is for the pizza you paid for”. The interesting thing here is that ordinals can even save the entire collectible itself, for example a photo, which makes them more powerful than the king of NFTs, Ethereum.

But the usual downsides are still there: You can only have a limited amount of Bitcoin transactions to carry those ordinals, and when you spend the money your ordinal is tied to by accident, they are gone. And don’t get us started on the environmental impact on Bitcoin – it’s not great.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

Last week, crypto exchange giant Coinbase announced that they are launching BASE, which is their own blockchain. So what is BASE, and why did Coinbase think it was necessary to create yet another blockchain?

Let’s dig in.

BASE is what is commonly referred to as a Layer 2, or L2 blockchain. This simply means that it exists on top of an established blockchain, Ethereum in this case. These L2 chains are complicated solutions for an unfortunate problem: Ethereum is way too slow and expensive to be considered usable in most cases.

The way this works is a bit like elevators. Think of Ethereum as an elevator that stops at every level of a skyscraper. At the end, you are certain you didn't skip a floor because you saw that door open and close many times, but it takes a long time to get all the way to the top. Level 2 chains skip a bunch of floors instead, taking you up more quickly. The tradeoff is that you can't really verify how far you actually went until you look out of the window.

But what Coinbase is doing here is nothing new. People have been trying to mitigate Ethereum's problems for a long time now, for example, the popular Polygon blockchain. So why is Coinbase seemingly reinventing the wheel here?

We suspect this is about having a shot at directing where the industry will go. Coinbase has been under a lot of pressure lately. Most of its customers are using Coinbases' accounts to store their crypto - which means it could be gone in case of bankruptcy or hacks. Coinbase likes it this way, but sees the writing on the wall - as everyone is moving their money into wallets they control themselves, Coinbase needs another way to stay relevant. And what's more relevant than building the highway people drive on?

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3. We are back here tomorrow.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

Have you ever watched Jim Carrey imitate another star’s voice and were amazed by it? Then get ready to be wowed by a revolution in synthetic voices created by artificial intelligence.

It used to be that voices are somewhat of a person’s fingerprint: You will always recognize your parents speaking, even over the worst phone connection.

But things are changing big time: AI can now imitate anyone’s voice almost instantly. And the applications are endless - you could listen to your favorite podcast in the voice of Barbara Streisand, George Clooney’s voice could be used in every language his movies are released in, and maybe - but just maybe - Siri might finally be able to hold a decent conversation while sounding like you.

At the heart of it is a process called machine learning. It analyses voice samples from real people, figures out what makes them unique, and builds a profile that can be applied to any voice or read any text. This is something that only recent evolutions in computer processing power enabled.

You know, we may even try it out for this podcast, just to see if you can tell the difference. Because if it gets this voice and pronunciation right - then anything is possible!

And that concludes our week on all the amazing things AI can do and will change. Let us know how you like these mini series… And next time we’ll talk about a secret project we’ve been working on.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3.

Copywriting is done by Arndt Voges, Social Media is done by Brett Holleman and design is done by Carmen Rincon. And the voice in between was generated by AI. Happy weekend!

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

Today, we’ll touch on another area that generative AI will change entirely: How we experience stories in books, video games, and even TV shows. But before we dive in: If you are new here, make sure to start a few episodes back in 363 where this mini-series begins.

You’ve done it hundreds of times: Start a book, read it all the way through, and finally close it after the last page. Or you’ve played a video game and eventually reached every possible corner of its world.

That’s because stories eventually end. They are written by humans, and those humans move on to the next thing. Even Game of Thrones eventually ended.

With AI, things are entirely different. By its very definition, “generative” AI can generate content instantly, taking into account the context you provide.

So how could this look like? Let’s say you love the Sherlock Holmes books - if AI were to write them, you could get a new one basically whenever you wanted. Or you play a game, and AI creates the world and storyline automatically - meaning you could play forever. Even for TV this is possible: Really like Breaking Bad and never want it to end? Well, AI is here to help.

And while some - us included - prefer change and don’t think things ending is a bad thing, we bet many folks out there will love this new world… So much so, that you’ll begrudgingly have to be part of it. What do you think about all this?

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

The future is almost here, and it could mean big changes for how we create music, too.

If you’ve heard anything about AI, it’s probably related to its ability to create text, for example as a chatbot. But did you know that there are AIs that can express themselves in other ways, such as creating music?

One of them is called MusicML and was developed by Google. You can simply describe to it in words what you’d want it to compose, and it’ll spits out its version of that.

This is quite amazing on a conceptual level if you think about it - you don’t have to be able to play an instrument, you don’t even need to understand music theory. And yet, you can become a musician.

Do you find that thought upsetting? Do you think it should be harder to create something, or else all things we create lack value?

Maybe so - which is a general debate we should all have, because like it or not: AI is coming in hot. But we think there is something heartwarming about allowing anyone to create beauty - especially if it’s music.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3.

Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where you learn – in just a minute or two a day – what is happening in crypto and other game-changing ideas. As always: In plain English.

Yesterday, we talked about AI and how it will most likely allow for completely personalized movie and TV content that is incredibly realistic, but generated just for you. And honestly, looking at the stuff we see in our Netflix account right now, that future can’t come fast enough if you ask us.

But for today, on to something that you can already experience yourself: The replacement of search engines like Google.

To understand the incredible shift we are about to witness there, let’s first look at why Google exists. There are billions of websites out there, and each has some sort of information to offer. You would never be able to find it, so Google reads all of them for you, and with just one search, shows just the few that are most relevant.

And this is where the trouble starts. Now it’s on you to click link after link in the search results, doing your own work to figure out the solution to your question.

With AI, on the other hand, technology can now do the reading and summarizing for you. Say you are looking for a new toaster. You type in “best toasters” and it’ll start having a quick conversation with you: How many slices do you want to toast? How much do you want to spend?

And then the magic happens: It’ll create a completely personalized recommendation. No further research needed.

And if you think this won’t work, or only work with specific types of questions like the toaster purchase - well, we challenge you to try the new Bing which will come out any day now. Microsoft has built exactly AI to replace search and it is incredible how well it responds to you.

As always - you’ll be the judge. But we think this is Google 2.0 - the question is just: Will Google miss the boat?

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3.