Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english. Let’s continue our mini-series on: Does the world need crypto? This is part 3, so make sure you start from the beginning.

In the past two episodes, we've discussed how anger about banks and governments started the crypto trend. Yet, crypto hasn't gone mainstream and Bitcoin itself has become what it wanted to prevent in the first place: Another speculative asset with zero consumer protection.

But Bitcoin can also be seen as an outdated proof-of-concept. A great first idea, with as many flaws as promises. But all that changed with Ethereum, which aims to take crypto from just one use – in Bitcoin's case being a payment method – to virtually any finance application you can think of.

So: Is Ethereum finally solving real problems then? Crypto is actually useful?

Arguably, yes, we are seeing some real uses. Stable coins for example, like Tether and USDC. By being pegged to a real currency, they fix the price fluctuation issue of Bitcoin. The complicated logic behind stabilizing them can only exist on a programmable blockchain like Ethereum. And they are being used – Ukraine's call for donations is a great example. While traditional banks are slow and charge high fees to send money across borders, people could suddenly help quickly and efficiently with crypto.

Other uses exist too, like lending and borrowing money, or using crypto as an alternative to bank accounts. You may not realize this, but most of our world is "underbanked", meaning people don't have fair access to bank accounts and stable currencies, making their life a mix of uncertainty and high fees. Crypto projects like Celo are already in wide use there, leapfrogging inefficient governments or traditional finance systems.

You see: The world does need crypto. Slowly, the technology is catching up with real needs. It just took a really, really long time. And suddenly, does it seem unrealistic that Visa and Mastercard will also be disrupted by crypto?

But we are not there yet. Even Ethereum and many others are flawed. So, tomorrow we'll look into what makes a perfect blockchain, one that could disrupt them all.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Does the world need crypto? Part 2: Replacing the banking system

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Welcome back to our mini-series on: Does the world need crypto? This is part 2, so make sure you start from the beginning.

Last time, we learned about the history of Bitcoin, and how it was born out of the 2008 financial crisis as a digital currency that is not centrally controlled by a government, with wallets that are like bank accounts without having banks involved.

The content of the bank account, of course, is crypto and not real money... and do we really need all that?

And it does sound like a compelling argument: Cut out the government and the banks, who all messed up in 2008 and didn't protect us enough in the first place.

But it has been 14 years since then and Bitcoin has only turned into a speculative asset, and ironically has almost no practical use as a currency. Structural problems, like slow speed and high energy consumption make it suited at most as a store of value, not a real payment method.

Meanwhile, Visa, Mastercard and co are still charging multiple percent from every person buying something, and Bitcoin didn't address the problems with financial institutions themselves. You still have a regular bank account and tolerate the outrageous fees without complaints.

So, where are the real-world use cases of crypto helping us avoid the next financial crisis?

Enter Ethereum, and the power of decentralized finance, a world of applications that aim to replicate what only banks are able to do. And they promise to perform it transparently on the blockchain, for everyone to participate.

Will they be the real breakout case for crypto? Let's dive into it next time and see what is already happening and where defi still falls short.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Does the world need crypto? Part 1: Decentralization

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

The reason Bitcoin exists in the first place is widely assumed to be Satoshi Nakamoto’s disagreement with fiscal policies around the 2008 crash.

This week, let's have a brief look at history and the discussions around crypto: Is it really necessary?

The 2008 crash was a direct consequence of big banks placing increasingly risky bets on ever rising housing prices. When the bubble popped, most of them got bailed out by governments which printed massive amounts of money to do so, causing inflation.

Many people were unhappy with this; they found it unfair that these banks would get saved at the expense of everyone else; after all they caused the mess.

Bitcoin attempted to change the game by creating a system of money that is decentralized, meaning no single player has the power to change it. It, in fact, was even built to be deflationary: There can never be more than 21 million Bitcoins, meaning nobody can print it.

But do we really need such a self-policing system?

Critics will argue that governments' ability to react to market conditions is a great thing. This way we can proactively step in and help the economy.

And they will rightfully argue that we have replaced something simple and effective - a centralized system, with something complicated that only insiders understand. While a company like VISA can run the world’s payments out of a single data center, we burn through a household's energy just for a few Bitcoin transactions.

You see, what it comes down to is this: Do you think the financial system as it is has been serving society well? Or do you think power should shift away from governments and big corporations so everyone can participate at their own risk?

Next time we'll look into those questions in more depth. Until then – happy learning!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

cryptohunt is launching! How to get a spot.

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, we have something exciting to cover. After a long time of building cryptohunt, we are finally launching into beta by the end of March.

So, what is cryptohunt in the first place? Fair question! We have been hard at work building a website where you can learn from the ground up about crypto and all the projects that exist.

Don't know anything about crypto yet? Come on in, we are making it easy for you to get started. Already deep into it? Go ahead and read our opinions on many of the existing cryptocurrencies to help you make up your mind.

Cryptohunt is going to be the place where you will review, discuss, and explain what it is really about.

But we need your help in the beginning, and that is why we are launching in closed beta on the 25th of March. The rules are simple: If you want to start learning and even making some money with the classes we offer, we ask you to give us feedback in return.

So... Join the waitlist at cryptohunt.it. That'll get you a place in line. We can't wait to hear from you.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

What is a 51% Attack?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s dig into the topic of 51% attacks.

Remember: One of the core ideas of blockchains is to get rid of a central authority for checking payments for fraud. This is different from traditional finance, like credit card company VISA, where a single organization controls the entire flow of money, and thus can easily check every transaction.

But how exactly do you decentralize such a system? It's easy actually: You have many actors who validate independently.

Say you write the word "cryptohunt" on 20 pieces of paper, which you then distribute to 20 people in a room. Someone could walk into that room and ask any honest person for the word, and they'd get the right answer. But what happens if someone starts to mess with your guests, and tells them the wrong word on purpose?

Blockchains like Bitcoin have a simple rule for this: At least 50% of the people in the room have to confirm the word, otherwise you can't trust it.

And that's where the 51% attack comes in. What if more than half of the people in our room conspired to change the word? Then their fake truth becomes the real truth.

In crypto, what's validated are of course transactions and account balances, and the people are computers. But there is always a fear that someone could get enough computers together to take over a blockchain – this is the 51% attack.

In reality though, that has never happened for Bitcoin and co, thanks to proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. We highly recommend to listen to those episodes to dig a little deeper.

And next time we talk about cryptohunt's upcoming launch and how you can get exclusive early access.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

What makes Dash special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, let’s talk about Dash, another crypto currency that was built with privacy in mind.

Dash was invented as an alternative to Bitcoin and Litecoin, and is based on a modification of their original computer program. The name Dash is a word mix of “digital” and “cash”. Live since early 2014, it is one of the oldest altcoins.

To ensure privacy, dash uses a mechanism that is often referred to as a “tumbler”.

Imagine your friend wants to pay you $5 dollars, and she drops the amount into a bucket, but does that by first putting $2 dollars in, and a few minutes later $3 dollars.

Meanwhile, other people have also put money into the bucket for their own transactions. Now, you pull out your $5 dollars, but at five separate times for $1 each. At this point, the money has been mixed up with everyone else's: It has been tumbled.

If there are enough transactions, it becomes impossible to say who sent what to whom and how much exactly, thus making the system more private – and that’s exactly how  Dash works.

But Dash isn’t just used for privacy reasons. Despite being an older altcoin, it’s actually quite useful in real life. The makers have an app, for example, where you can get discounts at a ton of big retailers. It works by buying a discounted gift card with Dash first, and then using that at the counter. A little clunky :), but it works with thousands of stores and still beats most other cryptocurrencies that have near zero real-world application.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

What makes ZCash special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

A common misperception about crypto is that all blockchains provide perfect anonymity. Because wallets are only identified by a cryptic key, owners assume it is easy to hide their real identities.

But in practice, everyone leaves traces behind when using crypto. And with that, scientists, hackers, and governments alike have demonstrated that re-identifying people is much easier than often assumed, especially with big data and ever increasing computing power.

That brings us to ZCash! ZCash was founded by researchers who saw these anonymity problems as a fundamental flaw of Bitcoin, and they improved its code to be privacy focused.

While Bitcoin, like most other blockchains, keeps a public, easily readable record of all transactions, ZCash does not. Instead, it encrypts the transaction details, and only the owner of that transaction can decrypt it.

Think of it like giving a friend a key to your house in case you lock yourself out. With ZCash, you would put that key in a lockbox, pick a code only you know, and only then hand it over. When you need to get into your house, only you can get the contents of the lockbox in the first place.

ZCash comes with drawbacks though. Because it is based on Bitcoin, a now arguably outdated technology, it is also slower and less planet friendly than newer blockchains. In addition, the creators pay themselves an automatic 20% of all new mined coins, which some think is unfair.

That’s ZCash! Next up tomorrow: Dash!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

What makes Monero special?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

If you’ve listened to our explanation of what a blockchain is, and remember from last episode that every transaction and account balance on a blockchain are public, then you probably think: What about privacy then? I don’t have to tell my neighbor how much is in my real bank account either.

That’s where so-called privacy coins come in, and today’s episode is about Monero, a popular one.

Monero attempts to make that public record less useful for those trying to trace back the history of it. It has a few tricks up its sleeve to do that.

First, it uses a “stealth address” for each public transaction. Think of it similar to creating many temporary email addresses that all forward to your real inbox. If you never used the same temporary email twice, to the outsider it would be very hard to summarize what you actually sent and received.

Another clever mechanism is called “ring signature”. Imagine you had a bunch of friends, and you all send around a bunch of different amounts of money, carefully making sure that in the end everyone retained their exact wallet balance. Just by looking at all the transactions, you could never tell which ones were intentional, and which ones were just made to obfuscate things. Monero does this all the time, by design.

And it is actually quite effective at solving the anonymity issue this way. Because strictly speaking, all transactions are publicly visible because that’s how blockchains just work - but just can’t make much sense of them because of the way Monero obfuscates them. In fact, it is so effective that US tax authorities put out a bounty to whoever can crack the system.

But, of course privacy is not just for people who want to hide things, privacy is an expectation you have, just like your neighbor has no business knowing how much money you have. That’s why there are more of those privacy coins, and next time, let’s look at another example called ZCash!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Can anyone see what’s in my crypto wallet?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

One of the features of blockchains is that all transactions are recorded publicly - that way, the system is very hard to cheat because there are thousands of copies of its history on thousands of computers that can be compared for accuracy.

But did you know: This also means that you can easily see what anyone has sent, to whom, and even how much money is in their wallet?

So how does it work?

Every wallet has an address, which is like your bank account number. The blockchain is like a long diary, recording transactions between wallets and their balances every time they happen. You can see this yourself with just your web browser, by going to pages like blockstream.info for Bitcoin or etherscan.io for Ethereum. They contain the entire history of those blockchains, readily searchable.

Of course, you may not know who’s behind these addresses, but true anonymity is impossible by design. Whoever knows your wallet address can also see everything else.

But whatever you think about that, it’s also useful. For example , you’ll always know if someone got the money you sent for example. Or you can see how much an NFT sold for. Or if your donations have been used or are just sitting unused in an account.

And next time, we talk about Monero, a blockchain that tries to bring anonymity back to virtual money.

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

What is Celo and what makes it special? (Part 2 of 2)

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today, welcome to part two of our two part series on Celo, a blockchain near to our heart as they are investors in cryptohunt.

To recap – Celo tries to solve two problems: Reduce the technical knowledge typically needed to use crypto, and avoid crypto’s strong value fluctuations. And it does all that while being carbon negative.

Last time, we explained how Celo uses your phone number or email to make sending money much easier than is usually the case with crypto.

But what good is that if you have to pay with a currency that gains or loses value every day, like non-stable coins such as Bitcoin do? Imagine getting paid for work one week and the next week your groceries are twice as expensive.

Celo powers a couple of stable coins, currently one tied to the US Dollar, one tied to the Euro, and one tied to Brazil’s Real. One Celo USD is always worth one real US Dollar, for example. Same idea with the Euro and Real varieties.

That allows users to pay for things without having to worry about the fluctuating value of their crypto wallet.

And in case you were wondering, yes there is also CELO itself, the native currency that does fluctuate in value and rewards those who validate the transactions. That means: If the Celo blockchain becomes more popular, the CELO token increases in price too.

And lastly, but important to many of us, Celo offsets more carbon emissions than it causes, making it one of the few carbon negative blockchains. It uses a method of validating transactions that doesn’t need a lot of computing power. For comparison: Bitcoin only processes 2 transactions per ton of CO2, while Celo crunches up to 7 million. And even then, the Celo Foundation is making regular contributions to Project Wren, which plants trees to offset carbon emissions.

Those features have led to CELOs adoption across the world. Even Kickstarter announced in 2021 that they will pivot to a blockchain powered company and build on CELO. It currently ranks in the top 75 blockchains by market cap and has attracted large investments from Andreessen Horowitz, T-Mobile, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey among many others.

And that’s it on Celo! We hope you enjoyed our two part series!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.