DEFINITION of '51% Attack'

51% attack refers to an attack on a blockchain – usually bitcoin's, for which such an attack is still hypothetical – by a group of miners controlling more than 50% of the network's mining hashrate, or computing power.

The attackers would be able to prevent new transactions from gaining confirmations, allowing them to halt payments between some or all users. They would also be able to reverse transactions that were completed while they were in control of the network, meaning they could double-spend coins.

They would almost certainly not be able to create a create new coins or alter old blocks, so a 51% attack would probably not destroy bitcoin or another blockchain-based currency outright, even if it proved highly damaging.

Even though it’s called a 51% attack - actually the attacker would only need to match or slightly exceed the current network hashing power.

The Maths (Too many variables to be 100% accurate!)

The attacker must buy the hardware, then the most economical device is the Antminer S5+, which produces 7.7 TH/s (7.7e12 H/s) and costs US$2300. It draws 3.4 kW.

So a 51% attacker needs to produce about 4.0e17 H/s himself, to match or slightly exceed the hashing power of the existing network. This means he needs 4.0e17 / 7.7e12 = 52000 Antminer S5+ devices, which would cost 52000 x $2300 = $120 million.

(This is unrealistic in a couple of ways - buying that many devices would not only drive up the price but probably exceed the production capacity. On the other hand, such a large order might qualify for a quantity discount or wholesale pricing. This attacker might also find it more efficient to license the design and do the manufacturing themselves.)

Running these machines would consume 52000 x 3.4 kW = 177 MW of power. If the attacker is located in the US, this table shows that the cheapest place to get electricity at an industrial rate is Washington State, where it costs an average of 4.5 US cents per kWh. At this rate, the attack would cost US$8000 per hour to supply with electricity.

*Episode correction, Ben said it would be $8000 a minute, we know that this is actually $8000 p/h! 

Our top Alt-coin picks for 2018 (Round 2)

In this episode, we go through some more of our favourite alt-coin picks. This includes the system we use to perform due diligence when investing in our own 6-figure crypto fund. We'll be doing another episode very soon on this topic but this time around, we go through 5 different alt-coins:

Power Ledger (POWR)

Utility: Distributed Power Ledger token. It’s an energy trading platform that allows consumers with solars panels on their roof to sell excess electricity to their neighbours. Consumers trade ‘Sparkz’ which means people can source and sell their electricity on a P2P basis.

Why we like it: This is a crypto-asset rather than a currency option. It diversifies our portfolio and they solve a problem in a huge market.

Team: Dr Jemma Green (co-founder), 11-year investment banking experience, climate change and is a founder of the Global Blockchain Business Council.

David Martin (Co-founder & Managing Director), 20 years experience in the electricity industry.

Full team details here: https://powerledger.io/#team

Technical Information:

Current Market Cap & Prices: Current Market Cap £211 million, the high point was $670 million back in January 2018. Current price: $0.58

12-14 month target: $4 if total crypto market cap increases by 5 x

Potential Downside: Country/regional specific. Other projects are out there trying to solve the same problem.

 

EOS

Utility: EOS is a direct alternative to Ethereum. Headed by Dan Larimer the founder of two successful crypto coins STEEM and Bitshares, EOS is promising to be a new blockchain operating system faster and more scalable than Ethereum that will allow users to build decentralized applications more efficiently.

Why we like it: It allows people to build decentralised apps, develop them and govern them. It brings a faster and cheaper alternative to ethereum.

Team: Dan Larimer & Brock Pierce (he is the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation)

Technical Information: EOS uses state of the art technology and for all those techies out there, the whitepaper can be found here https://eos.io/documents/EOS_An_Introduction.pdf

Current Market Cap & Prices: $5.6 billion is the current market cap, we saw highs of $10.6 billion back in early January 2018. You can buy EOS for around £8 based on today's market price.

12-14 month target: $25 if the total crypto market cap increases by 5 x

Potential Downside: It’s still very early and they’re working on their testnet.

 

TRON (TRX)

Utility: Tron (TRX) helps digital media creators who use Tron have total control and ownership of the data they create, including how it is distributed to their audiences. This cuts out intermediaries like Apple, Google etc eliminating the fees those companies charge creators to have their material available there.

Why we like it: Tron has an enormous market potential which can be used by millions.

Team: TRON was founded by CEO Justin Sun in 2017, who also appears in the Ranking ″Forbes 30 Under 30″. The team members established the TRON foundation in Singapore as a non-profit organization that operates the TRON network based on the principles of fairness and transparency.

Technical Information: The Foundation supports the TRON development team. The Foundation is set up with approval from the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority(ACRA) under the supervision of the Company Law of Singapore. Singapore is well known for having a stable and well-established set of laws and financial establishment. Any surplus will be retained to use for the purposes of the foundation and members of the foundation will never obtain a share of any surplus.

Current Market Cap & Prices: The current market cap for TRX is $2.6billion after dropping from a staggering $16.7billion in early January 2018. TRX is available to buy on various exchanges for approx $0.04 per unit.

12-14 month target: $0.15 if the total crypto market cap increases by 5 x

Potential Downside: The huge pump in price back in January 2018 could put off investors as there was speculation around why the price increased so rapidly.

 

investFeed (IFT)

Utility: Taken directly from the investFeed website - "investFeed is the epicentre for all things cryptocurrency. investFeed’s evolution involves creating a “One Tab” solution for social networking among cryptocurrency enthusiasts, professionals, and projects. investFeed will also include market data, crowd sentiment, news, information, and integrated asset portfolio/order management through 3rd party APIs (with sharing capabilities)."

Why we like it: It's a really useful platform with huge potential as more people are entering the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.

Team: 

Ronald Chernesky, CEO – prior to starting investFeed, he worked as the Head of US Equities Trading at World Trade Financial Group, and Senior Equity Trader at Avatar Securities.

Andrew Freedman, Co-founder and CTO – prior to starting investFeed, he worked as an IT Consultant at Midpoint Solutions and Developer at WTS Proprietary Trading Group.

Technical Information: Whitepaper available on their website https://www.investFeed.com/upload/investFeedInc.PreSales.FINAL.pdf

Current Market Cap & Prices: Current market cap is $12million which is very low, we saw a high of £62million in January 2018. IFT units can be purchased for $0.06 (as of 25.02.17) on Cryptopia and some other lesser know exchanges.

12-14 month target: $0.60 if the total crypto market cap increases by 5 x

Potential Downside: The development team will need to remain strong as the market evolves and changes, new features & updates must be added.

QUESTION TIME:

Is there anything you’d like us to talk about on the podcast? How can we help you?

Let us know by emailing [email protected]

In this episode of Cryptopulse we speak with Aletha And Bjorn from Bitbay.market the world's first fully-functional decentralized marketplace. Aletha is the head of recruitment at Bitbay - currently running a successful I.T recruitment business, we speak with her about some of the unique challenges faced in Blockchain talent procurement.

Bjorn is the Operation Manager - a committed community manager and blockchain expert who speaks with us about some of the ambitious projects currently being undertaken by the Bitbay team whilst explaining their key benefits to our listeners.

We were also joined by a very special (surprise) Bitbay guest - Tune in now to hear our chat with David Zimbeck, Bitbays lead developer, and his ideas for the future of the platform and blockchain.

Bitbay.market

https://bitbay.market/the-team

Double Escrow

https://bitbay.market/double-deposit-escrow

Dynamic Peg

https://bitbay.market/dynamic-peg

Land Sale on the Bitbay platform

https://medium.com/@tradersnow/how-i-sold-5-acres-of-land-using-bitbays-trustless-smart-contracts-28f18b83125

In this episode Kevin talks with Samson Williams about ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings).

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• What’s an ICO and why they exist
• The difference between an ICO & ITO (initial token offering)
• Why blockchain isn’t hot sauce! (you don’t have to sprinkle that sh*t everywhere)
• The average success rates of ICOs and what to look out for
• How to avoid the scams and bad projects
• How to find the best ICOs (or at least increase your chances of success)

We also talk about a few topics which have been in the news recently including the Kodak ICO (which is on hold) and the hype around Atari’s ICO.

Here’s some of resources and links Samson spoke about during the interview:

https://www.coinschedule.com/ - a list of ICOs and token sales available.

https://www.icoalert.com/ - another place to find ICOs and tokens sales.

https://www.icrowdu.com/ - a project Samson advises on. They solve the problem of getting luxury goods into the hands of the Chinese market AND helps niche manufacturers sell their items into China. There’s a useful Q&A video we found HERE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkjtOVCjPrI which explains the concept in more detail.

http://opportunityhub.co/ - another project Samson advices on. They help push out education to the masses, capture your wealth score and measure where you’re at on your journey to wealth. We think this project could be HUGE, there’s an enormous market opportunity. They’ll be launching their ICO at South by South West. https://www.sxsw.com

Here’s some more about Samson Williams:

Samson Williams is partner at Axes and Eggs, a Washington, DC based blockchain and cryptocurrency consultancy. Samson wants you to know, blockchain isn't hot sauce. You can't put that shit on everything.  Samson is currently working on 2 cryptocurrency token projects. One for an online marketplace, iCrowdU and the other OpportunityHub, that wants to ask you, "What is your wealth score?"  

 

For more information on Samson Williams you can follow him on:

Twitter @HustleFundBaby

Instagram @HustleFundBaby

or linkedin where he posts some absolute gems! https://www.linkedin.com/in/samson-williams-a7bb8513/

 

If you enjoyed this episode we would REALLY appreciate a review on iTunes.

In this episode, we go through our strategy for picking for Alt-coins. This includes the system we use to perform due diligence when investing in our own 6-figure crypto fund. We'll be doing another episode very soon on this topic but this time around, we go through 5 different alt-coins:

Litecoin (LTC)

Utility - Payment system (fast payments). Very much seen as the silver in cryptocurrencies, whereasas the Bitcoin is seen as the gold.

Team - Created by Charlie Lee who’s an ex-google employee. The Litecoin foundation is headed up by Charlie with other Directors. See https://litecoin-foundation.org/ for further details. Also the ex-director of engineering at Coinbase.

Technical Information - Litecoin has the Segwit & The Lightning Network enabled which means it’s much faster and cheaper to send/receive Litecoin.

Current Market Cap & Prices - Built on the same system at Bitcoin. Current Market Cap is approx $10billion, it went as high as nearly $20 billion towards the end of last year.

12-14 month target  $1000 if the total market cap for Crypto goes 5 x in the next 12-14 months.

Potential Downside Depending on government legislation and other developments in the market, privacy coins might be used more. However LTC is proven to scale well, it’s also been around for one of the longest so websites such as eBay, Amazon etc might considering accepting Litecoin in the near/mid future. 

IOTA (MIOTA)

Utility: IOTA is a cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of Things.

Why we like it: Huge potential use and vast opportunities for partnerships. It has some big advantages over Blockchain such as it's modular nature & zero fees

Team: Their founder is David Sonstebo, full details are here: https://blog.iota.org/about

Technical Information: The main innovation behind IOTA is the Tangle, a revolutionary new blockless distributed ledger which is scalable, lightweight and for the first time ever makes it possible to transfer value without any fees

Current Market Cap & Prices: the Current market cap is approx $6.5 Billion, earlier this year we saw highs of $12 Billion. Current coin price $2.46.

12-14 month target: $8 if the total market cap for Crypto goes 5 x in the next 12-14 months.

Potential Downside: Already a very large market cap, a new technology which hasn’t scaled compared to usual blockchain systems. 

AEON

Utility: Mobile privacy coin for lightweight transfers. Enabling people to privately send & receive money whichever gadget they own.

Why we like it: Low market cap, privacy coins will be popular with regulation coming. Lower barriers to part-take in this technology.

Team: Developed by the Monero team

Technical Information: Can run on regular mobile devices alongside regular desktops & laptops.

Current Market Cap & Prices: the Current market cap is approx $60 million, $120 million back on Jan 9th. Current coin price $4.20.

12-14 month target: $40 is total crypto market cap increases 5 x

Potential Downside: There are other privacy coins available so it’s possible that AEON may to be the most popular or most widely adopted.

Monero (XMR)

Utility: Privacy payment coin

Why we like it: One of the longest-running privacy payment coins.

Team: Monero was originally launched by a Bitcointalk forum user only known as "thankful_for_today" under the name BitMonero. Due to its private nature, it's impossible for us to do more research on the person who created it. Just like Bitcoin!

Technical Information: Monero is based on the CryptoNight PoW (proof of work protocol)

Current Market Cap & Prices: Current Market Cap $4.2 billion, there was a high of $7.5 billion on January 6th.  Current coin price $296.62.

12-14 month target: $800 if the total market cap of crypto increases by 5 x

Potential Downside: There are other options for privacy coins such as Z-Cash 

TENX (PAY)

Utility  - Converts Cryptocurrency in real time so you can spend it anywhere

Why we like it: It sets to solves the problem “How can I spend my Cryptocurrency in the mainstream?”

Team - Julian Hosp, experienced entrepreneur and blockchain expert. Very strong at marketing.

Technical Information - Full technical information available in the whitepaper https://www.tenx.tech/whitepaper/tenx_whitepaper_final.pdf

Current Market Cap & Prices - Current Market Cap is £231 million, it was as high as £557 million in August last year. Lots of growth potential this year.

12-14 month target - $10 per coin

Potential Downside - they may not get their banking licence. Recently rejected by Visa

 

QUESTION TIME:

Is there anything you’d like us to talk about on the podcast? How can we help you?

Let us know by emailing [email protected]

In this episode of the podcast Kevin runs solo to help you get started in the cryptocurrency-universe. We had lots of people asking us how to get started via email, twitter & through our VIP community so here it is!

Step 1 - Open Coinbase Account

The easiest point of entry is to buy Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum or Bitcoin Cash via Coinbase. You can access this platform through their app or website. If you click HERE, then you'll get $10 of free Bitcoin when you buy a minimum of $100.

You will need:

Photo ID such as a driving licence or passport

A credit/debit card to buy your desired cryptocurrency

Step 2 - Open Accounts with exchanges

If you want to buy alt-coins you'll need to open an account with some different exchanges. The first thing you should do is check on coinmarketcap.com to see where your chosen coins are listed. We're based in the UK and use the following exchanges ourselves:

Binance.com - wide choice of cryptocurrencies and available in most countries

Bittrex.com - one of the most popular and has many of the major alt-coins. As of today 21.01.18 they're not accepting new users. Go back and check in a few days.

gdax.com - the same exchange as Coinbase, handy to cash out into euros or dollars if required.

yobit.com - lists some of the newer coins. We have not used this ourselves but if you're looking at some of the low market cap coins, they might be listed here.

btcmarkets.net - can be used if you're based in Australia. Lists some of the major coins.

Step 3 - Buy your chosen alt-coins

Simply send either Bitcoin, Litecoin or Ethereum from your Coinbase wallet over to your exchange wallet.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you're sending from to & from the same type of wallet e.g. LTC wallet > LTC wallet. Also check the trading pairs on your exchange, you can usually swap Bitcoin for your chosen alt-coin on most exchanges.

Step 4 - Decide where your cryptocurrencies will be stored

Hardware wallets are the most secure place to store your Cryptocurrency. Order your Nano Ledge S HERE: https://www.ledgerwallet.com

You can download a software wallet for whichever coin is available, here are a couple we like for Bitcoin & Litecoin

Bread - https://breadapp.com/

Loaf - http://loafwallet.org/

Step 5 - Useful tools & apps

Blockfolio - a really useful app to keep track of your crypto trades and portfolio values

Bitworth - very similar app to Blockfolio but its a little more visually pleasing.

HODL - check average prices in the market and specific prices on exchanges, handy to compare prices when buying coins.

Coincap.io - useful for checking live prices on your desktop/laptop. Not great on mobile!

Coinmarketcap.com - a very in-depth website which contains graphs, source code details, historic trading data, social links, website links, current market cap & prices.

Step 6 - Give us a little bit of love!

If you've enjoyed this podcast episode we would LOVE you to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please also leave us a review.

QUESTION TIME:

Is there anything you'd like us to talk about on the podcast? How can we help you?

Let us know by emailing [email protected]

In this episode of the podcast Kevin runs solo to help you get started in the cryptocurrency-universe. We had lots of people asking us how to get started via email, twitter & through our VIP community so here it is!

Step 1 – Open Coinbase Account

The easiest point of entry is to buy Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum or Bitcoin Cash via Coinbase. You can access this platform through their app or website. If you click HERE, then you’ll get $10 of free Bitcoin when you buy a minimum of $100.

You will need:

Photo ID such as a driving licence or passport

A credit/debit card to buy your desired cryptocurrency

Step 2 – Open Accounts with exchanges

If you want to buy alt-coins you’ll need to open an account with some different exchanges. The first thing you should do is check on coinmarketcap.com to see where your chosen coins are listed. We’re based in the UK and use the following exchanges ourselves:

Binance.com – wide choice of cryptocurrencies and available in most countries

Bittrex.com – one of the most popular and has many of the major alt-coins. As of today 21.01.18 they’re not accepting new users. Go back and check in a few days.

gdax.com – the same exchange as Coinbase, handy to cash out into euros or dollars if required.

yobit.com – lists some of the newer coins. We have not used this ourselves but if you’re looking at some of the low market cap coins, they might be listed here.

btcmarkets.net – can be used if you’re based in Australia. Lists some of the major coins.

Step 3 – Buy your chosen alt-coins

Simply send either Bitcoin, Litecoin or Ethereum from your Coinbase wallet over to your exchange wallet.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you’re sending from to & from the same type of wallet e.g. LTC wallet > LTC wallet. Also check the trading pairs on your exchange, you can usually swap Bitcoin for your chosen alt-coin on most exchanges.

Step 4 – Decide where your cryptocurrencies will be stored

Hardware wallets are the most secure place to store your Cryptocurrency. Order your Nano Ledge S HERE: https://www.ledgerwallet.com

You can download a software wallet for whichever coin is available, here are a couple we like for Bitcoin & Litecoin

Bread – https://breadapp.com/

Loaf – http://loafwallet.org/

Step 5 – Useful tools & apps

Blockfolio – a really useful app to keep track of your crypto trades and portfolio values

Bitworth – very similar app to Blockfolio but its a little more visually pleasing.

HODL – check average prices in the market and specific prices on exchanges, handy to compare prices when buying coins.

Coincap.io – useful for checking live prices on your desktop/laptop. Not great on mobile!

Coinmarketcap.com – a very in-depth website which contains graphs, source code details, historic trading data, social links, website links, current market cap & prices.

Step 6 – Give us a little bit of love!

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast episode we would LOVE you to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Please also leave us a review.

QUESTION TIME:

Is there anything you’d like us to talk about on the podcast? How can we help you?

Let us know by emailing [email protected]

In this Episode of Cryptopulse we discuss the day old question, pondered by investors and crypto enthusiasts alike: Should I buy bitcoin?

You will learn about:

Why “Should I buy Bitcoin?” might be the WRONG question to ask.

If Bitcoin represents the right choice for you.

Alternatives to investing in Bitcoin.

Our take on sensible but highly profitable investing & how to scale up your knowledge base.

P.S. We also made a hilarious mistake, but we left this in as we’re quite happy to laugh at ourselves!

Are you bamboozled by Bitcoin? Maybe you’re enthused by Ethereum? Perhaps you’d like to know more about the Cryptocurrency universe but don’t know where to begin. Hosted by Ben Rees & Kevin Basham, Cryptopulse empowers YOU to make decisions through our knowledge, tactics, tips and expert interviews.