Everything I know about Cryptocurrencies, Blockchain, & NFTs

By: Kincade Honey

[NOT FINISHED, INFORMATION SUBJECT TO CHANGE]

Introduction

Whenever I first started learning about cryptocurrencies I had no idea where to start. Miners? Blockchain? Cryptography? It's very hard to fully grasp all of these subjects and that is why I am making this article going into detail about Everything I have learned about Crypto, Blockchain, and NFTs over the past years.

 What is Bitcoin Summarized: 

Bitcoin is a form of online currency that allows anybody to transact with anyone at any time.

 History of Digital Currencies

There has been many attempts at digital currencies far before bitcoin. The list includes

• DigiCash (David Chaum) 1989

• Mondex (National Westminster Bank) 1993

• CyberCash (Lynch, Melton, Crocker, & Wilson) 1994

• E-gold (Gold & Silver Reserve) 1996

• Hashcash (Adam Back) 1997 

• Bit Gold (Nick Szabo) 1998

• B-Money (Wei Dai) 1998

• Lucre (Ben Laurie) 1999

Hashcash is particularly important as it was directly quoted by Satoshi in the white paper as credit for the Proof of Work system bitcoin is based off.

“To implement a distributed timestamp server on a peer-to-peer basis, we will need to use a proof-of-work system similar to Adam Back’s Hashcash”

 The idea behind hash cash and proof of work systems, in general, is that before interacting with the network you need to do some sort of valuable thing that proves you are not a spammer or malicious attacker as performing a bunch of these tasks would cost a large amount of money for the attackers and would ultimately be a waste of time.

 The first transaction on the internet was done by Pizza hut using a service called PizzaNet. You could place an order online but once it arrived you had to pay in cash.

The first-ever transaction on the Bitcoin network was sent to Hal Finney an American developer for PGP Corporation and an early bitcoin contributor.

Hal Finney died in Phoenix, Arizona, on August 28, 2014, as a result of complications of ALS and was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

“Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first blocks in the blockchain himself. The first transaction was from Nakamoto to Hal Finney, for a grand total of 10 bitcoins. The transaction was a success, and it is permanently recorded in Bitcoin history thanks to Bitcoin’s unchanging blockchain.

What is a Blockchain

Summary: A Blockchain is a log of transactions time stamped to show when the transactions occurred linked together using asymmetrical cryptography that proves the order of which the transactions took place, the validity of the transactions, and uses that information to record balances of the network participants. The people who process the transactions and secure the network are known as miners, and the people who keep copies of all the transactions that have occurred are known as node

“The first workable mathematical formula for non-secret encryption was discovered by Clifford Cocks, which he recorded in 1973 in a secret CESG report titled A Note on Non-Secret Encryption. This work describes a special case of the RSA algorithm, differing in that the encryption and decryption algorithms are not equivalent and without mention of the application to digital signatures. A few months later in 1974, Malcolm Williamson discovered a mathematical expression based on the commutativity of exponentiation that he recorded in a secret report titled Non-Secret Encryption Using A Finite Field, which describes a key exchange method similar to that discovered by Diffie, Hellman, and Merkle. It is not known to what uses if any, the GCHQ work was applied.”

RSA Encryption is a public-key / private key system that is widely used for secure data transmission and is one of the earliest forms of Asymmetrical Cryptography.

“Introduced in 1977 by MIT colleagues Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, RSA — its name derived from the initials of their surnames — is a specific type of public-key cryptography, or PKC, innovated in 1976 by Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman, and Ralph Merkle. Intrigued by their research, Rivest, with Shamir and Adleman, developed cryptographic algorithms and techniques to practically enable secure encoding and decoding of messages between communicating parties.”

“In computer science, a one-way function is a function that is easy to compute on every input, but hard to invert given the image of a random input.”

The first mention of the possibility of Asymmetrical cryptography

HEX

HEX is an innovative cryptocurrency promoting true crypto values.

 Cryptocurrencies are the Highest performing Assets in the entire world. Coins like Bitcoin have gone from $.0008 per coin to All-Time Highs of $68,789.63 per coin but the truth is almost nobody got to realize those gains.

 Every 10 minutes new Bitcoins come into existence through a process called mining where you waste electricity and can earn coins. in 2018, China accounted for 74 percent of the world’s bitcoin production. 1% of all the electricity in the world is used for Bitcoin mining.

HEX is Bitcoin but instead of paying the inflation to Chinese Dudes wasting Electricity, it inflates at a locked rate of 3.69% per year and is only given to people who lock their money for a specific amount of time. 1–5555 days. The longer you lock your money for the more interest you will get paid an average length stake of 6.4 years will pay roughly 38% Interest in HEX token per year. If you end your stake early you will be penalized.

SECURITY

Security is the most important part about crypto currency. Its already hard enough to be diligent with all of the fake links, front ends, etc that can cause you to lose all your crypto but someone can also come into your house and take it from you by force. This is why physical security is so important. 

Crypto currency has strong ties to the 2nd amendment. Anybody who has a significant amount of cryptocurrency should seriously consider buying a few firearms to protect themselves and there home. Its important to be a concealed carry holder and always have a gun on your person for any situation that might require you to defend yourself. Its better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. 

Safes are another really important factor about securing your crypto currency at your home and are often quite overlooked. I mean you are possibly storing hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more on a piece of paper that you need to protect by all means nessecary. It is normally recommended that you spend 10% of the value of the item(s) you are storing on the safe.

Most safes are not as useful or secure as you would think. Its required by RCS standers that a container needs to use minimum 12 gauge steel in order to be considered to be a "safe" and because of that the typical safe you will find by Canon, Winchester or Cabellas are made with such metal. These safes can be easily broken into thru the body by a fire axe. 12 gauge is just too thin

Fire Protection is another important aspect of a safe that is normally overlooked. Most safes with a 1200* fire rating would say the contents inside will not exceed 350* for an hour in 1200* heat but this is just not sufficent enough. On average a house fire will last