Hedera Hashgraph - aBFT crypto network

[Captain Ron]

My HBAR holdings are about as high as I’m comfortable with, proportionally. Everything with it looks great but in the crypto world hype rules, often for years at a time. So on one hand I’m wondering if I have enough and the other hand if it’s too much. BTC and ETH are dinosaurs but also the most reliable over the last several years.

I’ll probably keep trying to grow my HBAR amount and see where it goes, will look at QNT too.

[H60DoorGunner]

So what is a good exchange for someone just starting to dip their toe into Crypto and wanting to pick up some HBAR?

I use Voyager

Soon, voyager will issue a Mastercard debit card too, and they'll pay you up to 9% interest on your money, just by keeping a minimim balance in USDC (a stablecoin backed by the US dollar) and holding crypto investments through the Voyager exchange.

The real advantage though, is that you'll be able to exchange your various crypto investments for USDC, and then spend it instantly via the mastercard. And since no actual money comes out of the exchange and into your bank account, there is no realized profit to show.

[jbanker]

My HBAR holdings are about as high as I’m comfortable with, proportionally. Everything with it looks great but in the crypto world hype rules, often for years at a time. So on one hand I’m wondering if I have enough and the other hand if it’s too much. BTC and ETH are dinosaurs but also the most reliable over the last several years.

I’ll probably keep trying to grow my HBAR amount and see where it goes, will look at QNT too.

Yes, having a portfolio plan is a good idea. Everyone has their own positions and proportions. My thoughts here are unique to me and my profile. For instance: HBAR represents a super majority of my crypto. And I'll continue purchasing HBAR as long as price is under appreciated/valued.

Again, for me:
XRP is artificially low (force is being applied to restrict its movement), which can't continue forever
QNT, ALBT, LINK: are either relatively unknown or under appreciated/valued

My goal is to find asymmetric investment opportunities. Ones where the information I or preferably a group of people have researched, but is not priced in yet. Obviously this is difficult, but rewarding.

[jbanker]

Boom.

I was hoping for a big pullback (esp for QNT). Buying HBAR, QNT now.

[jbanker]

Crypto has been exciting over the last week. I like to have sales on outstanding companies.

Couple of thoughts:
Rant first
How many Youtubers are looking solid with their predictions from beginning of the year? (Remember BTC predictions of 250-330k, I do) How many Youtubers told you to sell mid May / Buy back in July / sell early Nov? That was the plan right? Sell the high buy it back at the low and repeat. I heard the "I'm going to sell the top of this bull market and buy back in the bear." OK, did they? Did BTC top out at ~70k? If so, why didn't Youtube tell me on Nov 8? Or Nov 9, 10... a couple day grace period is still a win. On the contrary, they said it's a pullback and it always does this and we aren't selling. When will they tell me BTC has topped? A month later? After 30%, 40% down? Not helpful. Most of those channels are painful. But I watch to see what is being said to influence the average crypto consumer. OK, rant done... can you tell I have disdain for many crypto YTers?

Secondly
I've asked this question elsewhere, but I'll bring it up here: Just food for thought
Can a blockchain/DLT ever be decentralized if they are a leader based DLT? Even if they have proper number of nodes, proper node spacing, proper governance, and proper distribution of coins/hashing power. In my thinking, no. Regardless of all decentralization steps taken there will always be a single point failure, the leader node. If you take down the leader node you take down the whole network. All other efforts to decentralize seem trivial when the leader node crashes everything.


If this is true, how can a sovereign or serious enterprise rely on a leader based algorithm? There are many leader based networks. Good luck!

[jbanker]

Sorry to be posting so often lately, but the pricing on HBAR and even QNT are where I like to buy more! For me HBAR is the most blue chip crypto company. Obviously my definition may differ from others so I'm OK with anyone having a different idea of a blue chip crypto company.

Recent Interview:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000544270069

[jbanker]

Sgt. Psycho - I'm unable to send you a message. Check to see if your inbox is full.

[jbanker]

Ripple (XRP): High altitude viewpoint from a novice XRP investor

XRP is in a strange position. Go back a couple years ago and it looked like the best solution for moving money around the world would be Ripple ledger (XRP), not Bitcoin/Ethereum/Litecoin... Snapshot today it looks less obvious that the world needs Ripple to that extent. The problems Ripple was designed to solve can be supported by other solutions. What does this mean?

Ripple Labs products, XRP/RippleNet, were designed for the transfer of value. Financial institutions and sovereign nations (the whole world) could use this technology to greatly enhance speed/efficiency. And XRP/RippleNet has distinct advantages over most blockchains. XRP has the ability to interoperate with other DLTs and RippleLabs has patented technology. Ripple seems to be connected to numerous large institutions and some central banks. All excellent points for investment. Low cost ($.0002--> .00001 on the low-end), fast consensus (about 5 sec), reasonably fast speed (1500-1700 tp/s with expectations of increasing to ~7k tps). And with payment channels a magnitude greater speed. So why isn't XRP a slam dunk? It might be. I'm not fully convinced, but I don't disagree with those that believe in its potential.

Let's take a comparison look at Hedera. Low cost ($.0001), fast consensus (about 5 sec), fast (10,000 tp/s throttle down). And capable of 100,000+ in a single shard. So they are similar here. Hedera has connections to large institutions and some central banks. Similar again. Hedera is aBFT secure at full speed which no other DLT can do. Hedera has large financial institutions discussing their use cases and potential use cases. Not conjecture or Hedera talking, but the institutions themselves. (To be fair, I'm not sure if Ripple also has this in their favor or not). So, Nomura Bank, Standard Bank, Shinhan Bank, DBS Group are all on the General Council for a reason.

Examples of where Ripple's XRP has competition:
1. Right now Shinhan Bank and Standard Bank are setting up, through the use of a newly created stablecoin, a cross-border international remittance payment system. This is huge. If Cardano or Solana announced this they would have doubled. LOL. So, Hedera network is doing what Ripple is doing. Will Ripple win other opportunities? Certainly will, but not world domination.

2. QNT is building what could be described as "the network of networks." They will have blockchain interoperability and legacy network interoperability. QNT is also patented technology. QNT is being designed for interoperable payments around the world. They have numerous financial institutions and some central banks interested. QNT achieves this in a unique way with their Overledger product. They can connect centralized banks to BTC, ETH... or bank to bank or gov to gov. Basically any combination.

3. Lightning Network - layer 2 solution for BTC. I'm not going to expand on this as I'm not a fan of this option, but it exists and has backing.

In Ripples's investing favor is the building pressure due to the lawsuit. Once this is over and XRP gets re-listed I expect XRP to find its real trading range. This is very likely to be a large percentage higher than it trades today. In addition if companies began dedicating resources, a couple of years ago, to building out their "blockchain" solution, then Ripples's XRP network may have already been chosen.

Bottom line is Ripple is intriguing enough for me to invest, but it's small in comparison to my Hedera investment. I am fully expecting to wish I had more in the future, but every time I'm ready to invest more dollars... it seems to go to Hedera. Good Luck!

[jbanker]

I had a minute so this is food for thought.

Payment technologies from central banks to P2P:

XRP
AMP
XLM
ACH (Alchemy Pay)
BTC - thru Lightning
HBAR
QNT
LTC
BCH
BSV
ADA
ZCash
Square - will have one
PayPal - will have one
Facebook - will have one
Apple, Amazon, Walmart... ???
Plus dozens more... probably hundreds

Questions to ask:

1. Where is this all going? It's a big question. Not likely that everyone survives. Not likely that there will be dozens of large players.
2. Where would enterprise and gov likely turn to find a solution? Do you think their network of choice will be a fork of a fork? Or even a single fork?
3. If a central bank chooses a private network, create their own AppNet, and use a DLT for consensus time stamping, who would it be?
4. If a central banks were to use a current DLT and it's native coin, who would it be?
5. Will P2P need to be fast, cheap, have predictable fees? Is security an issue?
6. What would the minimum required speed (tps) be for P2P?
7. What would the minimum required speed (tps) be for enterprise and gov?
8. How does interoperability help or hinder? If interoperability is perfectly implemented, do we even care who the best DLTs are?

When you ask questions sometimes you can get an idea of where certain DLTs fall short or fail. Answers to the above are just educated guesses based on research. For me, any DLT that is a fork or fork of a fork absolutely fails the enterprise and gov sector. It's a non starter. Next level is anything that can be forked is highly questioned and presents a risk. Probably a non starter.


Let me pick on Stellar for a second - only because YT keeps telling me how they are going to dominate and go to the moon.
Stellar stats.jpg

So, they advertise 3000+ tps... but this is not reality. (Unless they have fixed their network). AdsDax attempted to use Stellar and they were testing it out. As they pushed toward 1000 tps they consistently froze the network. Stellar asked them to stop. This was a couple years ago, 2019? So, maybe it's better now, but that graphic was from a couple years ago. AdsDax concluded, after researching, that many blockchain white papers were more fiction the reality. They chose Hedera and haven't looked back. Maybe XLM will end up being a successful DLT and a great investment. I'm only bringing up the side that YT doesn't tell you about.

So where do the forked and double forked networks stand? IMO, they are not taken seriously by large enterprise or gov. Neither are networks that can easily be forked. So, the above long list gets much shorter. What about P2P networks? I don't think people, in general, really care at this level. So all the higher risk, forked networks could make a living here. LTC, DOGE, BCH, BSV... whatever. Most people don't care. Also, I see a monkey wrench being thrown into my thinking. Interoperability could be a lifeline to underserving networks. I've read about how it could be designed such that speed, cost, security can be derived from different DLTs along the way. This means lesser networks could benefit from the metrics of superior networks.

All this talking and I have no idea... that's why I say Good Luck! (Cause we need it)

[jbanker]

I've been busy lately, but quick update:

Hedera is exceeding expectations. Most recently, Hedera has purchased the Hashgraph patent rights from Swirlds. They announced they will open source the Hashgraph algorithm. Completely open for all to use or copy. This is great news even though it may initially seem dangerous. Simple answer is Hedera is far enough along now that the patent is no longer critical or important, but open source code helps the developers even more. Further understanding of why the patent is no longer needed brings us to the General Council. Soon there may be numerous copies of the Hashgraph algorithm, but only one will have the signatures from the GC. Therefore, it will be trivial to see imposters from the real Hashgraph.

BTC is bringing down the alt coins. I have already expressed my concerns for BTC long term. BTC domination and other beliefs of Michael Saylor, Max Keiser, Anthony Pompliano... are incorrect (IMO) and therefore I don't invest in BTC. It may take some time before the real DLT companies can break free from following BTC. It's coming though.

I am taking advantage of HBAR and QNT at these prices right now. Unless you are in need of selling, these downturns are a blessing. These opportunities are where I supercharge my portfolio. I buy quality items on sale. Good luck.