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Hello

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From Web 1.0 to Web3: How the Internet Grew Over The Years

Photo by on Pawel Kadysz Unsplash Hello! Long wait is over. We are launching our latest product in the global marketplace today. Eulercoder is launching QuickGames — a global distributor of HTML5 and Android Games. We spent past three months in curating, building and testing our HTML5 games and today is the day we are ready to hit the market. QuickGames (An Eulercoder company) already partnered with many channel partners to distribute our games globally. We have over 230+ HTML5 games that we are distributing worldwide through our channel partners. Our simple pricing model and integration APIs make the integration of our games seamless and easy. This article covers all the information about QuickGames, our services, products, pricing model and basic FAQs. So let’s get started… QuickGames Partner Network — Yes, we are looking for distributors in the US, Canada and Australia 😉, Shoot us an email — hello@eulercoder.com Our Services 💼 QuickGames supports all the major devices and platforms, we have developed High Quality HTML5 games that be played on any device without downloading it. We support Android, iOS, Desktop, Browsers, In-flight entertainment systems, Smart TVs, OEMs or your own website or app. Our powerful APIs (99.9% uptime) let’s us integration our games on any platform. Eulercoder Games Mobile App 📱 Our beautifully designed mobile app can be easily white labeled and used anywhere. Our Mobile App has full support of Subscription APIs, Social Sign In, Social Leaderboard, Liked Game sections, User settings etc. Here is our mobile app demo. Web Portal 🖥 We are building our latest Web portal with top open source technologies — React, NodeJS, , GraphQL, Docker and AWS for servers. We want to make sure whatever we develop is the top notch product. As a tech company, we strive to create high quality and scalable web apps. gaming TypeScript APIs 🌐 We support many powerful APIs. We also build APIs if there is any specific requirement for our partners. Games API — Get the full list of all the games. Publisher API — API for publishers, get your publisher key and start using our games. Subscription API — If you would like to charge your users a subscription fee on monthly or weekly basis, we support that as well. Liked Games — Save liked games for users. User Activity — We have built APIs to save user activity, let users start where they had left. Pricing Model 💁🏻‍$ Our pricing models is very simple, no hidden cost, flat fees. We distribute games on 50–50% revenue share. So, 50% of the total revenue a partners make including but not limited too apps, web portal, browser and anywhere where our games are being played. Flat 500 USD/month if you would like to use our Mobile or web portal. 1000 USD/month if you would like to use both. All the handling, hosting, support, maintenance, required changes and customizations will be done by us. Who can join our partner network? 🤷🏻‍ Frankly speaking any company or person, though it’s good to have some userbase or network in the market for initial user acquisition. Telecom operators VAS Companies B2C companies Airlines FAQs 💁🏻‍ ​There is no specific requirement, just shoot us an email, let’s get our contract and NDA signed and we are ready to hit the market. What are the basic requirements to join Games partner network? ​It depends on how effectively we communicate and get things done, if you would like to use our mobile app or web portal, it can take upto one week for all the customizations and integration of all the required APIs. How long does it take to complete the integration? ​We usually sign the contract for 2 years and it can be easily extended. Contract lasts for how many years? ​You can cancel the contract anytime but you have to give one month of notice period. We don’t want our partners to leave us though. 🙈 What if I would like cancel the contract? If you like to join our partner network and distribute our games, please shoot us an email — hello [at] eulercoder [dot] com , we would love to hear from you and bring our games on your platform. You can also directly schedule a call to discuss about partnership . here Affiliates? If you have good network in the major telecom companies or if you can bring partners in our network, let’s talk, we are offering upto 10% of the total revenue to our affiliates. Write to us — hello [at] eulercoder [dot] com with subject “Affiliate Partner…” Ok, that’s all I have for now. More news in the upcoming weeks. Are you a developer? Would you like to help us in building QuickGames website? Let’s talk! Show Some Love. we are growing slowly as a company and a community. If you like what we are doing, show some love. Also Hey, if you like what you just read, please this resource by hitting the green “ ” icon, it on so that other people may also stumble upon this. like Recommend share Twitter or Facebook You can always contact me personally on or over . on to get access to more updates on Eulercoder in future. Linkedin Mail Follow me Medium

Bringing HTML5 games to life. Launching Eulercoder Games — QuickGames

Hello, My name is Lou, and I’ve been undergoing a multiyear internal questioning of the meaning of my life. Almost everyday I find myself spending many thought cycles questioning the purpose of all the actions in my life, wondering what it is they’re amounting to, if anything. The consequences of this have been nontrivial — I occasionally find myself with semi-crippling existential anxiety, and find it difficult to motivate myself to do anything besides metaphorically rot in my room. Why should I attempt to be productive when I’m unsure of the greater goal of any of my actions? [1]. And so I’m writing this essay with the goal of structuring some of these thoughts, and to hopefully end with some concrete actions and life goals to reduce the amount of anxiety in my life. In addition, I’m sharing this with you in case you find it interesting, relatable, or helpful in any way. Let’s start from the most zoomed out perspective. Of existentialism categories, I relate the most to , the belief that humanity’s pursuit of inherent meaning in the universe will inevitably fail, but regardless, we should continue to pursue it. Absurdism describes this conflict between a human’s desire to discover this meaning and the impossibility of it the “Absurd”. However, , a philosopher, argues that despite that, we should continue to pursue discovering meaning, even if we never truly find it. Perhaps the pursuit of meaning will have meaning itself, or perhaps someday we will actually discover true meaning. I mean, we’ll never know unless we try, right? I actually consider this argument to be both practical and romantic. Practical in the sense that, really, what else can we do but try? Romantic in the sense that, despite the impossibility of the task, we should be optimistic and defiantly continue hoping and trying. absurdism Albert Camus Camus illustrates this in . The Wikipedia summary: The Myth of Sisyphus In the last chapter, Camus outlines the legend of Sisyphus who defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die. When Death was eventually liberated and it came time for Sisyphus himself to die, he concocted a deceit which let him escape from the underworld. Finally captured, the gods decided on his punishment for all eternity. He would have to push a rock up a mountain; upon reaching the top, the rock would roll down again, leaving Sisyphus to start over. Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death, and is condemned to a meaningless task. Camus is interested in Sisyphus’ thoughts when marching down the mountain, to start anew. After the stone falls back down the mountain Camus states that “It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end.” This is the truly tragic moment, when the hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition. He does not have hope, but “there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” Acknowledging the truth will conquer it; Sisyphus, just like the absurd man, keeps pushing. Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance. The essay concludes, “The struggle itself […] is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”. I love this story / metaphor. While our everyday work and tasks are certainly more meaningful than repeatedly pushing a rock up a hill only to see it roll down again, the amount they contribute to our attempt to find inherent meaning is arguably equally as unexceptional. With absurdism in mind, I’ve decided perhaps I shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about inherent meaning in the universe. In my lifetime, it is very unlikely we will ever learn why or how the universe or humanity was created. I also don’t think I’m capable of contributing at all to this discovery. Without that knowledge, attempting to discover inherent meaning in the universe or in something greater than ourselves will be even more likely to be fruitless. So if inherent meaning is impractical to pursue in my lifetime and I’ve decided to continue pursuing meaning, what kind of meaning should I pursue? Well, selfishly, I guess what I’m really trying to accomplish is to feel like my life has meaning. If I think my life can have meaning, does that mean that lives, in general, are meaningful? Because I am conscious and think my life can be meaningful, does that mean that all consciouses can have meaning to me? While I think this line of reasoning is fairly weak, it does make me think that the most meaningful part of my life are my fellow conscious humans around me. Putting that thought aside for a while, perhaps we should zoom in a little. I guess put more simply, I think my life would be meaningful if I felt fulfilled. Introspecting and reflecting on the experiences in my life, I think I’ve felt the most fulfilled when I solved problems, whether that was problems for work, problems for my friends and family, or problems in my life. I think perhaps humans have, over a long period of time, evolved an innate need to solve problems. Without unconditional, unending support, an individual will never survive or consistently find moments of happiness or pleasure without repeatedly solving problems. I think solving problems also makes me feel useful, and sometimes even feel needed. I grew up incredibly lucky and privileged. For over twenty years of my life, my only real “problem” and focus was on education to eventually find a job to sustain myself during adulthood. After college (which my parents paid for), I worked as a software engineer at a high paying company. With more money than I knew what to practically do with, I quickly found myself with only trivial first world problems, like wondering where I should vacation to next or what TV show I should watch next. The only real problem I had in my life was what I was going to do with it. technology I often find myself contrasting this life with the lives of my ancestors. My ancestors worked on farms for as long as anyone in my family knows. Their lives were difficult — constantly worrying about money, performing difficult physical labor everyday in the fields, and truly worrying about the wellbeing of their family. This contrast inspired two interesting thoughts. First, I wondered if my ancestors lived incredibly meaningful and fulfilling lives. While stressful and difficult, the work they did everyday sowed visible, concrete contributions to solving their major life problems. Second, it made me feel guilty about feeling unhappy. Wasn’t this life what my ancestors wanted for me? Wasn’t this what they worked so hard everyday for? [2] Going back to point one, I can only imagine that they lived incredibly meaningful and fulfilling lives. If I was in their shoes, spending everyday solving problems that directly helped people I cared about must feel rewarding. Is there a way for me to do that too? I think my anxiety is perhaps also slightly exacerbated by working in Silicon Valley. Everyday I read about all the amazing projects and ideas people are actively working on to better the world. I also truly believe that Silicon Valley as a whole is doing a great deal of good for the world. The survivorship bias of the news has made me unrealistically believe that I, too, can have impact and change the world. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is strictly a bad thing. These stories inspire me to want to do good on a large scale. But the expectation versus the likelihood of actually achieving that expectation in my lifetime probably wasn’t as far off for my ancestors. Well, regardless, even so, I have to start somewhere. What can I do in my life to help others so I can feel fulfilled [3]? My life comprises of a few major components: Work We spend an estimated of our lifetime at work, so work seems like a clear candidate to change to spend more time working on something that I find fulfilling. Since I want to help people, what kind of work should I transition into? An extreme thought I had was to move to somewhere where I could directly see the effect my work had on bettering someone’s life; for example, doing manual labor for a non-profit to build houses in areas of extreme poverty. The thing, though, is that I probably wouldn’t be exceptionally good at it, and it would probably be more impactful if I donated the difference in income working as a software engineer to an organization that is better suited for building houses in areas of extreme poverty. The fulfillment I’ll receive from work is probably a function of both how direct the impact is in addition to how much of an impact I actually had. Is there a job where I could help people, be good at it, and be effective? [4] 80000 hours I realized that I don’t need to swing so hard on the kinds of things I work on — not everyone can directly work on “the world’s most pressing problems”. We’re all doing good in some way, and we have our own preferences in what good we care about or what we’re interested in. I’ve decided to start looking for a job that either directly or indirectly helps an overarching cause that I feel strongly about. Free Time There are many things I care about that, unfortunately, are more difficult to work on as a sustainable career. For example, it bothers me that underprivileged communities don’t have access to the same amount of Computer Science education that other communities do. While my contribution is likely negligible and is treating symptom instead of cause, I’ve started volunteering at an organization that hosts after school computer science classes for specifically underprivileged communities near me. I hope to find other ways for me to contribute my time to things I care about soon. Income I’ve been reading a lot about recently. Effective Altruism focuses on the most effective ways to solve the world’s most pressing issues. One simple way to help is to donate money, and Effective Altruism has you can donate to that will give money to what they’ve analyzed to be the most effective non-profits for a given cause. also has a of what they’ve analyzed to be the most effective charities. While the action of donating money and the effect it’ll have on people feel fairly far removed, I do believe it’s the right thing to do, and . This year, I’ve decided to donate 1% of my income to various charities (mostly ones listed on Give Well), and I think it’s helped me feel a lot better about my work and how I can use what I’ve earned to help people. effective altruism funds Give Well list try to care is a community of effective givers who created a to help you track your donations. Many people there also to give away 10% of their income to effective charities. I think this is something I eventually want to do, but am having trouble mustering the courage to do it. I plan on donating 5% of my income next year and will iterate from there. Giving What We Can tool pledged Something I realized about donating money is that it’s a trade off between how much I care about helping others now versus how much I think the money will help me (in any way, including helping me help others in the ). It’s interesting because the more money I accumulate, the lower the marginal utility is per dollar. And so, the more money I accumulate, the more money I’ll be able to give away without affecting my quality of life. At an extreme, think about how Zuckerberg is donating 99% of his net worth. The amount of good that money will do for the world is incredible, but his quality of life with 1% of his net worth probably isn’t drastically different than with 100%. I’m not trying to downplay his contributions at all — he’s a wonderful philanthropist doing incredible amounts of good for the world, but I think it clearly illustrates the idea that it’s easier to give away a larger percent of your income the larger your income is. future Family and friends My family and friends enrich my life. They make me smile and laugh. They share in my joys and in my sorrows. They’re people I care deeply about. I’ve decided I should make a more conscious effort to maintain close friendships and to spend more mindful, quality time with these people in an attempt to give to them what they’ve given me. Romantic Life Partner I put a significant other in a separate category because I think there’s something particularly special about a romantic relationship in the role it plays in the meaning of my life. To me, a significant other is much more than someone I endlessly enjoy spending quality time with. While the romantic side of it makes it easier to bond, I think I also personally hold a large responsibility on the quality of my significant other’s life (similar to the responsibility one would have to their children). I actually prefer to think of my significant other as a “life partner” than as someone I’m just dating. I hope that my significant other will help me contribute to my life goals the same way I hope to help contribute to theirs. I imagine the responsibility and good I can contribute to someone I care so much about would be incredibly fulfilling. I’ve decided I should make a more conscious effort to attempt to contribute to my romantic life partner’s life goals, and attempt for us to move more as a unit than as two separate individuals. Thanks for making it this far. It took me a long time (wall clock time) to write this because I had many ideas about different aspects of my life and how they all tied together. I personally found it insightful, enjoyable, and cathartic to express all of my thoughts into a single essay like this. I hope you found this interesting or helpful in any way. Sincerely, Lou Chen [1] It’s true that not all actions need a defined goal at the moment (if you follow a positive trajectory, you’ll likely end up somewhere much better than you were before, even if you had no idea where it was exactly you were going towards at the time of the action), but the looming uncertainty and lack of even a clear “bigger picture” can be anxiety-inducing for me. [2] I’m probably exaggerating and romanticizing their lives quite a bit. It’s possible they were so busy dealing with all the imminent issues in their lives that they didn’t even have time to ponder if they felt fulfilled or not. describes this phenomenon quite well. However, even so, the guilt remains, though I’ve recently been doing a better job of . On the topic of what’s helped me feel less anxious, I also started seeing a therapist! Seeing a therapist has also made me feel significantly less guilty about the contrast between my life and my ancestors. I highly recommend anyone who suffers from depression or anxiety to take the initiative to see one. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs giving myself the permission to feel whatever it is I’ve been feeling [3] A quick note about “helping others so I can feel fulfilled”. It’s clear that my motivations for doing good for others is a bit selfish, but I guess I look at it as a win-win, so I don’t feel guilty about it. Things will (hopefully) be made betters for others and I can also feel good about it. Wouldn’t the world be better off if more people felt this way? [4] The Japanese call this balance ! Ikigai

A Personal Story about Existential Anxiety and the Pursuit of Fulfillment

Hello My organisation had a directory structure for projects like: grunt/Gruntfile.js grunt/package.json grunt/node_modules/ web/index.html (well, .php) web/js/script.js Which had been fine with our for SCSS, JS etc. grunt toolchain When I added JSX and via I found I encountered an react browserify “Error running grunt-browserify” >> Error: Cannot find module ‘react’ from ‘/directory/of/source/jsx’ There may be a simple way of telling (or similar, I had the same errors when investigating alternatives) the location of the node_modules/ for modules, presets and plugins, but until I find out what it is, I have reorganised to: grunt-browserify /Gruntfile.js /package.json /node_modules web/index.html web/js/react-app.js And changed my to reflect that the web/* source files folder live in a child directory (web/) rather than a sibling (../web/). Gruntfile.js >> Bundle web/js/react-app.js created. I would prefer to have not moved my directories around, but for now, my OCD can live with a bit of pollution of the parent directory.

Reorganising a directory structure to solve “Cannot find module/preset/plugin” in grunt with babel…

The Biggest Mistake UX Designers Make In Their Portfolios My controversial tip to get you more interviews. I’ve been hiring designers for the past 4 years. During that time, I’ve seen amazing portfolios and terrible ones. This is probably going to be controversial. It might annoy you — but this isn’t about what’s right. This is just my practical trick to get you more interviews. Here’s the biggest hurdle I faced when recruiting designers: UX portfolios have too much text Recruiters review hundreds of portfolios per day. They spend probably 5 minutes per portfolio on a good day. On a bad day, it might be 30 seconds. They won’t admit it, but . they don’t read most of what you write As a UX designer, this is horrifying because your portfolio is mostly information. It’s the problems you need to solve. It’s your research, your deep insights, and the clever ways you solved these problems. None of this matters if the recruiter doesn’t read it. Even if the recruiter has time to read, . The best way to evaluate an onboarding or a purchase flow is to use the product. it’s tough to properly judge UX from looking at wireframes and mocks If available, you . Even then, recruiters might only have time to try one or two. Also, recruiters are not your target audience. They might not appreciate your solution as much as your real users would. should provide links to shipped products and interactive prototypes Most of the time, I review student portfolios. This means there is no real product to try. It’s all text, wireframes, and a few mocks. So what should graduate UX designers do? Show as much UI and visual design as you can Maybe you specialize in UX. Maybe you don’t think you’re good enough at UI. However, if you want to get more interviews, my recommendation is to get good at it and have a lot of it in your portfolio. One of my favorite designer out there is . Check out his and . I guarantee he’s flooded with job offers every day. Salomon Aurélien Dribbble Behance Aurélien’s . Behance page Why? Because it’s easier and faster to judge UI than UX. Great visual design is instantly obvious. A 10-seconds look at Aurélien’s portfolio is enough to immediately feel the quality. Here’s the most messed up part: When recruiters see amazing UI, they immediately assume that the designer is also amazing at UX. This is the . We attribute unrelated positive qualities to beautiful things. It’s true for people, architecture, and also for design portfolios. attractiveness bias I know, it’s wrong. I’ve worked with great UI designers who were terrible at UX, and vice versa. Still, when I see great UI, I can’t shake off that feeling. Aurélien could be terrible at UX. It wouldn’t matter. He would still get a ton of job offers. If you want to make it as easy as possible to get interviews, focus on UI. UI gets you the interview. UX gets you the job This is how it usually plays out. Recruiters source hundreds of portfolios. They make quick judgment calls based on first impressions. They narrow down to a few candidates. Then, they reach out and talk about UX. The interview is the best time to show off your UX work. You have the full attention of the recruiter. You have the time to explain the problems, the research, your findings, and your clever solutions. You can demo your prototypes and explain why the design matches your target audience’s needs. UI gets you the interview. UX gets you the job. “But I suck at UI” Bullshit. There is no such thing as being bad at UI. Visual design is a skill that can be learned just like anything else. When someone tells me they suck at UI, I assume two possibilities. Best case scenario: . Worst case: they suck at design in general, so they “specialize” in UX because it’s easier to hide. they never took the time to properly learn it I’ve done both UX and UI for 10 years. In my experience, UI is much easier than UX. It’s the easy and fun part — the dessert at the end of a hard project. If you can’t figure out proper color and spacing, I don’t know that I can trust you to fix our multi-million dollar purchase flow. “How can I learn UI?” Here are the best ways to improve at UI design: Learn the fundamentals Develop an eye for good design Practice and share 1. Learn the fundamentals “I’m not the artistic type” The first thing to understand about UI is that is not art. It’s more objective than subjective. There are rules and logic to good aesthetics. These rules are fairly simple to learn. I’ve seen engineers create high-quality UI after a few hours of reading up on the basics. There’s a lot of information online about these rules. Here are a few articles to get you started: How To Make Your Not-So-Great Visual Design Better Fundamental design principles for non-designers How to use colors in UI Design Optical Adjustment White Space Hierarchy 2. Develop an eye for good design Once you got the basics, you should develop your . taste This is done by looking at good designs every day. Over time, you build an intuitive understanding of what proper typography, color, spacing, and layout looks like. To do so, I recommend using a browser extension to replace your default tab with a Dribbble feed. I use , but you can also use or . Muzli Panda Design Hunt can replace your new browser tab with a Dribbble feed. Muzli It also helps to create a Dribbble and a Behance account, and start following great designers. Here are some good ones to start with: Aurélien Salomon Mike from Creative Mint Cuberto Ramotion 3. Practice and share A friend of mine, who’s an incredible UX designer, was looking for a new job. She applied to a few places and didn’t get the responses she wanted. She thought her portfolio was ugly, and she hated it. So she started the Daily UI challenge. At first, I made fun of her. I said: “This isn’t real design. There are no constraints. This is art.” But she did it anyway. She shared her , every day. Daily UI on Behance Yansou’s Behance Page. . Recruiters were contacting her on LinkedIn and Behance to offer interviews. After 10 days, the private messages started pouring in . She was happy, and she stopped the challenge. I was blown away. After 20 days, she had accepted her new job at Wix As a designer, I don’t think she improved that much in those 20 days. She still considers herself a UX designer. She mostly does UX at her new job. However, by creating a lot of great visuals and sharing them to the world, she got the recruiters’ attention. They couldn’t care less that there was no context or hard problem behind her designs. They saw a variety of great visuals. They saw talent, and they reached out. P.S. It’s OK if you want to focus on UX. Don’t force yourself into a UI if you don’t want to. But if you want to make it as easy as possible to get interviews, this is what I’ve seen works best. Also, if you want to try Daily UI, check out for some nice inspiration. CollectUI If you enjoyed or learned something from this, please hit the 👏 clap button. It helps to bring this text to more people. You can clap up to 50 times :) Pro-tip:

The Biggest Mistake UX Designers Make In Their Portfolios

How I Got a Design Job at Google

How crypto could bring one of the most important concentrations of power the world has ever seen. The more I think about crypto, the more I get about our future. scared On the one hand, cryptocurrency seems like a libertarian dream. The technology allows transacting money — or anything of value — over the Internet without any third parties involved. Crypto is all about empowering individuals. Projects like Bitcoin are open source, permissionless, borderless, censorship-resistant and beyond the control of anyone. They put the existence of banks into question and hint at a world of . radical self-governance On the other hand, cryptocurrencies could also be used by governments to gain terrifying power over the population. More than they ever had in history. How is that possible? Consider : the idea of a centralized cryptocurrency built by a government and meant to replace its currency. FedCoin Cryptocurrency = Programmable Money Since Bitcoin, the most important innovation in crypto is arguably the creation of projects like . These are like Bitcoin, but they add an important feature: they can perform any computation. Turing complete Ethereum Because these cryptocurrencies can run computer code, it’s possible to build and distribute applications on them. These are called , and they are absolutely revolutionary. In short, they allow us to . smart contracts program money For governments, being able to program money is one of the best things that could happen. Why? Here are a few examples: 1. Automating Taxes Imagine a world where the US government replaces the dollar with FedCoin. Then, they program the entire tax code directly into the money. In this world, every time you get paid or spend money, taxes are automatically deducted from the transaction. You no longer need to hire an accountant at the end of the year. Everything is calculated in real time through smart contracts. Crypto could make accountants as irrelevant as self-driving cars will make bus and cab drivers irrelevant. Never again. Think of all the wasted time this could save. US citizens spend about per year dealing with taxes, leading to about $233 billion in productivity loss. Automating taxes would save considerable time and money for you and me, and even more for businesses and the government itself. 6.1 billion hours 2. Automating Distribution of Money Beyond taxation, FedCoin could also automate the redistribution of money. Say a politician promises to invest 10% more money in education. Rather than those being just empty words, he could program it directly into the blockchain. Then, every time the government collects taxes, 10% would be automatically redirected to the Department of Education. With FedCoin, you would no longer need to trust politicians. You could trust the code itself. The same could go with any other distribution of money. Need to give a stimulus payment? No need to send physical checks tough the mail, and no need to worry about people fraudulently trying to steal the money. You could do the whole thing with a single line of code. 3. Transparent Government FedCoin could also make the government a lot more transparent. One of the biggest misconceptions about crypto is that transactions are anonymous. With the exception of , they’re not. It’s the opposite. You can go on today, download Bitcoin’s blockchain and see every transaction ever made on the network. By design, every Bitcoin transaction is public. privacy coins bitcoin.org Bitcoin’s blockchain is essentially a public spreadsheet. You can browse it at . blockchain.info If FedCoin was to be built that way, anyone could access the blockchain, look up the government’s address and see exactly how the politicians are spending our money. Considering the US government has in the last 20 years (that’s trillion with a just about as much money as the ), more transparency would be very welcome. lost the trace of 21 trillion dollars T — entire national debt The Bitcoin Bankruptcy Problem Crypto could make the government finances incredibly more efficient and transparent. So what’s so scary about it? Consider the following: A allows you to carry your money in your head. Literally. brain wallet Imagine you borrow $1,000,000 from your bank and use it to buy Bitcoins. Then, you put them into a secret personal wallet. You destroy any traces of the private key, except for the 12 words you have memorized. Now, the only way to access that borrowed money is in your brain. mnemonic phrase Then, you go back to your bank, declare bankruptcy and refuse to pay back the loan. Normally, the bank, the court, and the government would team up to seize everything you have so they can hopefully get the money back. Only now, because the money is mathematically encrypted on the blockchain, there’s nothing they can do. That million dollar is yours forever. You can do this today. I’m dead serious. I’m surprised there’s hasn’t been a famous case of someone doing it already. Granted, if you were to do that, you should probably leave the country forever. Otherwise, you would most likely be charged fraud and put in jail for a very long time. The point is: For governments, this is a huge problem. If everyone starts doing reckless things like defaulting on loans or stop paying their taxes entirely, the system could collapse. There’s no way they would allow it. cryptocurrencies are above the law. So what happens when a government wants all the benefits of programmable money but doesn’t want to lose control over it? The solution is simple: They create FedCoin and use it to replace the national currency. They code for themselves. That way, they can freeze or seize people’s funds when they try to cross them. a backdoor access In all likelihood, they would probably they can’t control. Oh and while they’re at it, why not as well. They can’t control it either, and cash is the easiest way to commit crimes. ban Bitcoin, Ethereum, and every other open cryptocurrency ban cash If FedCoin happens, politicians will inevitably give themselves absolute control over the money. With FedCoin, if you try to commit fraud, governments won’t need to go through the courts and the banks to seize your money. They could do it at the press of a button. If this doesn’t scare you, ask yourself the following question: What if Hitler had FedCoin? Imagine if, in 1943, Hitler had absolute control over all of Germany’s money. What if, at the press of a button, he could have frozen the money of half of the German population? History would have played out very differently. Or consider the , a new program where everyone is given a score between 350 and 950, just like your credit score. Except the score isn’t just about the quality of your finances, it’s about your entire value as a citizen. Chinese’s Social Credit Under this program, when you do something wrong, your score goes down. It can be jaywalking, not paying back a loan in time, committing a crime, or just being friends with someone with a low score. When your social score goes down, so does your quality of life. If you’ve seen this , you know how this ends. Black Mirror episode In China, a low social score means limited access to finance, higher interest and tax rates, and even slower internet speed. If it goes too low, you can’t send your kids to private school or from buying plane and train tickets anymore. The point is to make life for you and your family as miserable as possible if you don’t behave as the government wants. exactly With FedCoin, the money itself would prevent you from buying things if your score is too low. This might sound like a dystopian nightmare, but this is happening right now. The Chinese government is ahead of its goal of implementing the system nationwide by 2020. Even weirder, most so far, because the program offers perks to those who behave nicely. people seem to enjoy it It’s easy to imagine how social credit could take a dark turn under a corrupt government. Once implemented nationwide, nothing prevents them from ruining your score if, say, you go to the wrong protest or vote for the wrong party. Social credit is leveraging money to become the ultimate system of control. I bring this up because it seems to me that FedCoin is the missing ingredient for China to implement such a system nationwide. With it, all the social credit rules could be coded directly into the money. Given that, it’s no surprise China started working on its own . They also started clamping down on other cryptocurrencies by , , and . I bet China will be the first country to launch FedCoin, and social credit will be a core feature. Fedcoin since 2016 banning ICOs crypto mining foreign exchange trading The Coming Crossroad Digital money is inevitable. It might happen in 10 or 100 years, but at some point, most currencies in the world will be digital. The benefits are just too great. The problem is, as money becomes digital, it gives those who control it . Today, digital money allows banks and governments to track every single transaction you do. They get to decide who can receive and spend money, and who can’t. If you cross them, they can freeze or seize your money at the press of a button. None of those things were possible when money was simply cash. Programmable money will make all of this much worse. increasingly more power over the rest of us That’s where cryptocurrencies come in. The point of crypto is to get the convenience of digital money without anyone having to be in charge. Governments are increasingly exploring the idea of FedCoin. They want all the benefits of Bitcoin except for the last part where they have to let go of their control over money. They are missing the entire point. Technology can be used for both good and evil. Nuclear can power millions of homes, but it can also destroy them. Cryptocurrency is no different. As a society, we’ll need to decide how we want to use this new technology. Do we want a world where we have an open, global, decentralized, permission-less monetary system? A currency of the people, by the people, for the people. Or do we want a world where governments are in charge of digital money, with the potential for massive abuse and oppression down the road? These are the questions that we’ll need to face in the coming decade. Please hit 👏 if you enjoyed or learned from this. Want to learn more about crypto? Check out these other mind-bending stories of mine👇 _This is a 100 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe. It’s worth around $0.40 US right now. I got it as a reminder of what…_hackernoon.com Today I Became a Trillionaire _Crypto Kitties is about so much more than cats._medium.com People are spending $millions on digital cats and here’s why it makes sense

The Terrifying Future of FedCoin

Bitcoin and Snapchat are two massively popular products. While they’re both very different, at the core of their successes is the same counter-intuitive idea. Understanding it helps us see what the next billion dollar product might be. Bitcoin One of the most important features of computers is that they can . effortlessly duplicate information It’s hard to appreciate how convenient this is. Before computers, if I sent you a hand-written letter, the letter was gone. There could only be one version of that letter in the world. Today, I can send the same email to a near-infinite amount of people. A big part of the 90s and the 2000s was about getting used to this new world where information, music, movies, etc, could be infinitely duplicated and shared. Today we’re used to it. We take it for granted. Bitcoin changes that. Bitcoin’s biggest innovation is . This means it’s digital but unique. Just like an email, you can instantly send it to anyone in the world. But unlike an email, you can’t duplicate it. Like a hand-written letter, when you send a Bitcoin, it’s gone. digital scarcity In a way, Bitcoin brings us back to the pre-computer days. Its big innovation isn’t about adding a new feature. It’s about : the computer’s ability to duplicate digital things. removing one This idea is so simple it’s almost dumb. Yet it created a . It kickstarted thousands of new startups and about technology, finance, and governance. $300+ billion market completely changed the way we think Snapchat Another feature of computers is that, by default, they . remember everything Thus, in the 2000s, when Facebook and Twitter brought our personal lives in the digital world, we faced something new. For the first time, every interaction we had with each other was recorded forever. We didn’t realize it at the time, but there was something extremely uncanny about it. This is because, in real life, human interactions aren’t forever. They fade away. They are ephemeral. Then came Snapchat. Its big innovation: . ephemeral messaging Just like Bitcoin, Snapchat brought us back to the somewhat pre-computer days. For the first time, digital conversations could fade away just like in real life. It was an instant hit. Like Bitcoin, Snapchat big innovation wasn’t about adding a new feature. It was about : the computer’s ability to remember everything. removing one Once again, a simple, dumb, counterintuitive change created a massive market: a $16 billion company and a feature now used . by 1.2+ billion people around the world Conclusion Bitcoin and Snapchat might be very different products, but at the core of their successes is the same idea: instead of adding new features, they removed one. Their creators took a hard look at the of computers. In this case: the persistence and effortless duplication of information. While everyone else thought these proprieties were inevitable consequences of computers, they removed them. By doing so, they created massively successful products now used around the world. fundamental proprieties These products were successful because they made technology more human. They brought it closer to how life was before computers. I believe Bitcoin and Snapchat are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of more of these opportunities left to discover. Today everyone is competing to build the next killer feature: AR, VR, AI, etc. What if the key isn’t about building new features, but removing them? Is this the future we really want? Computers are weird and uncanny. They have fundamental proprieties that make them completely different from how we evolved in the last million years. They’re fast. They compute at the speed of light. They duplicate and transmit information effortlessly. They remember everything. The 90s and 2000s were spent getting used to these weird new inventions. The next decade will be about making them less alien, more real life. Please hit 👏 if you enjoyed or learned from this.

What Bitcoin and Snapchat Reveal About The Future of Tech

This is a 100 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe. It’s worth around right now. I got it as a reminder of what can happen when governments and banks make reckless and irresponsible financial decisions. $0.40 US Back in 1980, one Zimbabwean dollar was worth roughly one US dollar. But after tanking the economy, the government started printing money in a desperate attempt to save it. This led to a vicious spiral of hyperinflation. In 2009, , compared to an average of 3.5% worldwide. Zimbabwe’s inflation was 231,150,888.87% Think about the people who worked hard their entire life maybe to save $100,000. Then, in just a few years, they saw their government flood the market with $100,000,000,000 notes that couldn’t even buy them a meal. These people saw the value of their lifelong earnings turn into nothing, and they couldn’t do anything about it. Zimbabwe is the worst case of hyperinflation, but this is happening in many other countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and even in the US. The USD Printing Machine The US dollar hasn’t been backed by gold or anything else . Currently, private banks create money out of thin air by Since 2008, the government printed over , effectively quadrupling the total amount of US dollars in circulation. Thankfully, the government managed to keep inflation under control, but this situation is very worrisome to some economists. since 1971 lending up to 10 times the money they don’t have. 4 trillion dollars Total USD in circulation since 1980. Today, we’re at about 3.9 trillion. In a debt-based economy, it is somewhat beneficial for governments to print money, because . However, this also wrecks everyone trying to save money. A 2% inflation rate might seem like nothing, but it essentially means that in 20 years, . lowering the value of the currency also lowers their debt half your savings will be lost This is where Bitcoin comes in You might have heard of Bitcoin. It’s a new form of digital currency. Bitcoin has many features that make it extremely interesting for the people in countries like Zimbabwe. First, it’s outside the reach and control of any governments. Because it’s global, it’s also unaffected by local markets and policies. But more importantly: you can’t print Bitcoin. By code, there will only ever be . 21 million Bitcoin ever created Why 21 million? No particular reasons. It is an arbitrary number chosen by . The goal is to emulate features found in natural currencies such as gold. Just like there is a limited quantity of gold on Earth; there’s a limited quantity of Bitcoins on the Blockchain. Bitcoin’s mysterious creator This limited supply makes Bitcoin a , meaning compared to fiat money, it gains value over time. For people in countries like Zimbabwe, this is a blessing, because what happened to the Zimbabwean dollar could never happen in the Bitcoin ecosystem. deflationary currency Some people will say that Bitcoin isn’t a great store of value because it’s price is too volatile. Others will say that an economy running entirely on a deflationary currency like Bitcoin wouldn’t be sustainable, because no one would spend their money. These people are right, but they are missing the entire point. Because despite all of this, Bitcoin still brings something extremely valuable to the table: competition. Voice & Exit As tells us, when it comes to changing things, there are two fundamental forms of power that comes to people: voice and exit. Albert O. Hirschman When governments become reckless, you can gather around, create banners, and march the streets to voice your complaints. However, as you know, this is usually suppressed and rarely lead to changes. So when voice doesn’t work, you get to the second most important form of power. . Exit Leaders might not care enough to listen when people voice their complaints. But when people start leaving in drove, then they care. Because you can’t be in power when everyone has left. Exit scares the shit out of those in power. A Financial Exit Door Thanks to Bitcoin, for the first time in history, governments don’t have the monopoly on money anymore. Today, people who have lost faith in their governments can choose to move their fund out of their national economy, and into the digital economy. Governments can try to build walls and borders all they want to prevent this, but Bitcoin is borderless by design. All you need is a smartphone and an Internet connection, and you’ve got yourself an entire bank on your phone, with instant access to the global economy. In the end, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are healthy check against the tyranny of corrupt and fiscally irresponsible governments. Because nobody wants to be the leader of an economy everyone is trying to leave. Don’t know anything about crypto? Learn the fundamentals of blockchain technology here 👇 _Crypto Kitties is about so much more than cats._medium.com People are spending $millions on digital cats and here’s why it makes sense Want to invest in crypto but don’t know where to start? Read my beginner’s guide to buying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies! 👇 _The complete guide to buying Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies._medium.com How to Buy Bitcoin and Other CryptoCurrencies _Read writing about Cryptocurrency in Hacker Noon. how hackers start their afternoons._hackernoon.com Cryptocurrency - Hacker Noon Please hit 👏 if you enjoyed or learned from this. This is an excerpt of a talk I just gave at WAQ18.👉 👈 Watch the video with English CC

Today I Became a Trillionaire

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