On June 24, a Reddit post had a few Bitcoin Cash proponents discussing a number of privacy enhancements BCH supporters can leverage every time they transact. The Bitcoin Cash enthusiast, Mr. Zwets r/btc post explained how BCH supporters can use tools like Cashfusion, Cashshuffle, Schnorr Signatures, Local.Bitcoin.com, Neutrino Wallet, and a number of Electron Cash plugins that bolster confidential transactions. The following report is a comprehensive look at all of the tools and services that protect a BCH users transactional data.

Not that many people are aware of the fact that the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem has a number of tools and services that cushion a persons privacy. Cryptocurrency privacy is very important to BCH supporters, as there have been many dedicated efforts to making the digital asset even more privacy-centric. On Wednesday, a well known BCH fan called Mr. Zwets published a picture and description of a bunch of privacy-enhancing tools BCH proponents can leverage today.

The first is Cashshuffle, a platform that Mr. Zwets calls a trustless version of coinjoin usable today in the Electron Cash wallet for increased privacy. People who want to utilize Cashshuffle can do so today, in order to help obfuscate their BCH transactions. So far, since March 27, 2019, there have been 54,202 shuffles to-date, and that consists of 253,751 BCH or $59.2 million.

Cashshuffle is used a lot, as shuffle volume plus daily counts show that the weekends are the most popular shuffling times. Cashshuffle was officially launched in March 2019 and the code also was reviewed by Kudelski Security. Bitcoin Cash proponents who want to leverage the Cashshuffle application can do so by visiting the website cashshuffle.com.

Cashfusion is an extension of Cashshuffle and is more advanced privacy-wise. The Cashusion protocol has been heralded as far more practical than other coinjoin protocols by even few BTC maximalists. Cashfusion will also undergo a security audit from the well known firm Kudelski Security and Mr. Zwets Reddit thread shows the audit began in May 2020.

Since November 28, 2019, there have been 5333 Fusions and 49,106 BCH total fused ($11.4 million). The reason for the added privacy, in contrast to using Cashshuffle, is due to the fact that Cashfusion abandoned the idea of equal outputs. For instance, Electron Cash developer Jonald Fyookball published a paper about the combinatoric math in Cashfusion.

In Cashfusion, we have opted to abandon the equal-amount concept altogether. While this is at first glance no different than the old naive schemes, mathematical analysis shows it in fact becomes highly private by simply increasing the numbers of inputs and outputs, a quote in Fyookballs paper from software developer Mark Lundeberg stressed.

For example, with hundreds of inputs and outputs, it is not just computationally impractical to iterate through all partitions, but even with infinite computing power, one would find a large number of valid partitions, the developer added.

Schnorr Signatures is another privacy-enhancing method that is not used as much for privacy right now as Cashshuffle and Cashfusion. However, there have been a few private transaction examples created by Mark Lundeberg and other developers, and in the future, Schnorr Signatures should bolster BCH privacy even more so.

Mr. Zwets says Schnorr Signatures were added to BCH over a year ago and allow for more private transactions as explained by Mark Lundeberg here. After the last Schnorr related upgrade and other Schnorr-enhanced forks going forward, the scheme could provide for public signature aggregation and more complex sign-to-contract concepts.

Mr. Zwets also mentioned the platform Neutrino Wallet, a privacy-focused mobile wallet for Bitcoin Cash that does not expose a list of your addresses to third parties and allows for connection using Tor. Users can download the wallet at the website neutrino.cash, which links the Google Play Neutrino download package. Neutrino was built by the developers who work on the Bitcoin Cash full node project BCHD, and the wallet is named after the subatomic particle which is extremely hard to detect.

Another privacy bolstering platform Mr. Zwets included was Local.Bitcoin.com, a service to buy and sell BCH peer-to-peer without any middlemen.

It is possible because of a new BCH opcode called Checksigverify that allows for more complex smart contracts, explains Mr. Zwets Reddit post.

Bitcoin.com launched its over-the-counter BCH marketplace on June 4, 2019, and tens of thousands of traders have signed up since then. Some of the most popular Local.Bitcoin.com trading regions include the U.S., China, Venezuela, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and various countries throughout Europe.

Further, Local.Bitcoin.com traders can chat in privacy by leveraging encrypted messaging. Payment methods for Local.Bitcoin.com include cash (in-person trades), other cryptos, bank transfers, bank deposits, Paypal, Moneygram, international wire, Western Union, gift cards, Payeer, Venmo, Skrill, and Transferwise.

In addition to the tools and platforms mentioned above, Mr. Zwets described a number of other examples that can help with privacy. Crescent Cash is a BCH wallet with SLP token support for android, Zwets said on Wednesday. It is privacy-focused in that it is the first wallet to supports using a BIP47 reusable payment code as a cashaccount. It also generates new addresses each time both for BCH and SLP, while also allowing for a connection using Tor, UTXO management and the ability to connect your own full node, he added.

Mr. Zwets further states:

The Electron Cash wallet apart from supporting Cashshuffle, Tor, UTXO management, and more it also allows the user to install extra plugins. Some of them are privacy-oriented like the Interwallet Transfer Plugin other plugins allow us to build special transactions using smart contracts.

What do you think about all the Bitcoin Cash privacy-oriented tools and platforms available? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Cashshuffle, Cashfusion, Neutrino, Local.Bitcoin.com, stats.devzero.be, Mr. Zwets r/btc post

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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6 Privacy-Enhancing Tools That Place Bitcoin Cash Transactions Ahead of the Pack | Privacy - Bitcoin News

On-chain data indicates crypto investors arent taking profits but are holding on despite uncertain economic conditions and bitcoins strong performance.

At the time of publication, 60.63% of all bitcoins have not moved in at least a year, according to data from Glassnode. This data suggests bitcoin ownership is consolidating, and investors who bought at the cycle bottom in 2018 have been reluctant to take profits and relinquish their bitcoin holdings. Its been over four years since a percentage of supply this large has been inactive.

One method to analyze inactive bitcoins has been to group them by the length of time theyve been inactive. Called HODL Waves, this data analysis was pioneered by Austin, Texas-based Unchained Capital to display macroscopic shifts in bitcoin ownership and use. It may also give a sense of investor preferences.

Each wave one day, one month, six months, two years, five years, etc. represents the period of time in which a percentage of the issued supply has not been used in a transaction, or, in other words, has been inactive.

The term HODL represents the behaviour of die-hard bitcoin investors who chose to hold bitcoins with practically no intention of using or selling those coins. Thus, each wave visualizes what percentage of the bitcoin supply has been HODLed and for how long.

Dhruv Bansal, co-founder and CSO at Unchained Capital, explained that this HODL Wave data suggests investors who bought bitcoin on the way down from $6,000 to $3,000 in 2018 are still holding it despite the tremendous gains since then and the recent economic turbulence.

Curiously, the two age segments that have grown the most are coins held for more than 10 years and those held for two to three years, which are up 31% and 26% year to date, respectively. In 2020, the two- to three-year band represents coins held from the 2017 market all-time high to present.

Every bitcoin investor might not intentionally HODL though. Speculating on the two- to three-year band waves growth, Yassine Elmandjra, cryptocurrency analyst at ARK Investment Management, told CoinDesk his guess is growth in this coin age group could, among other things, be a function of retail investors who bought at the peak and lost their Trezor [wallet] or cant log into Coinbase.

Despite an extremely volatile Q1 2020 and ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, an increasing amount of dormant bitcoins confirms that buyers still believe in their investment more than ever.

According to Bansal, If you believe bitcoins price history repeats or at least rhymes, then this may be a bullish sign, the market consolidating into strong hands as macro trends highlight bitcoins value proposition.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Inactive Bitcoin Supply Reaches 4-Year High, Pointing to Bullish Sentiment - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

During the last few months in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak and faltering global economy, many individuals have shown an interest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. However, oftentimes people can find the process a bit daunting because they are not used to using crypto assets and have never experienced the process. The following article is a quick guide on how to get a cryptocurrency address, receive digital assets, and send them as well.

Amid the crazy economy, a lot of people have noticed a number of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), and bitcoin cash (BCH) have done far better performance-wise than a majority of stocks, bonds, and commodity assets worldwide. For instance, the crypto asset bitcoin cash (BCH) dropped to a low of $150 per unit on March 12, 2020, otherwise known as Black Thursday. The price of bitcoin cash has gained 60.66% since then at todays BCH price of roughly $241 per BCH. At a price of $9,453 per unit, Bitcoin (BTC) has gained 162% since March 12, when it traded for $3,600 for a brief period that day.

Besides the price rises, many people are beginning to understand the importance of a censorship-resistant and permissionless, electronic peer-to-peer cash. However, many people get frustrated when they try and learn the process of obtaining a crypto address, receiving digital currencies, and sending them to people after learning to store them in a wallet. In this article, you will learn the basics of all three of those tasks by leveraging a noncustodial Bitcoin.com Wallet and some practice.

In order to get a cryptocurrency address, you need a wallet. Basically crypto wallets are software applications that allow you to send, receive, and store digital currencies on a mobile phone, laptop, tablet, or desktop computer. The Bitcoin.com Wallet allows people to use bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin (BTC), and crypto tokens built using the Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP). For todays testing, we are only focusing on the cryptocurrency bitcoin cash with the ticker symbol BCH. The Bitcoin.com Wallet is noncustodial, which means the company has zero access to the funds and you are 100% in control of the storage. This means when you create a wallet, you need to back it up immediately using the twelve-word mnemonic phrase.

Once you have created a Bitcoin.com Wallet on one of your devices, the process of storing, sending, and receiving is very simple. All you need to do to obtain a bitcoin cash (BCH) address via the Bitcoin.com Wallet is by simply pressing receive. You need to choose what wallet you will be receiving to and in this example, it would be bitcoin cash (BCH). After selecting BCH, the wallet will generate an alphanumeric address that allows you to accept BCH to that specific address.

There are two ways to copy the address. One way is giving someone a copy or picture of the QR code, and a person with a QR code reader tied to their bitcoin cash wallet will be able to scan the code. The second way is by copying and pasting the BCH address by copying it to your devices clipboard and sending it to another person. With this address, any person from anywhere around the world can send you bitcoin cash.

Once someone has sent you some bitcoin cash, you then have the ability to send it all to another address or send it in fractions to various individual addresses. To send someone some BCH, simply launch the Bitcoin.com Wallet and select the send button. This will direct you to a screen that allows you two options; either copy and paste the recipients wallet address into the address box or you can select scan QR code.

After one of those two options has been completed, you need to choose a wallet that holds your unspent bitcoin cash (BCH) and enter the amount you wish to send to the individual. After selecting the number of funds you want to send, simply press the next button. There will be a confirmation screen that shows you all the details of your transaction and if you are happy with the details, simply slide to send to deliver the transaction. Alternatively, you can also send money from one wallet to another wallet within your devices application.

Obtaining a cryptocurrency address is very easy once you download a wallet, and most wallets follow the same standards when it comes to getting an address and the sending and receiving processes. There are many wallets that allow people to store cryptocurrencies in a noncustodial fashion.

Also if it is a different cryptocurrency, obtaining an address and sending and receiving an address is pretty much the same process. The biggest difference is, each cryptocurrency has an alphanumeric string, but they look different in the beginning of the address. For instance, bitcoin cash (BCH) addresses look different than ethereum (ETH) addresses, but the process of sending and receiving is the same.

After doing these steps a few times, you should easily get the hang of obtaining a crypto address, and using a wallet to send and receive digital currencies. When practicing, try sending small fractions of a cryptocurrency like bitcoin cash (BCH) in order to feel more comfortable with the processes. A great number of crypto assets have a network fee associated with sending a cryptocurrency, and bitcoin cash (BCH) fees are always less than a U.S. penny per transaction.

On the BTC and ETH networks, fees could be higher than you realize, and you may have to adjust a transaction accordingly. Besides fees, doing this step-by-step process regularly with even just a few dollars in bitcoin cash, will turn you into a well-seasoned machine in no time. Also, check out the video below to get a visual presentation of these processes as well.

What do you think about the step-by-step process of obtaining an address and sending and receiving cryptocurrencies? Let us know in the comments below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

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Crypto 101: How to Send and Receive Bitcoin Cash Via the Bitcoin.com Wallet | Featured - Bitcoin News

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. The year was 1944 in the United States. The 44 allied countries met in Bretton Woods in order to confer on moving towards fixing and backing the US dollar, along with other currencies, with gold, thus starting an era when currencies were fixed or to gold.

For the next 26 years, this standard remained and the US dollar became the de facto reserve currency of the world. At the end of World War II, the US controlled about two thirds of the worlds gold reserve.

Countries that have the worlds reserve currencies are powerful and tended to get away with borrowing a lot. Thats because other countries were inclined to hold the debt/money as it can be used for spending around the world. All of that borrowing will have to be paid back one day.

By 1971, the US Federal Reserve had printed so much debt that they didnt have enough gold to back up the US dollar. As a result, the Bretton Woods monetary system broke down in 1971 when President Nixon, like President Roosevelt in 1933, defaulted on the USs promise of allowing holders of paper dollars to turn them in for gold.

Therefore, the dollar is no longer pegged to gold and it devalued against gold and other currencies. During this period, the US and all countries went into a free-floating currency era where the value of each currency was not backed by a particular asset but remained relative in value to other asset classes.

The move to a fiat monetary system gave the Federal Reserve and other central banks the ability to print dollar-denominated money and credit, which led to the inflationary during the 1970s. During this period, there was a flight from dollars and dollar-denominated debt to goods, services, and inflation-hedge assets such as gold which many considered to be a good store of wealth. During this period we moved from asset-backed money towards a floating fiat currency not backed by assets. And for the next 50 years, this worked fine.

In 2008, interest rates hit the lowest levels during the economic recession and the US government decided to initiate quantitative easing by printing more money and buying financial assets. Fast forward to today, their debt has ballooned to US$24 trillion dollars as of April 2020.

But something unexpected happened. The coronavirus triggered the economic and market downturns all over the world, which created holes in incomes and balance sheets, especially for indebted entities whose incomes have been affected by the downturn.

So, on April 9, 2020, the US central government and the US central bank or the Fed announced a massive money and credit creation program that included helicopter money (direct payments from the government to citizens) that eclipsed anything theyve done before. This was essentially the same move that Roosevelt made in 1933.

However skeptics point out that the hope for growth, created by the debt printed by the Fed, is not reflected by the productivity gains from businesses around the world. This scenario tends to lead to inflation. If we looked back historically, these periods tend to be characterized by people converting assets to those that are not inflationary in nature, such as gold or assets that have a fixed amount or a scarcity quality to it.

In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin with the idea of building an alternative currency as a response to the financial recession of 2008 and the burgeoning debt around the US dollar. The hope was to create an alternative financial system that is resilient against socio-economic changes and geopolitical fights.

The idea behind bitcoin is simple. At its core, bitcoin is an alternative currency that is among other things:

(1) Decentralized and not controlled by any person/entity being (built through a decentralized network).

(2) Scarce in nature (only 21 million bitcoins will ever be created) and therefore deflationary in nature- over time it becomes more and more difficult to produce bitcoins (thus, theoretically making its value go up).

Over the past 10 years, bitcoins growth in acceptance and value has kept rising and the currency has shown its resilience over many peaks and troughs throughout its short lifetime. In the backdrop of what is going on in the world today, many believe that bitcoin can be the next global reserve currency and become the safe have asset.

We have already seen Bitcoin being used more in countries where its national currency goes through massive inflation (such as Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Zimbabwe).

Bitcoin is set to go through its scheduled halving on May 11, 2020. This means that it will technically be two times as hard to mine new bitcoins, forcing miners to sell their bitcoins at a higher price in order to cover the operational cost. This will change the supply and demand dynamics with many predicting the price to continue going up.

The next few months will be an exciting time for bitcoin, as the macro-economic changes in the world set up the stage for a good testing ground for Bitcoin to prove itself. Now, its your turn to choose. May the force be with you. Always.

***

The writer is founder of Pintu, a government-registered platform to trade cryptocurrencies, and graduate of Harvard Business School, where he did research at the MIT Media Lab on cryptoasset valuations. The original article was published in Medium.com.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.

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Currency wars: The rise of bitcoin - Opinion - Jakarta Post

People around the world are increasingly trusting Bitcoin over big banks, according to a new survey conducted by fintech news site The Tokenist. The survey, which polled 4,852 participants across 17 countries, found that 47% of respondents trust Bitcoin over big banks, an increase of 29% in the past three years.

The survey also showed a striking generation gap when it comes to Bitcoin and the banks. While over half (51%) of millennials trust Bitcoin over big banks, an increase of 24% over 2017, over nine in ten (93%) of over-65s trust big banks over Bitcoin.

The over-65s are wary of Bitcoin in general, with half of those polled thinking that its a bubble, versus less than a quarter (24%) of millennials.

Millennials embrace of Bitcoin is partly down to increased familiarity; 78% of millennials are somewhat familiar with Bitcoin, versus 61% of total respondents, and 14% of them have owned Bitcoin. In the next five years, 44% of millennials expect to buy some Bitcoin.

Not surprisingly, then, the survey also found that 59% of millennials are confident that Bitcoin will see mass adoption within the next 10 years, and that most people around the world will likely be using it by that time.

While millennials may be leading the way in Bitcoin adoption, the survey found increased knowledge of, and growing confidence in, Bitcoin among all age and gender groups surveyed, its writers stated.

Six in ten (60%) of those polled felt that Bitcoin is a positive innovation in financial technology, an increase of 27% in three years. And over 45% of respondents preferred Bitcoin over stocks, real estate and gold.

Three years ago, many of the largest BTC brokers were relatively new and were therefore accorded a low level of trust, said the reports writers. Now, there appears to be an appreciation of the maturity, and stability, of these providers.

With stocks and shares taking a beating in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown, some Bitcoin advocates are arguing that this is the cryptocurrencys moment. Though with Bitcoins price fluctuating in recent days, it clearly has some way to go yet.

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Bitcoin is becoming more trustworthy than big banks, says survey - Decrypt