As a philosophical technologist, Hari is concerned with emerging innovations and how they impact our life. Mr. Seldon spends much time separating the outstanding from the paltry and incorporating only holistic beneficial technologies into his life.
I have been a Coinbase user for a couple of years now and just learned of a cool program Coinbase offers: Coinbase Earn. Coinbase Earn says you can: “Earn Crypto While Learning About Crypto”. Since launching in December 2018 and has taken me so long to discover this program, I want to share the knowledge by posting about it to spread the word the best I can!
The Coinbase Earn product allows users to learn about select cryptocurrencies and the needs they address. As of this writing, there are earn and learn courses for are 3 cryptocurrencies: BAT, ZEX, and ZRX. Also, as of this writing, a waiting list exists for enrolling in the program for each cryptocurrency. I put myself on the waiting list for all 3. I will update this post after I have finished each of the courses. Also, this post will update if any new courses become available.
On the waiting list to earn cryptocurrency
To find this product, go to Coinbase and scroll to the bottom of the page. Press on the link for ‘Earn’ and you will be taken to the Coinbase Earn product. You are then presented with a choice of cryptocurrencies to learn about. Even though this author was unable to immediately take any of the courses all is not lost. The cool thing is that short videos are available to preview on each of the cryptocurrencies.
The preview videos highlight the need that each particular cryptocurrency addresses. For instance: one of the videos notes that the Brave browser id faster, more secure, more private. One of the videos notes that 70% of the revenue generated by ads goes the user that views the ad! I am a huge fan of Brave. You can read more about Brave here. I highly recommend downloading the Brave browser.
One more note: the videos are short and entertaining.
Screen shot from Coinbase Earn Product video on BAT
As a philosophical technologist, Hari is concerned with emerging innovations and how they impact our life. Mr. Seldon spends much time separating the outstanding from the paltry and incorporating only holistic beneficial technologies into his life.
Unlike almost all other tech companies that farm out users personal data for profit, Brave has found a way to be available for free, while still protecting the privacy of its users and allowing advertisers to get their products in front of customers. This is amazing, the best of all worlds!
I have been using the Brave browser for about 10 months on iPhone and Mac. For about four years before, I had used Safari and Chrome. Before that, I used Internet Explorer and Firefox.
At this point, I am able to use Brave almost exclusively with only two real drawbacks that affect me:
not being able to select it as the default browser on the iPhone
the syncing feature is not yet implemented between the Mac and iPhone
BAT Token:
The BAT token is the vehicle by which all of the magic occurs. BAT tokens are a currency that can be passed around between blog readers, Youtube channel subscribers, advertisers, and publishers. The BAT token has been trading between 10 cents and 1 USD for the past year, but this value is so far just in speculation. The real price discovery will happen with the usage of the browser and its advertising platform.
BAT Token Promotion:
Brave has been running a promotion to help onboard users. Brave has been giving BAT tokens to users of the Brave browsers. These promotional tokens are deposited into the wallet within the browser and are available for tipping websites or automatic contributions to websites of Brave Verified Publishers.
This website is a Brave verified publisher. At this point in the development of the Brave platform, if you are using the Brave browser and have enabled automatic contributions to your favorite websites, your Brave browser may contribute to farawaystars.com in proportion to the time you have spent on this website. If you are using the most up to date browser, you can click the BAT icon in the URL bar and tip farwaystars.com.
Although the ways publishers can be compensated is limited currently; in time, the Brave ecosystem may look something like this:
As a philosophical technologist, Hari is concerned with emerging innovations and how they impact our life. Mr. Seldon spends much time separating the outstanding from the paltry and incorporating only holistic beneficial technologies into his life.
How does it make you feel to know that in your ‘user data’ that a company stores likely takes many gigabytes? check yours here
What is your reaction to the knowledge that each of your personal emails with a certain company has been inspected, analyzed, and preserved in order to better create a profile of your personality and to document the changes in your priorities and interests over time?
Do you approve of the fact that the same company presents modified search results to you based on the profile it has crafted for you?
Does a person that wants privacy from strangers have something to hide?
Is it ok for a company to cooperate with a tyrannical government in silencing and oppressing its citizens?
Perhaps it is due to just how good capable Google’s software is that has brought me to this point. A fairly recent update to the email service reveals options for quick replies to emails that are creepily context aware. The thought of every email that I write being read, analyzed, understood, and saved forever really popped to the forefront of my thoughts when I saw that feature. The uneasiness that feature gave me combined with news of Project Dragonfly directs me to find an alternative for email, calendars, alternate phone numbers, and many more services that Google provided so well.
As luck would have it, a suitable and awesome competitor presented itself for email: Protonmail.
“ProtonMail uses Zero-Access Encryption, which means it is technically impossible for us to decrypt user messages. Zero-Access Encryption applies to all messages in your mailbox, even messages which did not come from other ProtonMail users.” This ensures the emails are not read by bots and then analyzed for ways to manipulate you into buying goods and services. Because of this, there is a charge to store anything over 500MB of data in your emails, Protonmail’s product is not you.
Protonmail also has a neat feature that allows you to use your own domain name for your email address and it works very much like Google Apps does.
You will need your own domain name to do this. This tutorial uses SiteGround.
Purchase your domain name if you don’t already have one.
As a philosophical technologist, Hari is concerned with emerging innovations and how they impact our life. Mr. Seldon spends much time separating the outstanding from the paltry and incorporating only holistic beneficial technologies into his life.
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is dope and I have been interested in trying it out since I first heard about it. But, time is a cruel mistress and much passed before I took a chance to Check It Out!
Steps to Register a .eth Domain
Go to https://www.myetherwallet.com/#ens
Connect your wallet (I used a Ledger Nano S)
Check the availability of the domain.
Enter in an actual bid amount and a masked bid amount.
Record your secret phrase.
Select ‘Start the Auction’.
At this point an error may appear stating that you need to enable ‘Contract Data’. This means go into the Settings menu on the Ledger Nano S and navigate to ‘Contract Data’ and select ‘Yes’.
Again press ‘Start the Auction’, and you receive some information and are urged to screenshot that data.
The reveal date is in 3 days, the auction ends in 5 days.
Use the ‘ENS’ tab on myetherwallet.com during the reveal period to enter the chosen domain name and reveal the bid. You need to connect your wallet (my Ledger Nano S) in order to have a place to enter in the info from the initial start of the auction and also enter a secret phrase and bid amount. Here is my successful transaction record: https://etherscan.io/enslookup?q=0x467d28fdec1d6bafd780c293f466c6489b2d433c58360f5c8a0e91b257000777
When the auction ends (5 days), you can enter your domain at myetherwallet.com under the ENS tab to see if you won. If you did, you can ‘finalize’ the domain.
Finalizing the domain includes setting the resolver for your name and setting the address to which your name will resolve (I selected an address that I can receive payments at). All of this is laid out in step-by-step directions at myetherewallet.com.
Now, I can receive payments at farawaystars.eth.
The domain name can also resolve to a contract address. This will be . a topic in a later post.
As a philosophical technologist, Hari is concerned with emerging innovations and how they impact our life. Mr. Seldon spends much time separating the outstanding from the paltry and incorporating only holistic beneficial technologies into his life.
Go to start.ledgerwallet.com and follow the instructions there to prepare the hardware wallet.
Initializing the Ledger Nano S:
I am not going to give detailed instructions on how to get the device up and running as they are available at start.ledgerwallet.com and may change with future updates. The current instructions are easy to follow and included installing the Ledger Live app, initializing your Ledger Nano S by creating a pin and saving your recovery seed (very important!). After that, you need to install apps to the Ledger Nano S and then add accounts to your device before adding your crypto accounts.
Ledger Live installation on a Mac
Initializing
Receiving funds
Operating the Ledger Nano S:
The Ledger Nano S has only two buttons, and it has menus to navigate. This is accomplished by using the left button as a ‘up’ or ‘left’ button, the right button as an ‘down’ or ‘right’ button and both buttons simultaneously as an ‘enter’ or ‘continue’ command.
Sending crypto to your Ledger Nano S:
Using the Ledger Live app that you have installed to your computer, you can select one of your accounts on the lower left corner of the app. Once the account is selected, ‘Send’ and ‘Receive’ buttons are visible. Selecting the ‘Receive’ button will give you the address at which the Ledger Nano S can receive funds for that account. The address shown can be copied and pasted into the app you are sending crypto from (or given to a friend so that they can send crypto to you).
Of course, one of the cool things that blockchain allows you to do is to view the immutable ledger that records all transactions. Here is my first transaction on the Ledger Nano S:
Like many cryptocurrency enthusiasts, I have seen this posted on Reddit and other internet hangouts many times. There are a few reasons to have your coins on an exchange:
Ease of acquiring
Ease of trading
Less effort to setup and maintain a wallet
However, storing coins on an exchange is in conflict with one of the great advantages of cryptocurrencies:
Counter party risk
Bitcoin has not been hacked, but exchanges seem to be routinely hacked. Storing coins on an exchange exposes the owner of the coins to the same risks of the traditional banking system (i.e. getting locked out of your account, having your funds frozen ,etc.). Where as properly protected coins can be protected from these things.Bad players – storing coins on an exchange equals trusting that the exchanges owners and employees will not steal your coins.
After considering this, as a newbie to crypto, I downloaded the Jaxx wallet and the Bread (now BRD) wallet and stored my crypto on my phone. Maybe many people do this, it certainly is convenient.
Storing crypto on a phone has some advantages:
Purchasing goods and services at local vendors is convenient with a phone wallet, it is always with you.
The phone wallets are very easy to use and all the ones that I have used are available free of charge.
BUT….phones are connected to the internet nearly 24/7 and are therefore able to be attacked 24/7. This is a significant disadvantage and risk as you start to acquire more crypto.
This risk associated with phone wallets creates an opportunity for manufacturers of secure hardware devices that are not connected to the internet. This is why I checked out the Ledger Nano S.
As a philosophical technologist, Hari is concerned with emerging innovations and how they impact our life. Mr. Seldon spends much time separating the outstanding from the paltry and incorporating only holistic beneficial technologies into his life.
143 million U.S. customers are vulnerable to having their identity and money stolen and credit rating ruined because they have given this information and these funds to a trusted third party. Equifax surley tried to protect this data, but it is just a very large honeypot that is tempting to cyber criminals.
If each customer was responsible for their own funds, the hacker would not receive nearly as large of a reward for each hack. Alternatively, it would require much more work to hack all 143 million people individually. This is the safety in the decentralization that Bitcoin provides.
The DNC hack shows that even some of the most powerful organizations in the world are vulnerable to being breached.
Bitcoin works differently than the digital dollars we mostly use now. With Bitcoin, each individual holds onto their own money – similar to cash. Also, the coins are cryptographically secured and cannot be tampered with. Bitcoin can be transferred person to person without the need for a bank or credit card company.
One thing to note about this is that storing bitcoin on an exchange removes these advantages and makes the bitcoin just as vulnerable as Target and Equifax are.
Currency Risk
The U.S. government is now over 20 trillion dollars in debt. Here is a detailed article on the relationship between sovereign debt and inflation:
Bitcoin addresses some of the shortcomings in the financial system that we use currently. As it becomes more widely known and used, Bitcoin enthusiasts believe it may not just complement, but replace the current system.
As a philosophical technologist, Hari is concerned with emerging innovations and how they impact our life. Mr. Seldon spends much time separating the outstanding from the paltry and incorporating only holistic beneficial technologies into his life.
