Time to share my reading of three articles.

Emerging Crypto Millionaires and Billionaires

The first article is about an interesting report done by Henley & Partners, a London-based investment migration consultancy. The writer highlights the emergence of cryptocurrency millionaires and billionaires, out of the world's 56.1 million millionaires, 88,200 have amassed their wealth from cryptocurrency.

What I find funny in this report is the sudden switch of sentiment after reading the article’s heading, which seems to imply a very unusual event, and then the implication that such a number is insignificant for it only represents 0.157% of global millionaires.

Notable personalities named in the article include Binance's Changpeng Zhao and Ripple's Chris Larsen.

Furthermore, the report notes certain actions on the part of crypto enthusiasts and investors to protect their digital assets from the threats of government regulations and aggressive taxation. All praise to these regulatory autocrats!

Reading the article gave me mixed emotions of astonishment and disgust. Gladly, the writer concluded by saying that with the current drop in the prices of cryptocurrency, now is the best time to pick them up. We might never see again such a bargain opportunity. Who knows? By taking advantage of the current depressed prices, perhaps, many on Hive might be the next millionaires and billionaires in the making.

Continuous Crackdown in China

The second article is about the continuous crackdown in China. I think we are no longer surprised by the action of Sina Weibo, a popular social media platform to delete 80 influencer accounts involved in cryptocurrency. According to the report, these accounts have violated Chinese laws by promoting cryptocurrency. This type of action has been normal in China since the day the government issued a ban on cryptocurrency in September 2021. As in the US and other parts of the world, the typical excuse for such an action is to protect people’s property and foster responsible investment. Again, all praise to the omnipotent government of China! How I wish the government officials were powerful enough to stop capital flight, which I suspect would be an inevitable outcome of such despotic actions.

Ethereum’s Centralization and Scalability Challenges

The last article is about Ethereum’s centralization and scalability challenges. For Vitalik Buterin, the most significant step to reduce centralization is by attaining statelessness, a word that I find new and very strange. And so, I searched the web to have a workable understanding of the term. What I found is that in the context of cryptocurrency, "statelessness" usually pertains to the qualities of cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks to operate independently of any central authority. This definition to me captures the very character of cryptocurrency. As such, statelessness is closely related to other features of both blockchain and cryptocurrency such as decentralization, borderless, censorship resistance, and financial inclusion.

In addition to statelessness, Buterin identifies other steps to address the challenge of centralization such as simplifying documentation, lowering entry barriers for distributed staking, enhancing staking security, and improving the overall convenience of staking Ether (ETH).

Despite the above proposal, Buterin is not so optimistic about finding the perfect solution to the centralization problem any time soon. He said that perhaps we need to wait 20 years more to find such a technical solution. I am not sure if anyone on Hive can wait for such a long period of time.

Nevertheless, for Buterin, the most immediate and crucial concern for Ethereum is achieving higher scalability. This reminds me of an ongoing project on Hive by recording data and transactions off-chain, that is, outside of the main Hive blockchain. It appears that both Buterin and many developers on Hive are thinking of similar solutions to address the issue of scalability.

Grace and peace!

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