Economics Book Review - The Ascent of Money, a Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

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Cryptocurrency is a digital asset used mainly as a medium of transaction to secure financial transactions, control creation of additional assets and verification of any asset transfers with the help of a strong cryptographic technology. It is also known as a form of digital currency or virtual currency. Unlike central banking systems, it is a decentralized control and financial transaction system that works through a blockchain used mainly for financial transactions.

The first decentralized virtual currency to be developed in 2009 is Bitcoin known as a virtual monetary unit and it works independently without the assistance of any central bank or administrator. Since then, around 4000 altcoins of diverse variants of bitcoin have been developed. Bitcoin is considered as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system where users perform transactions directly without any intermediates.

Blockchain is a data file consisting of numerous blocks that keeps records of all the previous bitcoin transactions and also creation of new ones. The normal average time between each block is around 10 minutes. The most frequent use of bitcoin, is supported by an external software named Bitcoin wallet. By using this software, one can easily store, receive and manage the transaction of bitcoin units. In order to perform transactions using bitcoin, one needs to have an account in any one of the bitcoin exchanges across the globe and has to transfer fiat currency into that account. Thus the account holder can perform future transactions by using these funds. Apart from the bitcoin, some of the other sources of cryptocurrency is petro which is mainly used for oil and mineral reserves.

There are some pros and cons associated with the usage of digital currency. The main benefits of using a virtual currency are as follows:-

• Provides a quick transparency layer:-

The Bitcoin usually operates with the help of a ledger called Blockchain that records & monitors each and every transaction. Once when a transaction is made and is recorded in this ledger it is considered to be as static. These transactions can be further verified at any time in the future and hence in addition to this, it also ensures security and privacy regarding all the transactions made through a particular account.

• Fast Processing and Portable Usage:-

Billions of dollars of bitcoin can be easily transferred from one location to another without any detection with the help of a single memory drive. While performing any kind of transactions, involvement of any third party can be eliminated by using this bitcoin technology. This will result in an easy and rapid transaction without any approval from a third party,

• Low transaction costs involved:-

Transaction costs involved in the exchanging of these digital currencies is very less which makes it more affordable than the real currency for the population across the world. Hence, cost of any kind of transaction made is very less which turns out to be an advantageous feature for the population whenever they are performing any transactions.

• Combats & eradicates poverty:-

Often the banking systems and financial institutions do not provide help or assistance especially to backward classes in rural areas. Bitcoin serves as an alternative in such cases where it extends its robust financial services to anyone with internet access. It often serves as a support for poor and oppressed classes who are in most cases not given any viable alternative.

As and when a new or latest technology arrives, there are some negative factors also associated with its usage which are as follows:-

• Lack of knowledge and mistrustful approach of the population:-

Due to lack of knowledge regarding digital currency people are more likely to become mistrustful of its widespread use. Hence, there are only very few number of business systems that accept these sources of cryptocurrency therefore limiting the business systems who prefer to use the virtual currency in their daily transactions.

• Non-traceable transactions:-

Since, transactions made by bitcoin are untraceable it provides a room for criminal transactions. In such cases, drug dealers and scrupulous persons are the ones who make use of such virtual currency so that their illegal activities are not detected easily.

• Volatile and Uncertainty nature:-

The cryptocurrency is at times volatile and keeps on changing frequently on a large scale. Sometimes people make quite a amount of money when the market rates of these virtual currencies are skyrocketed and at times they also face great loss when the price crashes.

Cryptocurrency is an innovative but amateur concept that can potentially disrupt the whole financial market. It is true that this digital currency has grabbed the world's attention in a short span of time. There are always benefits and drawbacks to every new technology that arises in the market. In order to make the best use of it, one needs to look into both sides before making any decisions.

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Source by Mukesh Saini

Analytics Training: A Stunning Opportunity for Growth in Career Prospects

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THE IMPORTANCE OF ANALYSIS

Big Data Analytics is not just a passing trend, it's here to stay. Its upward graph is partly because it plays an essential role in decision making for businesses. Data analysis helps organizations to design more appropriate, strategic decisions for the future. It is becoming the topmost priority of every organization as the benefits involved are immeasurable.

To become a part of this movement, organizations must engage specialists in all aspects of data analysis. Because of this, the demand for skilled professionals in the field of data analysts is increasing.

The work involved is super exciting and interesting much like the detective work of the legendary Sherlock Holmes as it involves collecting the traces to solve the mystery at hand. In a nutshell, data analysis is vital for every organization for effective and efficient functioning.

WHY DATA ANALYTICS TRAINING?

As businesses are becoming more data-driven and tech-driven day by day, gaining skills and expertise in order to gain insights from the vast amount of data is necessary. For that one has to undergo analytics training. Some of the benefits of training include:

1. Strategic and better decision making

Data analytics training assists an individual to provide a company with information to make better strategic decisions. The idea behind getting trained in data analysis is to make sense out of the humongous amount of data generated, analyze and share it for better business prospects.

Data analytics training is gaining importance because of the increasing demand for skilled professionals who can understand the proposed trajectory, direction and objectives of a business more effectively and can contribute to decision making process.

2. Helps in improving career prospects for an analyst

Bright career prospects await a certified job analyst and make it possible to land a well-paid and highly reputed job. However, candidates should investigate their own capabilities, and whether he / she has the proficiency to work with complex figures and statistics before plunging into the field of analysis.

3. Improves knowledge-base and skills

Analytics training helps the organizations to base their strategies on facts rather than instincts. It also helps a candidate to boost his / her knowledge-base and skills. The candidate can gain valuable insights and build his / her knowledge about the techniques and different tools involved in analysis.

4. Helps in gaining a competitive edge over others

Organizations cannot wait to find skilled professionals, go through the tedious and lengthy process of interviewing, assessing and hiring them. Instead they can skill their existing employees by providing them with the right analytics training. This, in turn, helps the organization to gain a competitive edge over others by getting a head-start in using data analytics.

CONCLUSION

The field of data analytics has been evolving for a long time with the introduction of better and improved techniques and tools used in performing analytics methodologies.

The need for development and competitiveness are the two key factors responsible for this evolution. Non-adoption of improved technologies can have severe implications on the functioning of the organization. Hence analytics training is gaining importance and every organization needs to become a part of this movement if they want to survive and grow.

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Source by Shalini Madhav

Practical Tips on How to Trade Cryptocurrencies

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For some time now, I have been closely observing the performance of cryptocurrencies to get a feel of where the market is headed. The routine my elementary school teacher taught me-where you wake up, pray, brush your teeth and take your breakfast has shifted a little to waking up, praying and then hitting the web (starting with coinmarketcap) just to know which crypto assets are in the red.

The beginning of 2018 wasn't a lovely one for altcoins and relatable assets. Their performance was crippled by the frequent opinions from bankers that the crypto bubble was about to burst. Nevertheless, ardent cryptocurrency followers are still "HODLing" on and truth be told, they are reaping big.

Recently, Bitcoin retraced to almost $5000; Bitcoin Cash came close to $500 while Ethereum found peace at $300. Virtually every coin got hit-apart from newcomers that were still in excitement stage. As of this writing, Bitcoin is back on track and its selling at $8900. Many other cryptos have doubled since the upward trend started and the market cap is resting at $400 billion from the recent crest of $250 billion.

If you are slowly warming up to cryptocurrencies and wish to become a successful trader, the tips below will help you out.

Practical tips on how to trade cryptocurrencies

• Start modestly

You've already heard that cryptocurrency prices are skyrocketing. You've also probably received the news that this upward trend may not last long. Some naysayers, mostly esteemed bankers and economists usually go ahead to term them as get-rich-quick schemes with no stable foundation.

Such news can make you invest in a hurry and fail to apply moderation. A little analysis of the market trends and cause-worthy currencies to invest in can guarantee you good returns. Whatever you do, do not invest all your hard-earned money into these assets.

• Understand how exchanges work

Recently, I saw a friend of mine post a Facebook feed about one of his friends who went on to trade on an exchange he had zero ideas on how it runs. This is a dangerous move. Always review the site you intend to use before signing up, or at least before you start trading. If they provide a dummy account to play around with, then take that opportunity to learn how the dashboard looks.

• Don't insist on trading everything

There are over 1400 cryptocurrencies to trade, but it's impossible to deal with all of them. Spreading your portfolio to a huge number of cryptos than you can effectively manage will minimize your profits. Just select a few of them, read more about them, and how to get their trade signals.

• Stay sober

Cryptocurrencies are volatile. This is both their bane and boon. As a trader, you have to understand that wild price swings are unavoidable. Uncertainty over when to make a move makes one an ineffective trader. Leverage hard data and other research methods to be sure when to execute a trade.

Successful traders belong to various online forums where cryptocurrency discussions regarding market trends and signals are discussed. Sure, your knowledge may be sufficient, but you need to rely on other traders for more relevant data.

• Diversify meaningfully

Virtually everyone will tell you to expand your portfolio, but no one will remind you to deal with currencies with real-world uses. There are a few crappy coins that you can deal with for quick bucks, but the best cryptos to deal with are those that solve existing problems. Coins with real-world uses tend to be less volatile.

Don't diversify too early or too late. And before you make a move to buy any crypto-asset, ensure you know its market cap, price changes, and daily trading volumes. Keeping a healthy portfolio is the way to reaping big from these digital assets.

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Source by Rodgers Aluvisia

Mining of Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

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Bitcoin cash is a cryptocurrency fork of Bitcoin classic. It was created in august 2017. It is worth noting that Bitcoin cash increases the size of blocks, which allows more transactions to be processed. Bitcoin mining is the process by which transactions are verified and added to the public ledger (known as the block chain). It is also the means through which new bitcoins are released.

The process of mining bitcoin cash.

You must be wondering how bitcoin cash is mined. There are two main activities involved:

1. Mining for blocks.

2. Addition of transactions to blocks.

1. Mining for blocks

When mining for blocks, miners use their computing power to find new blocks.

The new blocks are to be added to the block chain. The entire process is under 'proof of work' protocol. When a new block is discovered, the miners who made the discovery are rewarded handsomely. Currently the reward goes at 12.5 bitcoins. There are other incentives available too.

2. Addition of transactions to blocks

The second stage involves adding transactions to blocks. When a new block is discovered, the group of miners responsible for the discovery become temporary dictators of that block. When a miner needs to send some bitcoin cash to another, he will not do it physically. It is a transaction that has to be added to the blocks in the chain. Miners usually charge a fee if you want your transaction added to the blocks. It is after the addition that the transaction is deemed complete.

It is worth noting that both cash and bitcoin use the same SHA256 hashing algorithm. This means that they fight for hashing power from the same group of miners. Bitcoin cash is however more profitable to mine.

The top miners of cash are ViaBTC, AntPool, BTC.top, BTC.com among others. The mining profitability of the coin depends on the value of the coin, its fees and the difficulty involved in the mining. Difficulty in mining increases as more miners contribute their hash rate to the coin. This leads to reduced mining profitability. Currently, the coin has the second - highest 24-hour trading volume. It stands at $1.2 billion.It is also very encouraging to mine the cash (BCH) because exchanges such as Bithumb, Bitfinex and HitBTC allow the bitcoin cash to be deposited, withdrawn and also to be traded.

Bitcoin cash is focused on reversing a trend where very few online merchants accept the bitcoin. This will be made possible by adopting bigger block sizes. It will also refuse to adopt SegWit. With these mechanisms in place, the coin will definitely scale up so that its block chain supports more total transactions. This is referred to as on-chain scaling.

The process of mining cash is not as complicated as many would think. A few formalities and processes need to be observed and the overall process will give out the bitcoin cash. It is imperative to note that bitcoin was the first ever decentralized cryptocurrency.

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Source by Lisa An Freeman

How to Get $ 10 of Free Bitcoin, Easy and Simple

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By now, you've probably heard about Bitcoin - there are stories of people making thousands of dollars overnight with this and other Crypto-currencies.

Like any new speculative investment, there is an element of risk. This is why getting started with a free $ 10 of Bitcoin is a good way to try it out, and start learning how it all works. I'm still new to all this myself and stumbled across this process during my research. It helped me, so I thought I should share it with you.

The first things to know about buying Bitcoin are that there are several main ways to purchase it, and it's not that complicated to do so.

The main two ways to purchase Bitcoin are through a broker, or through an exchange. Check out the Coinbase exchange - they're one of the biggest exchanges, have a clean and easy to understand interface, are accessible by apps on various mobile and computer platforms, and offer you US $ 10 of free Bitcoin to get started. There are other exchanges that I have tried, and that work well - BTCMarkets, and Coinspot, to name a couple which are both good - but only Coinbase has the $ 10 startup bonus.

Additional benefits of Coinbase are that it operates locally in multiple currencies - if you are in Australia, for example, all of your data will display in Australian Dollars, so you don't need to keep on your toes with exchange rates and the like.

Also worth mentioning is that Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency that Coinbase deals with - you can also buy Etherium (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), or LiteCoin (LTC) - whatever currency you decide to use, you can still get $ 10 of free Bitcoin.

Without delaying any further, here it is - how you get your free $ 10 of Bitcoin:

1) Sign up to Coinbase (the link at the bottom of this article will make you eligible for the $ 10 bonus)

2) Complete the account setup process, including verifying your email address, phone number, and uploading proof of your ID (driver's license, passport, or other photo ID - this can be done by taking a photo with your phone)

3) Enter your credit card details, and verify the card by viewing the transactions Coinbase will add to your internet banking statement (this is instant, and you don't get charged)

4) Make an order for US $ 100 worth of Bitcoin, Etherium - whatever - on your now-activated account. If your local currency isn't USD, you will have to ensure you order the equivalent amount to US $ 100

*** IMPORTANT TO NOTE: All Bitcoin purchases incur a fee, and Coinbase is no different. At most , the fee for your initial $ 100 purchase should be about $ 4 ***

5) That's it! After a couple of days, the US $ 10 worth of Bitcoin will appear in your Coinbase account - even when you subtract the purchase fee, you still end up ahead.

So, if you're curious about Bitcoin, want to dip your toe in without the risk, and want to get some free money (!) During the process, give this a try. The bonus Bitcoin will more than cover your fees for that first deposit, and can help you learn what it's all about.

Sound good?

Some final notes:

• This process will only work if you are a new customer of Coinbase. If you already have an account, you will not get the free credit

• You can only get the free $ 10 if you sign up using the link below.

• The above offer is time-limited - after creating your account using the link, you have 180 days in which to make the purchase of US $ 100 worth of Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Etherium, and still get the $ 10 credit.

I hope you have a prosperous and fortunate future with Bitcoin, and take advantage of the free $ 10. Free money doesn't come around every day, and with the rates at which Bitcoin has grown recently, $ 10 could multiply quite quickly! My plan is to just sit on the $ 110 dollars for a while, see what happens, and get a feel for Bitcoin's ups and downs. Let's see how we go.

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Source by Zach Charge