How You Can Get Paid to Learn Blockchain Development

Published at: https://bangiboy181.medium.com/how-to-get-paid-to-learn-blockchain-development-d517684fd5e7

Does this sound familiar to you?

You are interested in learning something, hoping that one day, you can make money out of it.

You spend days, weeks, or even months learning it, telling yourself “It will all be worth it” when you build that next killer product.

You sacrifice valuable time away from the people who love you, when suddenly, you realize that you have only scratched the surface, and that you are still miles away from being an expert.

Your skills are still mediocre, and you need to spend a lot more time learning before you would be able to make a single cent.

You feel lost. “All that time spent for nothing.”

And eventually, you give up.

Don’t worry, because you are not alone. This happens to more people than you think.

I recently stumbled upon a video called “How to Get PAID to Learn Blockchain Development”.

It piqued my interest because, usually you would need to “pay” in order to learn, not “get paid”.

But in this video, I learned that you can actually get paid to learn blockchain development. Here is how.

Getting paid to learn

You can get paid to learn blockchain development by starting to work.

But “How?” you may ask.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be an expert to get hired.

Most beginners doubt themselves and delay applying for a job, with an excuse that they are not good enough.

However, there are opportunities to learn while you are working.

Yes, you may not be the one who leads the project, but you can bring value by mastering just one specific niche, and start to expand from there.

You may be wondering; how do you sharpen your skills if you are just starting out?

There is a free program on Coursera that teaches you how to specialize in Blockchain.

The “Blockchain Specialization” program consists of 4 courses:

Blockchain Basics
Smart Contracts
Decentralized Applications (Dapps)
Blockchain Platforms

Let’s look into these courses one by one, starting with Blockchain Basics.

The Blockchain Basics course “provides a broad overview of the essential concepts of blockchain technology – by initially exploring the Bitcoin protocol followed by the Ethereum protocol – to lay the foundation necessary for developing applications and programming.”

Once you have the foundation, you can move on to build smart contracts and Dapps, which is what the second and third courses allow you to do.

Finally, the fourth and final course, Blockchain Platforms, “provides learners with an understanding of the broader blockchain ecosystem”. It covers “other blockchain platforms, details of two decentralized application use cases, and challenges such as privacy and scalability.”

All of these courses have video explanations, reading materials, and practice exercises. There is also a project at the end of the first three courses for you to harness your power.

After you complete the program, you are one step closer to your blockchain development career.

The next thing you need to do is to start your own project using the concepts you learned.

Starting your own project

Your project can completely different than the examples shown in the program. It is completely up to you.

You are free to make it as simple or as ambitious as you like.

The goal here is to demonstrate that you have a working knowledge of how to build a blockchain application from scratch.

Sometimes, your application needs something that was not explicitly covered in the Coursera program. If you like, you can begin to explore the resources available online, such as YouTube tutorials, forums like Stack Overflow, or technical documentations.

Once you have a working application, you can use it to land your first job.

Here, you will be paid to learn about blockchain development in more detail.

This is a process used by many developers, because learning to be an expert is quite difficult without getting paid.

You may get demotivated learning by yourself for months or years without seeing a return on your effort.

Also, even if you did start with a formal learning path such as a computer science degree or a coding bootcamp, you will still need to learn on the job because the computer science industry is constantly evolving.

Conclusions

Blockchain technology is at the front of revolutionizing many industries, especially the financial sector.

This would bring many benefits, such as:

giving financial access to underserved populations,
reducing transaction costs in trade and economy, and
creating higher quality services and products.

So, I believe that blockchain development is such an important job that it will be the bedrock of a better future.

If you are interested in learning blockchain development, I encourage you to give it a shot.

Good luck and happy learning!

Using the Fear & Greed Index to Boost Your Crypto Portfolio

Published at: https://libranews.com/2021/06/18/using-the-fear-greed-metric-to-boost-your-crypto-portfolio/

The fear & greed index is a metric that combines data from various sources to show how fearful or greedy the market is on a particular day.

It is a measure of the market sentiment, on a scale of 0 to 100. Zero means “extreme fear” while 100 means “extreme greed.”

Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors of all time, said “be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

So, when the fear & greed index shows that the market is extremely fearful, that could be a buying opportunity. When the meter shows extreme greed, that means the market is due for a correction.

Jason Pizzino, a stock and crypto trader, shared his strategy for investing in the digital asset.

The strategy is to buy when the fear & greed index is 15 or below, because that is when the market is fearful and we should be “greedy”.

He keeps a progress tracker on an Excel sheet. If you were to follow this simple strategy, even if you started well into the bull market in May this year, you would have been up by at least 10% today.

He says this strategy works because there is very little stress involved.

You do not need to be worried about being too late to the market – aka FOMO – which may cause you to invest when the market is too hot.

You also do not need to worry about how much to invest, as you are contributing a fixed amount every time the fear & greed index is 15 or below.

This strategy is part of a bigger one, where you begin with buying bitcoin during the early stages of a bull market.

As the bull market progresses, bitcoin’s price will go up, until it eventually plateaus and investors begin to seek other opportunities, namely altcoins.

This is when altcoins start to pump – also known as altseason – until the prices increase at an unsustainable rate, and the everything comes crashing down.

Anticipating this cycle, the strategy is to start by focusing on bitcoin.

At the moment, we may be sitting in an accumulation phase, where the price is trading sideways within the $32,000 – $42,000 range, and institutional investors with large capital are buying at a relatively cheap price at a slow pace.

Once the accumulation phase is over, we should enter a distribution phase, where this time, large institutional investors will buy aggressively within a short time frame to squeeze the supply and drive the prices up.

These accumulation and distribution cycles are part of Wyckoff’s method, which happens in any market.

By accumulating bitcoin and staying away from altcoins first, you are positioning yourself to get ahead of the curve, as historically, bitcoin will be the first to pump.

As bitcoin’s prices start to rally, greedy investors will begin to sell off their altcoins to buy bitcoin, and this will cause altcoins to bleed.

This is where, you, as a forward-thinking investor, should start to buy those cheap altcoins using the gains you got from the bitcoin rally.

After bitcoin price plateaus and investors greedily look for greener pastures in the form of altcoins again, this is when you sit tight and wait for your altcoins to pump, and sell off once you see indications that the market is too hot.

One of these indicators is the fear & greed index. When the market is too greedy, that is when you sell.

It is important to stick to this simple plan, and not fall for short term altcoin rallies that may happen during the bitcoin accumulation phase.

Some altcoins will even have 10-20% rallies in a day, which may tempt many to swarm to those altcoins, only to see them bleed again as bitcoin prices go up.

Unexperienced retail investors may think that they will be able to buy low and sell high just by looking at the charts, but from my personal experience, this is not an easy thing to do.

I have tried buying an altcoin when its price fell close to a major support level.

I thought it was a great buying opportunity. However, in those few minutes, I was afraid that the price would drop even further beyond the support level, so I held off on buying.

I started to scramble for information on the internet as to why the prices were falling, just in case there was some fundamental change to the altcoin that would drop its price even lower.

However, by the time I was convinced that there was nothing to worry about, the price had already bounced back, causing me to lose my window of opportunity.

But the story doesn’t end there. Initially, I thought the price would go up by 10-20% in a matter of days. That would be a solid return for just clicking a few buttons.

So, when the price did go up by that much and by that fast, I was frustrated thinking about what could have been, had I acted confidently when I had my chance.

However, in next few days, the price went up by another 32%, as it rode on the bullish news that Tesla would adopt bitcoin again once half of its mining activities came from renewable energy.

So, even if I did act swiftly and bought the so-called “dip”, I would still be disappointed because I would have sold it when it reached a 10-20% gain, when the price actually soared by 42%.

On a short timescale, nobody can tell where the market is heading. Being a new investor, trying to play the day trading game is like playing with fire. You might just get burned.

If not by losing money, then by the stress it causes.

This is why I like Jason Pizzino’s low stress investment strategy.

It takes the emotions out of the equation, and allows you to be “fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

In a market where there are now institutional investors who have enough capital to manipulate the market, this is more important than ever.

Good luck and happy investing.

Breaking Down Bitcoin’s Crazy Price Movement

Published at: https://libranews.com/2021/06/18/breaking-down-the-events-behind-bitcoins-crazy-price-movement/

February 2014 – Mt Gox was the largest bitcoin exchange in the world. The company was responsible for over 70% of the world’s trading volume, making it the go-to place for thousands who wanted to buy and sell. This time, however, the customers were frustrated, angry, and scared – Mt Gox had stopped all bitcoin withdrawals. The exchange cited technical issues, but given the history of a prior hacking incident, users could not shake off the feeling that something was wrong.

A couple of weeks went by, when suddenly, Mt Gox suspended all trading. The website just went offline. As users were starting to wonder what was going on, a leaked document surfaced, revealing the company had lost over 800,000 bitcoins to hackers, worth $460 million.

It was the biggest crypto theft in history. Bitcoin investors were scared shirtless – many lost their money. Anyone who had thought about investing in bitcoin earlier were glad they didn’t. The public vowed to never touch it with a 10-foot pole. And with that, the largest price correction for the cryptocurrency was set into motion.

From November 2013 to January 2016, bitcoin’s price went from $1,163 to $152 – a whopping 86.9% drop. This may seem insignificant, considering bitcoin is now worth $40,000 each, but imagine if the same thing happened today. Imagine if bitcoin crashed to $5,000. Many investors, even institutions with “diamond” hands, will be spooked. For retail investors like you and me, try telling your spouse you lost over 80% of your investment. Leveraged traders who went long would be absolutely “rekt”.

However, a quick glance to the past would tell us that there may be nothing to worry about. Even the unluckiest investors who got in at the top in 2013 and lost more than four fifths of their money within two years, would have made a 34x return had they “hodled” on. That kind of gain is unheard of anywhere else. Only in cryptoland.

The fundamentals behind bitcoin did not change. The Mt Gox users who stored their crypto in their “cold” wallets were saved. The rest of the bitcoin on the blockchain were untouched. The community developing and maintaining the network was alive and kicking. The only thing that changed was people’s perception. They were paralyzed with fear.

Fear and greed are just part and parcel of the market’s boom and bust. Forbes and Gawker publish news on bitcoin – prices skyrocket. Mt Gox gets hacked and China bans the cryptocurrency – prices plummet. ICO’s are the next big thing – “let’s go all in”. Turns out many of them were scams – things hit the fan. Tesla accepts bitcoin as payment – “we love you, Elon”. He says “just kidding, no we won’t.” – everyone wants him dead.

There are underlying strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, behind cryptocurrencies. Understanding them helps you tell the fundamentals apart from the noise. Do not be afraid, and do not be greedy. Do no panic sell, and do not invest more than you can afford to lose. “Good things happen to those who wait”, and “strike while the iron is hot”.

The more you can learn about these fundamentals, the better off you will be. If there is anything the crypto investors during the Mt Gox hacking incident would tell you, I bet it would be this.

The Profound Evolution of Cryptocurrencies

Published at: https://libranews.com/2021/06/16/the-evolution-of-cryptocurrencies/

On a quiet evening in October of 2008, members of an obscure cryptography mailing list received an email from one Satoshi Nakamoto. It read, “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” Little did they know, the brief message would later shake the financial world to its core and spark a decentralization movement worldwide.

From an idea discussed among esoteric cypherpunks, to being an asset class worth over $1.7 trillion dollars, cryptocurrencies have become a polarizing subject over the years. Recently, however, it seems like there has been more and more indication that this new digital asset will become the currency of the future. El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender in 2021. And in the current bull market, it seems like everyone and their grandmother is talking about bitcoin.

However, the journey to becoming one of the most ventured investments in modern history has not come without a fair share of turbulence. Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist, called bitcoin a Ponzi scheme, while Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the world, referred to it as a fool’s gold.

Despite the harsh criticism from prominent financial figures, and the constant barrage of attacks by the mainstream media, cryptocurrencies have soldiered on and showed that they are not going away any time soon. Thirteen years since Satoshi Nakamoto released his bitcoin whitepaper, the digital currency looks to be stronger than ever, reaching an all-time high of $1.1 trillion in market capitalization just a few months ago. Over 100 million people are now using cryptocurrencies.

Each bitcoin today is worth about $40,000. Currently, there are 18.7 million coins in circulation. A new block is minted roughly every 10 minutes, until there are only 21 million bitcoins, upon which, the currency will become deflationary – which means the price of goods and services, relative to bitcoin, will go down. These are the fundamental principles behind the network, which allows it to be maintained without a central authority, and be easily adopted by many.

The process of minting a new coin is called “mining”, and in the earlier years, you can do this with just an average laptop. Satoshi Nakamoto himself mined about 1 million bitcoins before handing over the reins to Gavin Andresen, an American software developer, before disappearing forever.

Today, however, mining requires top-grade computer equipment and high electricity consumption, which is prohibitive for many. This technical fault shows that bitcoin is not yet perfect, as a network maintained by only a certain group of people means more centralization – something bitcoin was trying to avoid in its conception.

Just as a powerless infant evolves into a strong, full-grown adult over time, so too will technology evolve from being a prototype to a world-class product. Seeing the imperfections of bitcoin, computer and financial wizards worldwide have developed other cryptocurrencies, with additional features and sometimes radically different concepts to continue the mission of having a “new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” These alternate coins are colloquially known as altcoins.

The first ever altcoin was Namecoin. It was released a little over two years after its predecessor. Namecoin’s primary use is to resist domain name censorship from any governing body. Unlike bitcoin, however, it received little traction and has since fallen to obscurity. Apparently, most people don’t care enough to switch to an autonomous domain. As a result, the price of Namecoin plateaued for most of its life.

Bitcoin and Namecoin price performance. Source: coinlib.io

The failure of Namecoin shows that major cryptocurrencies are not a fluke. There are many factors that go into the success of bitcoin and other digital assets. Among them: the quality of the network or product, the strength of the project team, the ability to form strategic partnerships and raise funding, a robust coin allocation and token economics, and sometimes, the support or hype from an individual or group with star power. If cryptocurrencies don’t have any of these success factors, they may end up like Namecoin.

Six months after Namecoin was released, another altcoin made its appearance – Litecoin. Where Bitcoin takes 10 minutes to process a block, Litecoin does it in 2.5 minutes, making it a faster network under the same conditions. This altcoin fared better than Namecoin, as it is able to stay among the top 15 coins based on market capitalization.

However, the largest altcoin to-date is Ethereum. Its dominance is thanks to the smart contract feature, which allows applications to automatically execute when the terms of an agreement are fulfilled. Since then, there has been a plethora of decentralized applications, or DApps, that run on the Ethereum network.

The fastest growing sector among these applications is decentralized finance, or DeFi. It refers to any smart contracts, protocols, or DApps related to finance. One example is decentralized exchanges, which allow users to exchange currencies directly with one another without trusting an intermediary. Another example is lending platforms. They use smart contracts to replace banks that manage the lending in the middle.

These smart contracts hold Ether and other Ethereum-based tokens until the predefined terms of agreement are fulfilled. The value of all these tokens are called “Total Value Locked” or TVL. The chart below shows a parabolic rise in TVL in the past 12 months, reaching an all-time high of over $80 billion in May 2021. If this trend continues, there will be a significant shift in the financial sector, where incumbent institutions such as large banks will lose a huge chunk of their market share. They will have to adapt to the changing technological landscape in order to survive.

Today, there are over 10,000 different cryptocurrencies and over 300 crypto-exchanges. Besides El Salvador, other Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay have also started to look into adopting bitcoin as legal tender, shattering into pieces Paul Krugman’s argument against bitcoin. Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, has invested $500 million in a pro-bitcoin digital bank. So, he seems to be backtracking from his “fool’s gold” comment. MicroStrategy, a software company listed on NASDAQ, is on a bitcoin shopping spree, investing billions of dollars to hoard the digital asset. Hedge funds are now eyeing to add bitcoin to their portfolio, adding up to an estimated $300 billion dollars flowing into the market in the next five years.

However bullish this news may be, there are still fundamental problems with cryptocurrencies that need to be solved before they can reach mass adoption. By design, cryptocurrencies’ ledgers are distributed among many computers to verify its authenticity. In theory, the more computers the ledgers are distributed to, the more decentralized and secure the network is. However, this comes at the cost of an increased environmental impact, and an incredibly slow network.

There is an immense research and development going on to solve these issues. Ethereum core developers are looking to release a groundbreaking update called ETH 2.0 which could do just that. This update is broken down into three phases, the first one of which, called the Beacon Chain, is already live since December 2020. The second and third phase is estimated to be rolled out in within the next two years.

The importance of fixing these environmental and scalability issues cannot be stressed enough, as the idea of a stagnant, underused, and overhyped asset could only mean one thing – a bubble. And when a bubble pops, a lot of people, especially unexperienced retail investors, are going to get hurt. An excitement to see a life-changing technology develop in front of our eyes must be accompanied by a healthy sense of realism. So, do not invest more than you can afford to lose.

From developing technical solutions, devising robust monetary policies and supporting cryptocurrency growth, we carry a great responsibility to nurture this young industry. Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin paper sparked a worldwide revolution for decentralization, and it is up to us to see whether that spark turns into a flame, or goes out silently.