Republik DAO envisions cryptocurrencies as a gateway to a world of opportunities, a new frontier in the digital realm built on open-source software that allows individuals to break free from the grip of financial and technological giants such as Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

So why do so many people still believe that cryptocurrencies are full of scams?

This article proposes the "Concentric Circles of the Crypto Industry" model, which explains why many people view the industry as a fraudulent one.

This model aims to equip beginners with knowledge to navigate the often murky waters of cryptocurrency and gain a deeper understanding of the different types of people they may encounter in the industry. By identifying those to avoid and those to pay attention to, investors can make more informed decisions and reduce the likelihood of falling victim to scams.

The article discusses a model for understanding the crypto industry, consisting of four concentric circles. At the center of the model is the Core Developers circle, surrounded by the Crypto Believers and Crypto Scammers circles, with the rest of the world in the outermost circle.

The Core Developers

This is made up of the builders and philosophers who established the industry's principles. They possess an in-depth understanding of the world's problems, how cryptography and blockchain technology can address them, and the radical implications for the future. They comprehend the philosophy, code, and moral values that this technology can bring to the world. This is what is referred to as "crypto values."

The circle includes Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, who birthed the Bitcoin blockchain and then slowly disappeared because he knew that Bitcoin would be better off without a leader.

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, is also part of this circle. Vitalik is a digital monk, expert in cryptography, philosophy, mathematics, and of course, crypto economics. He has a desire to build public goods and social systems that promote global well-being. Even though he is incredibly wealthy, he is known to sleep in hostels and live out of a backpack, as he does not want to consume more resources than necessary.

In conclusion, this model can provide valuable knowledge to beginners in the crypto industry, allowing them to navigate the dark world of crypto with greater ease and comprehend the types of people they may encounter within the industry – those to be watched and those to be avoided.

Becoming a Core Developer can be a selfless job. Building open-source software is often undervalued and compensated relatively limited compared to the value it provides to the world. These people are here because they believe in their mission, they see a better future, and they need to help make it a reality.

Core Developers are the holy people at the center of the crypto universe, and their leadership creates the highest gravitational pull. They are the revolutionaries with good hearts and sound minds, for a future of cryptographic power.

The Crypto Believers

These are the users of crypto power. These people believe in the same future being built by Core Developers and live on the foundation established by Core Developers.

But this circle is not just composed of users! It also includes application developers, DAO members, and companies, all building interrelated layers of products and services around these new protocols.

Ethereum is a protocol, and we are all organized around it.

Applications like Uniswap, Aave, or Maker are built on top of the Ethereum application layer with smart contracts. DAOs like MakerDAO, PleasrDAO, or even Constitution DAO are governed using Ethereum. Companies are also organized around Ethereum, such as venture capital firms, news offices, or media companies… like Republik Rupiah!

This circle is filled with settlers, not tourists.

Here are crypto citizens who are building structures on this new frontier, testing their products in experimental phases, all gradually becoming less reliant on banks by managing their money and property on crypto tracks, and building new digital identities for themselves. These settlers are here to inhabit the open and free metaverse, built using open-source software and ethos.

Here are people like Rune Christensen, the man who saw the need for decentralized dollars and created the vision for MakerDAO, even before DAOs became popular! Now, billions of DAI exist to avoid their mismanaged government currency.

Or Hayden Adams, who single-handedly built Uniswap, a public and free asset exchange system after just learning how to code and with the help of a $10,000 grant from the Ethereum Foundation.

This crypto layer is where values built into the base-level protocols by Core Developers are expressed in applications built on top of them.

Cami Russo, a resident of Argentina, has experienced first-hand the effects of hyperinflation on the Argentine peso, which has created a demand for crypto-industry products. The adoption of DAI, a native crypto stablecoin, has been widespread in Argentina due to its ability to help the country avoid inflation rates of 50-100%. After becoming a crypto believer, Cami studied journalism and established The Defiant, a media publication focused on crypto news.

Anthony Sassano, on the other hand, produces a daily video that informs the world about the Ethereum ecosystem's latest developments.

This is the crypto layer that broadcasts progress in the industry, as developers and application makers tend not to be good at marketing themselves since they are focused on building the future. The community around the crypto industry solves it, and this community exists because of the shared belief that crypto is here to create a better and freer world.

Crypto Scammers

However, the understanding of the crypto world is hindered by Crypto Scammers who separate it from the rest of the world. Crypto Scammers make it difficult to hear the signals coming from the true forefront of the crypto industry. Scammers are loud and often exaggerate their claims. They use tactics and polarization styles that work well in politics. Crypto Scammers are not foolish – they recognize the wealth that can be extracted in the crypto world and are eager to take shortcuts to make money, regardless of how sustainable or ethical the technology is.

Crypto Scammers often market themselves more than they build technology. They create dangerous products intended to trap naive crypto beginners, such as paid Telegram channels where they share "alpha info" that is nothing more than a sales pitch or convoluted DeFi projects that transfer money from the victim's pocket to the scammer's. Most scammers appear in bull markets and mimic what is popular in the market, such as creating fake ICOs in 2017 or poorly executed NFT projects in 2021.

Crypto Scammers share some similarities, such as having a selfish personality, being big, bombastic, and sometimes bragging. They form a small but lively community, often becoming a personality cult. They silence dissent and are a classic mix of human and robot in the modern social media world. The products or systems they create are often unsustainable, despite seeming otherwise at the time. Shiny new crypto products that don't make sense are created, and they eventually die.

Well-Known Scammers

Alex Mashinsky

The founder and operator of Celsius, a custodial lending service. It is a centralized company that accepts customers' crypto assets and offers them substantial returns on their deposits. While this type of business model is commonly referred to as a bank, Mashinsky promotes it under the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) banner and espouses the notion that DeFi will disrupt traditional banks. However, it is worth noting that he himself is essentially establishing a bank. Celsius operates by accepting customer deposits, employing a high-risk trading strategy that lacks accountability, and putting other people's money at stake.

Daniele Sesta

The brain who built the Wonderland ecosystem. Following behind Sesta is a swarm of Pepe Frog accounts that crowd around him wherever he goes on the internet. Whether it's on crypto Twitter, YouTube comments, or live streaming chat boxes.

They invade and occupy the digital spaces where crypto enthusiasts spend their time, infiltrating their thoughts because of their incessant noise. We have seen this strategy before, both within and outside of the crypto world. However, in the crypto realm, when money is at stake, these internet armies can be deafening.

Nevertheless, Wonderland collapsed when people realized that the unsupported stablecoin was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. Additionally, the true identity of one of the anonymous founders of the project was revealed to be Michael Patryn, a convicted money launderer and one of the founders of QuadrigaCX exchange, which had a history of its founder's mysterious death and subsequent discovery of the exchange's bankruptcy.

Do Kwon

The eccentric and aggressive founder of Terra. The event marked the largest capital destruction in crypto history, where $50 billion in capital turned to zero.

The Terra ecosystem lost all its incoming cash flows overnight, revealing itself as an unsustainable structure that bears a striking resemblance to a colossal Ponzi scheme behind the scenes.

Similar to Sesta, Do Kwon has a large following that portrays themselves as "Lunatics." As Terra experienced surges, Do Kwon became increasingly outspoken and aggressive on Twitter while simultaneously amassing his followers.

Furthermore, there are many other fraudsters in the crypto world, such as Richard Heart and BitBoy.

Should we coexist with Crypto Scammers?

Yes and no.

We cannot directly stop these crypto scammers. That is the consequence that the crypto world must accept when prioritizing permissionless values above all else.

Universal access is the core value of crypto; this cannot be compromised.

Similar to the internet, no one should need permission to use crypto. Crypto is a public utility in money and finance, available to anyone with an internet connection. And this public utility becomes more valuable over time as the DeFi financial world grows and expands organically with increasing adoption.

Unfortunately, this same permissionless property also means that it is challenging to halt scammers from their actions. Permissionless financial innovation allows us to break free from the financial confinement imposed by banks and financial institutions, but it also means it is difficult to prevent others from attempting to make money through unethical means.

Although we cannot directly stop them, we do not have to coexist with them.

We can fight back through education. As an industry, we need to do better in reaching the masses before scammers do. Massive marketing efforts exploiting grandiose and bombastic tactics are hard to compete with. Crypto is complex, and understanding what makes this industry beneficial is more challenging than simply listening to a few charismatic individuals urging you to buy their tokens.

The good news is that nowadays, most people have basic intuition to avoid email spam and internet viruses.

Ultimately, crypto will not be any different.

The first thing to know is that Ripple is a platform. Ripple platform is an open-source protocol designed to enable fast and cheap transactions. It has its own currency (XRP) but also allows anyone to use the platform to create their own currency through RippleNet.

Despite its ambitions, Ripple is currently embroiled in legal issues with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), although this has hardly prevented XRP from soaring in value along with other cryptocurrencies.

What is Ripple?

Ripple is a payment settlement system and currency exchange network that can process transactions worldwide. The idea is that Ripple acts as a trusted intermediary between two parties in a transaction because the network can quickly confirm that the exchange is proceeding correctly. Ripple can facilitate exchanges for various fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, and even commodities like gold.

"Ripple was designed from the outset to essentially replace SWIFT [the leading money transfer network] or to replace the settlement layer between major financial institutions," said Pat White, CEO of Bitwave.

"The standard cost for transacting on Ripple is set at 0.00001 XRP, which is very cheap compared to the large fees charged by banks for cross-border payments," said El Lee, a board member of Kustodian Onchain. The only reason this service is not free is to prevent DDos attacks.

XRP is the token used to represent value transfers across the Ripple Network. The best way to describe XRP is as a "Joker." Not the scary Batman enemy, but a card that can be any other card. If you want to exchange dollars for euros, you can do dollars with dollars and euros with euros to minimize commissions. As highlighted above, the transaction fee on Ripple is 0.00001 XRP.

In particular, the XRP blockchain operates slightly differently from most other cryptos. The Ripple XRP network is somewhat centralized: while anyone can download its validation software, it maintains what it calls a unique node list that users can select to verify their transactions based on which participant they deem least likely to cheat them. The default list currently contains 35 trusted validators. Ripple decides which validators will be approved to enter this list and also creates six of these validation nodes. However, users can opt-out of this default list and theoretically remove Ripple-supported validators from their transactions entirely, instead creating their own trusted validator list. This would allow the network to continue to approve transactions even without Ripple involved or even needing to exist.

A Brief History of Ripple

Ripple was founded in 2012, but started as an idea in 2004. In 2005, Ryan Fugger launched RipplePay.com as a predecessor to blockchain currency. RipplePay provided a secure online payment option for the community but was not widely adopted. In 2011, Fugger was soon approached by Jared McCaleb and Chris Larsen to replace RipplePay with a digital currency system where community consensus verifies transactions, rather than miners as in the Bitcoin network.

OpenCoin started developing the protocol, based on the work done by Fugger, one of the early founders and architects, aiming to enable direct and near-instant payment transfers between two parties in any currency. This would dramatically increase transaction cost efficiency and transaction time in the existing traditional system. Among the early investors in OpenCoin were Andressen Horowitz, Bitcoin Opportunity Fund (now Digital Currency Group), Roger Ver, and Google Ventures, helping to provide initial funding to OpenCoin and its ongoing project.

Ripple’s Transaction Protocol work began in 2012. The protocol was designed to facilitate fast and direct money transfers between two parties in fiat currency, without waiting time or transaction fees from traditional money transfer services. To provide greater liquidity, the protocol also provides for the creation of new value tokens known as XRP.

In September 2013, OpenCoin was renamed Ripple Labs. In May 2015, regulatory authorities in the United States fined Ripple Labs $700,000 for violating the Bank Secrecy Act by selling XRP without the required authorization. In October 2015, the company simplified its name to Ripple.

In 2014, what started as a person-to-person money transfer option began to attract banks as another option for settling money transfers in a faster and more cost-effective way than traditional technology. In 2014, several banks and payment processors signed agreements to use Ripple in testing capacities. Ripple has added more institutions every year since then, with over 100 clients in 2017.

It is important to note that Ripple is a private company. They raise funds through institutional investors and venture capital, and their revenue model is based on professional services and creating integration into RippleNet for financial institutions. In 2017, Ripple was positive in cash.

In September 2017, R3, another blockchain company, sued Ripple. R3 argued that Ripple agreed in September 2016 to give it an option to buy 5 billion XRP at an exercise price of $0.0085 before September 2019. At its peak, the intrinsic value of this call option was worth about $16.5 billion. R3 accused Ripple of terminating the contract in June 2017, even though it did not have the right to do so. Ripple then filed a counterclaim, alleging that R3 did not honor its side of the original 2016 agreement by failing to introduce Ripple to a large number of banking clients or to promote XRP for use in these banking systems. As of February 2018, the case remained unresolved.

Who is the founder of Ripple?

Ryan Fugger developed Ripple in 2004 after working on a local exchange trading system in Vancouver. Fugger then built the first iteration of this system, RipplePay.com. At the same time, in May 2011, Jed McCaleb began developing a digital currency system in which transactions were verified by consensus among network members, rather than by the mining process used by Bitcoin. In August 2012, Jed McCaleb hired Chris Larsen, and they approached Ryan Fugger with their digital currency idea. After discussing with McCaleb and long-time Ripple community members, Fugger handed over control. In September 2012, Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb founded OpenCoin. OpenCoin started developing the Ripple protocol (RTXP) and the Ripple payment and exchange network.

Ryan Fugger is a web developer and decentralized system consultant. He now serves as an Advisor at a company called Clout. Clout is a media platform focused on blockchain and cryptocurrency prepared in a manner similar to social media sharing platforms like Reddit.

Chris Larsen is an angel investor, business executive, and privacy activist who is considered the richest person in cryptocurrency. He is known for co-founding several fintech startups, starting with the online mortgage lender E-loan in 1996.

Jed McCaleb is a renowned programmer and entrepreneur. He co-founded several crypto startups, including Ripple, Stellar, eDonkey, Overnet, and the crypto currency exchange Mt. Gox (he sold his shares and the platform was recoded long before the famous hack occurred), which at its peak handled over 70% of all Bitcoin transactions worldwide.

History of XRP Price

XRP's price has surged in 2021, but it has yet to reach the heights of late 2017, making this digital coin distinct from other cryptocurrencies. Ethereum's price, for example, continues to reach new all-time highs, an achievement not accomplished by XRP. Indeed, XRP's price spikes have tended to be relatively late to follow - only occurring in early 2021, compared to late 2020 for most other cryptos - after the US SEC filed a legal complaint against Ripple in November 2020. This legal action caused XRP's price to plummet from around $0.70 to $0.20.

Ripple is mostly active in Southeast Asia - a region with a fragmented payment landscape and one that is highly investigating the type of state-issued cryptocurrencies to make cross-border payments much easier. Price spikes tend to follow after news about this topic in particular regions. In 2019, for example, XRP's price grew after Japan and South Korea began testing to reduce the time and cost of international fund transfers between the two countries.

According to coingecko.com, XRP has a market capitalization of around $38 billion at the time of writing this article. Its all-time high price was $3.40, which occurred on January 7, 2018.

How Successful is Ripple's Adoption?

Some Ripple customers are already in the early stages of using xRapid, Ripple's XRP liquidity solution. Payments to emerging marketplaces may require several currency traders (additional costs) and pre-funded local currency accounts at the destination (inactive capital). Instead, payment providers and banks can use XRP to fund these payments on demand, without intermediaries, at less than half the current cost.

As of August 2019, only 4 banks or payment providers with over 1,000 employees were using xRapid: MoneyGram, SBI Securities, Cuallix, IDT. The rest were just testing it. (Another source: https://www.stedas.hr/infographic-companies-using-ripple-xrp.html).

What is BNB Chain?

BNB is a cryptocurrency issued by Binance Exchange and traded with the symbol BNB. BNB originally ran on the Ethereum blockchain with the ERC-20 standard, but has since become the native coin of BNB Chain.

Users of BNB Chain receive transaction fee discounts on Binance Exchange as an incentive. BNB can also be exchanged or traded with other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.

As of June 2021, Binance Exchange has become one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, supporting over 1.4 million transactions per second.

Just like other cryptocurrencies, BNB offers several uses beyond the Binance exchange, such as:

• Trading: BNB can be traded with other cryptocurrencies on various exchanges, depending on the exchange's limitations.
• Transaction fees on Binance Exchange: BNB can be used to pay for transactions on Binance Exchange, and users also receive discounts for doing so.
• Credit card payments: BNB can be a form of payment for crypto credit card bills.
• Payment processing: Merchants can offer BNB as a payment tool for customers, offering more flexibility in payment methods.
• Travel booking: BNB can be used to book hotels and flights on certain websites. Entertainment: From paying for virtual gifts to buying lottery tickets, BNB serves some purposes in the entertainment industry.
• Investment: Some platforms allow investors to invest in stocks, ETFs, and other assets using BNB Coin.
• Loans and transfers: BNB can be used as collateral for loans on certain platforms. Also, there are applications that allow users to split bills and pay friends and family with BNB Coin.

A Brief History of BNB Chain

The BNB coin, originally called Binance Coin, was launched during an initial coin offering (ICO) in July 2017. The sale offered 10%, or 20 million, BNB tokens to angel investors, 40%, or 80 million, to the founding team, and the remaining 50%, or 100 million, to various participants through the ICO process.

Almost half of the funds raised during the ICO process were intended to be used for Binance branding and marketing purposes, while about a third was used to build the Binance platform and make necessary upgrades to the Binance ecosystem.

BNB was initially based on the Ethereum network but has now become the native currency of Binance's own blockchain, the BNB chain. Although 100 million BNB tokens were initially offered in the ICO, the total token supply is currently lower.

Three years later, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) was introduced to the world. As Binance grew bigger and stronger, so did Binance Smart Chain. BSC was born during the DeFi revolution, as the public showed increasing interest in alternative financial solutions and blockchain-supported use cases. Currently, both Binance and BSC remain connected by BNB.

Every quarter, Binance uses one-fifth of its profits to buy back and permanently destroy, or "burn," BNB coins held in its treasury. Binance has regularly conducted these burnings.

In 2022, Binance aims to build a stronger relationship between the blockchain and its native token and focus more on decentralization.

As a result, the company has decided to rebrand Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain as BNB Chain. While Binance states that BNB stands for "Build and Build" and not an abbreviation for Binance Coin.

Through this rebranding, Binance Chain, where crypto staking and voting take place, will now be known as BNB Beacon Chain. The newer Binance blockchain, Binance Smart Chain, will now be known as BNB Smart Chain. This blockchain is now competing with Ethereum as one of the most popular blockchains for developing decentralized projects.

In addition to the name change, the number of validators will increase almost twofold, from 21 to 41, with an additional 20 validators acting as block producer candidates.

Who is the Founder of BNB Chain?

Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as "CZ", is a Chinese-Canadian business executive. Zhao is the founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume as of April 2018.

Zhao studied at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he majored in computer science. After graduating, Zhao started working for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, developing software to match trade orders. He also worked at Bloomberg Tradebook, where he was a futures trading software developer. In 2005, he moved to Shanghai where he founded Fusion Systems, known for "some of the fastest high-frequency trading systems for brokers."

Starting in 2013, he worked on various cryptocurrency projects including Blockchain.info and also served as the chief technology officer of OKCoin.

The Binance platform was developed in 2017 by two co-founders, Changpeng Zhao and Yi He. Both were former OKCoin employees, where they held executive positions. They left OKCoin to create Binance, a cryptocurrency platform whose operations are largely based in China. The name 'Binance' is derived from the combination of binary and finance. Both words summarize the platform's functions.

In less than eight months, Zhao developed Binance into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world based on trading volume, as of April 2018. Zhao also launched the Binance Smart Chain blockchain network, which has made significant contributions to the development of the decentralized financial industry.

In February 2018, Forbes magazine ranked him third on the list of "Richest People In Cryptocurrency." In 2021, his net worth is estimated to be $1.9 billion.

BNB Price History

The first market cycle for BNB started with a low price of $0.50 on November 17, 2017. BNB followed it up with a massive 4,936% increase in just 67 days. This peak price reached its highest level of $25.18 on January 12, 2017. This level remained the all-time high for BNB until April 2019. After reaching the peak, BNB dropped by 84% over 329 days. This was a significant correction, but more gradual than the previous upward movement. BNB moved down to the lowest level of $4.12 on December 7, 2018. After this, BNB started its second cycle.

The second cycle was much more gradual than the first. BNB increased by 861% over a period of 197 days, peaking at an all-time high of $39.59 on June 22, 2019. This all-time high price lasted until December 2020.

It is interesting to note that after BNB broke the previous high record, it dropped significantly before eventually recovering its losses. Unlike the upward movement, the subsequent correction was much more similar to the first one. BNB dropped 84% over 265 days in this correction. After reaching the lowest level of $6.30 on March 13, 2020 - very close to the previous low of $4.12 - BNB started its third market cycle.

According to coingecko.com, BNB is ranked #4 with a market capitalization of $67 billion. The current all-time high price for BNB is $690.93, which occurred on May 10, 2021.

How Successful is BNB Chain Adoption?

In the short term, the most prominent use case for crypto adoption is for investment and earning money for users, traders, and crypto holders. By building the best exchanges, Binance can achieve a foundation in terms of crypto adoption on the front end.

In the long term, Binance believes that crypto solutions will encompass almost every aspect of life, and that blockchain will be the underlying infrastructure of this industry. This is what Binance has built and provided for the industry. These solutions may be beneath the surface for now, but will be seen as crypto innovation begins to surface and fundamentally impact global trade.

The hype surrounding Web3 and metaverse also plays a role in BNB's changes. Binance itself has stated that the BNB Chain community will now "aim to build infrastructure that powers a parallel virtual economy world." This will be done using the concept of "MetaFi," which combines metadata and decentralized finance.

BNB Chain will also embrace GameFi and SocialFi in its future development. These concepts merge decentralized finance with gaming and social networking, and therefore, we may see some exciting new projects and features offered by BNB Chain in the future.

It may be difficult for investors to hold cryptocurrency. Many are highly volatile. For cryptocurrency critics — such as China's major payment institutions — this price volatility makes them less suitable as actual currencies because their value can change quickly, making agreed-upon prices difficult to obtain. This is where cryptocurrencies like Tether (USDT) come in. This type of cryptocurrency is designed to allow users to navigate the crypto industry without being subject to unexpected prices.

What is Tether?

Tether is a type of cryptocurrency known as a stablecoin. Stablecoins are designed to be pegged to a specific currency; in the case of Tether's main crypto currency USDT, the US dollar. Tether claims that each token is backed by one dollar held in its reserve fund; the token's value is kept stable by a bot that buys and sells every time its value fluctuates from the dollar.

In short, Tether is meant to work as follows; every time a user deposits one US dollar into a Tether account, Tether Inc. — the company behind the stablecoin Tether — prints one Tether as a reward. Tether is also available for euros and Japanese yen.

Tether is specifically designed to build the necessary bridge between fiat currency and cryptocurrency and offers stability, transparency, and minimal transaction costs to users. The coin is pegged to the US dollar and maintains a 1:1 ratio with the dollar in terms of value. However, no guarantee is given by Tether Ltd. for the redemption or exchange of Tether for actual money — that is, Tether cannot be exchanged for US dollars.

The main goal of Tether is to make cryptocurrency trading easier and cheaper. In 2021, more than 75% of Bitcoin trading was done in Tether. Although some people invest in Tether, most of it is used for liquidity and to protect against volatility when trading other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

There are several reasons to use stablecoins like Tether, most of which are related to the shortcomings of trading cryptocurrencies using other volatile crypto assets or normal currencies such as the US dollar, euro, or Swiss franc.

Fiat currencies involve a slow and relatively expensive banking industry. On the other hand, it is difficult to invest in one cryptocurrency if the crypto asset you use to buy it is also unstable. Trading one cryptocurrency with another is more like trading forex than investing.

A Brief History of Tether

Timeline of Tether's history:

• July 2014 - Realcoin, a token backed by the US dollar, is launched.
• November 2014 - Realcoin is rebranded as Tether and enters private beta.
• January 2015 - Bitfinex lists Tether.
• February 2015 - Tether trading begins.
• December 2017 - Tether supply surpasses one billion tokens.
• June 2018 - An academic study is published stating that Tether can be printed "regardless of investor demand."
• April 2019 - The New York Attorney General's Office sues iFinex, Tether's parent company, for allegedly using USDT to cover up $850 million in fund losses.
• July 2020 - Tether market capitalization reaches $10 billion.
• December 2020 - Tether market capitalization reaches $20 billion.
• February 2021 - Tether and Bitfinex settle with the New York Attorney General's Office for $18.5 million.
• February 2021 - Tether market capitalization reaches $30 billion.
• April 2021 - Tether expands to Polkadot and its market capitalization reaches $43 billion.
• May 2021 - Tether reveals its reserve details for the first time since 2014.
• May 2021 - Tether market capitalization reaches $60 billion.

Tether, as known today, was launched in November 2014, after being rebranded from the original project Realcoin. The project was initially founded by Bitcoin Foundation director Brock Pierce, along with software engineer Craig Sellars and entrepreneur Reeve Collins. Startup Realcoin laid the groundwork for Tether operations before the name change occurred.

Tether has an interesting relationship with the Hong Kong-based Bitfinex exchange platform. The exchange integrated Tether into its operations in January 2015, but the relationship has been under close scrutiny in recent years.

In November 2017, Tether was allegedly hacked, with $31 million worth of Tether funds stolen, which resulted in a hard fork. In January 2018, Tether faced another obstacle as the required audit to ensure the existence of actual reserve funds never materialized.

Instead, Tether announced a separation from the auditing company, after which Tether was called to court by regulators. This call was due to the company being accused of being less transparent about the reserve funds that support the tether coin.

In April 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James accused iFinex Inc., the parent company of Tether Ltd. and the crypto currency exchange operator Bitfinex, of hiding losses of $850 million from a mix of client and company funds from investors. The court filing said the funds were given to a Panama entity named Crypto Capital Corp. without a contract or agreement, to handle customer withdrawal requests. Bitfinex is alleged to have taken at least $700 million from Tether's cash reserves to cover the shortfall after the money went missing.

In March 2019, Tether updated its disclosure statement by claiming that its token was no longer 100% backed by US dollar deposits. Tether is now backed 100% by reserve funds, which include traditional currencies and an equivalent amount of cash over time, assets and other receivables from loans provided by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities.

In April 2021, Bitfinex and Tether reached an agreement with the New York Attorney General. Both companies agreed to pay a fine of $18.5 million and for the next two years, provide quarterly reports detailing the Tether's US Dollar reserves.

In May 2021, Tether issued a report showing that only 2.9% of Tether is backed by cash, with over 65% backed by securities, such as "secure loans", "corporate bonds, funds, and precious metals", and "other investments".

Who Founded Tether?

Tether Limited developed cryptocurrency in late 2014, under the name "Realcoin" before rebranding it as Tether.

Based in the British Virgin Islands - a jurisdiction known for its loose regulations - the company's headquarters are in Hong Kong. They share much of their management team with Bitfinex, including the CEO, chief strategy officer, and general counsel.

Bitfinex is a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc., headquartered in Hong Kong and registered in the British Virgin Islands. Bitfinex is one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges in the world by volume.

Brock Jeffrey Pierce (born November 14, 1980) is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and former actor known for his work in the cryptocurrency industry. Pierce is one of the co-founders of the cryptocurrency Tether with Reeve Collins and Craig Sellars in 2014. In an interview in July 2020, Pierce stated that his involvement with Tether ended in 2015 but described Tether as "one of the most important innovations in currency."

In 2013, Pierce joined the Bart brothers and Bradford Stephens in founding the venture capital firm Blockchain Capital (BCC). Pierce worked with Mastercoin, a startup that raised funds through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in 2013. Pierce was elected as the Director of the Bitcoin Foundation in May 2014. However, he only lasted for 1 year and announced his bankruptcy in July 2015.

In 2015, Pierce served as a technical consultant for a company in Silicon Valley. In the February 2018 edition of Forbes magazine, Pierce was included in the "20 richest people in the crypto world" with an estimated net worth between $700 million and $1.1 billion.

Pierce is one of the founders of Block.one, which released the EOS.IO software. In March 2018, Pierce's role at Block.one had changed to chief strategy officer, and he resigned from the company that month to pursue community building.

How Does Tether Maintain $1?

How Tether maintains its value at one dollar is becoming increasingly controversial. Tether is supposed to be issued by Tether Limited 'one-to-one' when customers deposit US dollars. The value of Tether in dollars (USDT/USD) fluctuates but tends to remain very close to one.

Ranked #3 according to coingecko.com, Tether has a market capitalization of $81 billion. The circulating coins at the time of writing this article are around 80 billion coins.

The Controversy Surrounding Tether

Tether is the first stablecoin introduced to the world. Buying and exchanging Tether quickly gained attraction shortly after its launch, and skeptics began questioning the legitimacy of stablecoin. The main question asked was: does Tether really have as much US dollar reserves as it needs to match the amount of Tether coins in circulation?

Meanwhile, the management structure of Tether gradually became subject to supervision. The 13.4 million-page Paradise Papers leaked in November 2017 shocked the world by revealing that high-level executives behind Tether Operations Limited and Bitfinex were the same group of people. Both companies had the same CEO, CFO, and Chief Strategy Officer. This raised speculation that Tether was actually just a coin used to manipulate and prop up Bitcoin prices.

Seeing the negative press that Tether received, in March 2017, Tether's related bank, Wells Fargo, decided to discontinue its services to Bitfinex and Tether. Scandal after scandal led to a drop in Bitcoin's value at the end of 2018, precisely on October 14, USDT fell to 86 cents on the Kraken crypto exchange, far from the expected 1:1 US dollar ratio.

Tether's reputation has taken a heavy blow in recent years. This stablecoin still exists and is traded, and although its price fluctuates far from $1 from time to time, Tether does not fluctuate too dramatically and is still a stable crypto, at least for now.

So, is Tether safe? There are around 80 billion Tether coins in circulation in the market today, but whether the coins really have 80 billion stored somewhere to match is a mystery. If you intend to buy some USDT to store your crypto assets, be aware that you need to do a lot of research beforehand.

Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that started as a joke about Bitcoin. Dogecoin was originally created as a light-hearted joke for crypto fans, taking its name from a once-popular meme. Despite this unusual origin story, its popularity exploded in 2021, partly thanks to the support of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who popularized this digital currency among the general public.

What is Dogecoin?

Dogecoin is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency with a fairly complex lineage. Dogecoin is a fork of Luckycoin - a new cryptocurrency that separated from Luckycoin - which itself forked (or separated) from Litecoin, which is a fork of Bitcoin. So, basically, Dogecoin can trace its roots back to Bitcoin, but they are not the same coins.

Dogecoin markets itself as a "fun" version of Bitcoin with a Shiba Inu (Japanese dog) as its logo. Dogecoin's casual presentation fits in with the growing crypto community. The use of scrypt technology and its unlimited supply makes it an argument for a faster, more easily adaptable, and consumer-friendly version of Bitcoin.

Dogecoin operates using a process called "auxiliary proof of work", which means crypto miners can work on a certain proof-of-work crypto currency, especially Litecoin, while also mining Dogecoin without additional fees. In the Dogecoin system, as well as in other proof-of-work coins, miners compete to see who can solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions the fastest to earn coins. For each mined Dogecoin block, miners receive 10,000 Dogecoins.

The most notable experiment of Dogecoin is its monetary policy. For instance, there is currently no limit on how many Dogecoins can be printed by its software.

Initially, the total Dogecoin supply was limited to 100 billion DOGE, but the developers removed it a few months after launch with the aim of making its money supply inflationary.

Over time, this abundance of supply would make miners reluctant to secure the Dogecoin blockchain, and in 2014, its mining process was integrated with Litecoin. This means anyone mining Litecoin can also mine Dogecoin without extra work.

Brief History of Dogecoin

Jackson Palmer, a product manager in Sydney, Australia, at Adobe Inc., created Dogecoin in 2013 as a way to satirize the hype surrounding cryptocurrency. Palmer has been described as a "skeptical-analytical" observer of emerging technology, and his initial tweet about his new cryptocurrency endeavor was made without any ceremony. However, after receiving positive feedback on social media, he purchased the domain dogecoin.com.

Meanwhile in Portland, Oregon, Billy Markus, a software developer at IBM who wanted to create a digital currency but struggled to promote his venture, discovered Dogecoin's buzz. Markus contacted Palmer to get permission to build software behind Dogecoin.

Markus based the code for Dogecoin on Luckycoin, which is a derivative of Litecoin, and initially used random rewards for block mining, although it was later changed to static rewards in March 2014.

Palmer and Markus launched Dogecoin on December 6, 2013. Two weeks later on December 19, Dogecoin's value skyrocketed 300%, possibly because China banned its banks from investing in cryptocurrency.

In January 2014, the Dogecoin community donated 27 million Dogecoins worth about $30,000 to fund the Jamaican bobsled team's trip to the Sochi Winter Olympics. In March of that year, the Dogecoin community donated $11,000 worth of Dogecoin to build a well in Kenya and $55,000 worth of Dogecoin to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise.

The excitement of Dogecoin lost some of its allure in 2015 as the crypto community, in general, began to grow more serious. The first sign that not everything was okay with the Dogecoin community was Jackson Palmer's departure, who said that a "toxic community" had grown around the coin and the money it generated.

However, Dogecoin's value skyrocketed along with other cryptocurrencies during the bubble that peaked at the end of 2017, and fell during 2018.

In the summer of 2019, Dogecoin saw another surge in value along with the rest of the crypto market. Dogecoin fans were delighted when the crypto exchange Binance listed the coin, and many believed that Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk had endorsed the coin in his cryptic tweets.

Musk openly supported Dogecoin in 2021, tweeting in May that he was working with the coin's developers to improve transaction efficiency. Earlier this year, the founder of SpaceX even held a social media poll asking whether Tesla should accept Dogecoin as a form of payment. In October, AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (AMC) announced that they would accept Dogecoin for digital gift card purchases by the end of the year, further adding utility to this meme-based cryptocurrency.

Who Created Dogecoin?

Dogecoin has been around for a while. The coin was rediscovered in 2013 by two software engineers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who initially thought of it as a joke.

At the time, Markus was working for IBM from Portland, Oregon, while Palmer was a member of Adobe System's Marketing Department in Sydney. Markus then reached out to Jackson Palmer and jokingly tweeted, "Investing in Dogecoin, pretty sure it's the next big thing." Ten days later, they teamed up to develop it together.

They paired two of the hottest trends of the year — Bitcoin and the "doge" meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog — to create a new cryptocurrency. Markus and Jackson wanted a coin that could be accessible to the general public, so they built it with open-source software that allowed anyone to view their source code.

After the launch of the "joke currency," their fame skyrocketed as dogecoin.com received over one million visitors within the first 30 days.

DOGE Price History

Like any other asset, the market gives DOGE value based on supply and demand. Given its wide and continuously growing supply, demand would have to surge significantly to push the value as high as possible.

That happened in the early months of 2021, when prices surged about 7,000 percent — driven by retail investors on Reddit (including the wallstreetbets subreddit that sparked meme stock frenzy) working together to push prices up, a broader crypto boom, and months of seemingly nonsensical tweets by Tesla founder Elon Musk, punctuated by his appearance on Saturday Night Live in May 2021.

DOGE's rapid price increase in 2021 drew significant media attention (as well as social media posts) — which temporarily created a cycle that attracted more investors and further drove up prices. Whenever an asset sees such dramatic gains, FOMO (or "fear of missing out") brings waves of new traders in. DOGE remains a highly volatile cryptocurrency, and like any investment, there's no guarantee that its price will go up or down in the future.

Ranked #12 on coingecko.com, DOGE has a market capitalization of around $18 billion at the time of writing. Its all-time high price was $0.731578, which occurred on May 8, 2021.

Dogecoin Controversies

A colleague named Alex Green joined Dogecoin. He founded a cryptocurrency exchange in the UK called Moolah, to handle dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies. Most /r/dogecoin users tipped a single dogecoin worth a fraction of a cent—but Green tipped thousands of dollars. Green began selling shares in Moolah on /r/dogecoin. He threatened to sue the original Dogecoin founders for harassment, for questioning the use of /r/dogecoin in this way.

Moolah closed in October 2014, and Green disappeared with the money. He turned out to be serial scammer Ryan Kennedy, who had a long history of creating start-up scams that raised funds and disappeared. In addition to being a serial fraudster, Kennedy turned out to be a serial rapist; he was convicted in May 2016 on three counts of rape, and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

The remaining Dogecoin community recovered—although the founders had long been expelled—and continued to play with their coins, unknown to the world.

Work stopped on the Dogecoin code; its software was barely maintained. In the cryptocurrency trading market, dogecoin was just another altcoin: a low-volume, nearly worthless token that could be traded by gamblers and day traders for other cryptocurrencies, hoping to make a few cents.

On January 19, 2021, rapper Soulja Boy—who was most recently known for his involvement in the Fyre Festival disaster—was paid by unknown parties to record a Cameo video ad for Dogecoin. He then talked about his cryptocurrency portfolio on Twitter.

On January 28, 2021, a Twitter user named "WSBChairman"—who claimed not to be affiliated with /r/wallstreetbets—picked dogecoin as the next potential asset to be pumped, and the forum followed suit. The price of dogecoin skyrocketed.

Musk, a tech CEO and obsessive Twitter user, made a tweet featuring a mock magazine cover called DOGUE and included "$DOGE" in his Twitter bio. Dogecoin skyrocketed—and then fell the next day. But with Musk's constant attention, the nearly dead and neglected altcoin's price surged over the following week.

Billy Markus, one of the original Dogecoin founders, posted an open letter to /r/dogecoin on February 8. He urged the community to get back to the spirit of fun and stop making Dogecoin about money. But he still talked at length about dogecoin as money—"Keep educating yourself as much as you can about how cryptocurrency works, how this market works, never risk more than you can afford to lose, be careful and vigilant."

Blockchain is undoubtedly a breakthrough technology that drives the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, including Decentralized Finance. Although being a driving force behind the future of finance in the form of distributed ledger technology, blockchain has certain limitations that we can't ignore: the lack of interoperability between different blockchains. This means that each blockchain cannot easily communicate with each other. The lack of interoperability between different blockchains limits data exchange, something that can be handled by Polkadot.

What is Polkadot?

Polkadot is a network designed to connect dots with all other networks. It's typically referred to as a multi-chain network because it can combine multiple networks, unlike the Bitcoin network, which operates on its own. Its main objective is to act as a framework for all involved blockchains, similar to HTML which allows sites, browsers, and servers to interact with each other. The idea is to handle messy and expensive cryptocurrency mining processes (including transaction validation and security protocols) and allow developers to focus on creating Dapps and smart contracts functionality. However, Polkadot, launched in 2020, is one of the latest ones, and introduces a number of technical features in line with its ambitious goals.

Polkadot is designed to run two types of blockchains. The main network, called the relay chain, where transactions are permanent, and user-created networks, called parachains. Parachains can be customized for a number of uses and incorporated into the main blockchain, so that parachain transactions benefit from the same security as the main chain. The idea is that Parachain and Relay Chain should work together and exchange information at all times.

Brief History of Polkadot

Polkadot began with the white paper published by Wood in 2016. Wood, former CTO of Ethereum, became famous after writing the Solidity programming language for Ethereum during his tenure with the Ethereum Foundation. Working with one of Ethereum's founders, Vitalik Buterin, in 2015, Wood was reported to be disappointed when the proposed early development for Ethereum 2.0 was delayed. Wood left Ethereum in 2016 to build a sharded version of Ethereum. In 2017, Wood and Peter Czaban founded the Web3 Foundation, a non-profit entity established to support research and development of Polkadot as well as oversee fundraising efforts. Wood and Jutta Steiner, former head of security at Ethereum, also co-founded Parity Technologies, which was tasked with continuing the development of Polkadot.

Polkadot was born from the precursor project Kusama in 2019 as a canary network that was unaudited. The canary network feature helped the development team uncover major issues before launching on the mainnet. The Kusama network has already run enhanced logic for hosting parachains, and the launch of several parachains on Polkadot has occurred.

Polkadot was first launched in May 2020 as a proof-of-authority (PoA) protocol. Its governance was controlled by one Sudo account (super user). After launch, validators joined the network to participate in its consensus protocol. The network quickly abandoned the proof-of-authority consensus algorithm and adopted the proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol, which was tested on June 18, 2020.

With the blockchain network secured by a decentralized validator community, the super user account was abandoned in July 2020, with governance shifting to the hands of DOT token holders. This paradigm shift helped Polkadot achieve its goal of becoming a decentralized platform.

Who Founded Polkadot?

Polkadot was founded by the Web3 Foundation, a Swiss foundation established to facilitate a fully functional and user-friendly decentralized web as an open-source project. Its founders are Dr. Gavin Wood, Robert Habermeier, and Peter Czaban.

Wood, the president of the Web3 Foundation, is the most famous of the three due to his industry influence as one of the founders of Ethereum, founder of Parity Technologies, and creator of the Solidity smart contract coding language. Habermeier is a Thiel Fellow and expert researcher and developer in blockchain and cryptography. Czaban is the Chief Technology Officer of the Web3 Foundation.

Wood was born in Lancaster, UK. He attended Lancaster Royal Grammar School and graduated from the University of York with a Master of Engineering (MEng) degree in Computer Systems and Software Engineering in 2002. He completed his PhD titled "Content-based Visualization for General Audio Music Navigation" in 2005.

Before developing Ethereum, Wood worked as a research scientist at Microsoft. He co-founded Ethereum, which he described as "one computer for the entire planet," with Vitalik Buterin and others during 2013-2014. Wood proposed and helped develop Solidity, the programming language for writing smart contracts, and released the yellow paper that defined the Ethereum Virtual Machine, a runtime system for smart contracts on Ethereum in 2014. He also served as the first chief technology officer of the Ethereum Foundation. Wood left Ethereum in 2016.

Wood founded Parity Technologies (formerly Ethcore), which develops clients for the Ethereum network and creates software for companies that use blockchain technology, along with Jutta Steiner, who also previously worked at the Ethereum Foundation. He served as the CWO of Parity in 2018.

He founded the Web3 Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on infrastructure and decentralized internet technology, starting with the Polkadot network. In 2019, he founded Kusama, an early-stage experimental development environment for Polkadot.

DOT Price History

Launched in October 2017, Polkadot released 10 million DOT tokens into circulation through a successful initial coin offering (ICO) that raised 485,331 ether (about $145 million at the time.)

DOT price reached its peak at $6.30 shortly after launch in May 2020, then fluctuated between $4 and $5 for the rest of 2020. In May 2021, DOT price reached its all-time high at $49.80. During the Q4 2021 surge, DOT price hit another peak at $44.41 in October.

Ranked #11 according to coingecko.com, Polkadot's market capitalization is $20 billion as of the writing of this article. DOT has a 473.31% ROI calculated from its initial release. The all-time high price is $54.98 which occurred on November 4, 2021.

How Successful is Polkadot Adoption?

The University of California, Berkeley's 'Blockchain Xcelerator' and Parity Technologies announced a collaboration in developing university blockchain curricula. Parity Technologies will work with Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator, advising students and entrepreneurs with the aim of launching high-value blockchain startups generally and in the Polkadot and Web 3.0 ecosystems.

Several platforms have already integrated with Polkadot, such as Acala, Moonbeam, and Astar. Polkadot (DOT) has launched several DeFi alliances with other cryptocurrency projects, such as LINK and IOST.