Bitcoin

Jesus says:
No one can serve to masters;
for a slave will either hate the one and love the other,
or be devoted to the one and dispise the other.
You cannot serve God and wealth (money).
Matthew 6,24 and Luke 16,13
(New revised standard version Bible 1989)

Why should you listen?
Because Jesus is the King of Truth (John 18,33-37).

Before you interest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies you should know:
Cryptocurrency is a Giant Ponzi Scheme
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/01/cryptocurrency-scam-blockchain-bitcoin-economy-decentralization

You can buy 1 BTC for (at bitcoin.de)

Date       Hour  Value                MarketCap (coingecko.com)
26.11.2021 20:30 48454,93 EUR (1,030) 1025605M$ (0,995) 
13.12.2021 23:15 41223,95 EUR (0,851)  890596M$ (0,868)
27.12.2021 23:00 45369,00 EUR (1,101)  967943M$ (1,087)
22.01.2022 21:15 30419,16 EUR (0,670)  668680M$ (0,691)
27.03.2022 23:00 41022,87 EUR (1,349)  872127M$ (1,304)
11.04.2022 22:15 37017,79 EUR (0,902)  760144M$ (0,872)
10.12.2022 20:15 16402,07 EUR (0,443)  330334M$ (0,435)
19.12.2022 22:30 15577,67 EUR (0,950)  319735M$ (0,968)
29.01.2023 23:00 21843,37 EUR (1,402)  458675M$ (1,435)
20.03.2023 22:15 26020,30 EUR (1,191)  541847M$ (1,181)
03.06.2023 04:15 25335,70 EUR (0,974)  526593M$ (0,972)
16.06.2023 00:15 23366,67 EUR (0,922)  496244M$ (0,942)
21.06.2023 15:00 26457,44 EUR (1,132)  560786M$ (1,130)
29.07.2023 19:45 26636,27 EUR (1,007)  569905M$ (1,016)
06.09.2023 10:15 23970,90 EUR (0,900)  501026M$ (0,879)
28.11.2023 18:00 34441,57 EUR (1,437)  740388M$ (1,478)
04.02.2024 15:15 39848,45 EUR (1,157)  843413M$ (1,139)
16.02.2024 11:00 48189,68 EUR (1,209) 1017665M$ (1,207)
18.04.2024 21:15 59405,62 EUR (1,233) 1244608M$ (1,223)
08.06.2024 15:45 64269,84 EUR (1,082) 1368051M$ (1,099)

Course falling. But crashing in the future.
Course is high. In the moment it is dangerous to invest in this cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrencies are the new tool for international transfer.
[Transfers with Ripple (XRP) are much faster and with no or little fees.]
26,6% of the trades are in Tethers (1 Thether = 1 USD). Tether Ltd. is the 
"Central Bank" of many cryptocurrencies, but manipulating the course by creating
new Tethers and supplying Marketplaces (https://twitter.com/whale_alert). BTC 
is becoming a currency like gold, but it may crash suddenly. You can use it to 
transfer money around the world (see bestchange.com), to upload phones and for 
other internet businesses. But be carefull. The fees are high and some internet 
adresses are manipulating your Bitcoin wallet at your phone and are steeling 
money. You loose 0,5% per trade (BTC/EUR). The winners are miners and 
marketplaces. The intention to setup a cryptocurrency is to earn money and to 
setup decentralized finance, not holded by banks, but by many people, who store 
the Bitcoin blockchain on their private PCs running a Bitcoin node in the 
Bitcoin network. Maybe the Bitcoin blockchain is the only blockchain set up 
without the intention to earn money. Transfers with Bitcoin app or other apps 
working on-chain on the Bitcoin network are slow, 40 minutes up to 1 hour, and 
expensiv. If you pay lower fees as proposed from your app, transaction is slower
than 1 hour. If your fee is to low, transaction is not proceeded and you loose 
your money. You get faster and cheaper transfers with the Phoenix app or other 
apps, working on the connected lightning network.

You can work directly with the Bitcoin blockchain on your Linux PC running a 
node in the bitcoin network. You have to download the bitcoind program and need 
a big memory. The crescent blockchain today has around 600 GB.
See blockchain.org.

BTC mining uses much energy (1000M$/month) and is devasting our climate. A high 
part of energy in Iceland is used for Mining. Also in Norway, Russia, China and 
Kasakhstan energy costs are low. In Norway they have water power plants and in 
Russia nuclear power plants in Kaliningrad, Krimea, Siberia and otherwhere. In 
China and Kasakhstan most of the electric energy is produced by coal power 
plants with a high output of dangerous emissions for our climate. China just 
opened a new nuclear power plant. Thats a risk for 1000 years. In China, where 
30% of the Bitcoins were mined, now mining and Bitcoin transfer is officially 
prohibited, but I think not for the government. So private miners ship their 
riggs to Kasakhstan and elsewhere. In spring 2021 in USA in New York they 
reactivated a coal power plant with over 100 MW, which was shut down for climate
reasons, and now is reopened only for Bitcoin mining and supporting the network
servers. Bitcoin mining in whole is consuming the electric energy of one or two 
European States, i.e. the Netherlands or Italy and Switzerland together.

Ethereum or Ether is not using so much energy, but also based on Tether. People 
argue, that they are betraying investors because of a high amount of premined 
ETHs. The security update in July 2021 went over without damaging the course. 
Until today only the Bitcoin blockchain is unique and practically secure.

Ethereum blockchain has more applications (smart contracts) than Bitcoin 
blockchain, which only works with Bitcoins and Tethers. Ethereum has 2 
blockchains, one for storing, the other for transfer, and is therefor much 
faster than Bitcoin blockchain. It is better for decentralized finance and other
applications. It gets more and more interest from banks and enterprises.

Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, but working with another 
cryptography, working much faster and with lower fees. Mining is easier than on 
Bitcoin blockchain. But an update in July 2021 halved the fees, and mining is no 
more so interesting.

XRP or Ripple is a cryptocurrency which is not based only on blockchain and a 
main currency for world wide bank transfers in a few seconds with no/low fees.

Investing in cryptocurrency is on high risk, you can loose your whole money. 
Never invest more than your monthly income.

For me the electronic conditions are not clear enough. Who controlls and changes
the electronic parameters? Elon Musk forwarded a Bitcoin Council for 
selfdisciplination of miners to use only green electric power. But this council 
cannot solve the problem of vasting energy.

A steady rising number of BTCs or LTCs is not possible, because energy costs for
mining are rising from BTC to BTC or LTC to LTC. To find the last BTCs shall cost 
to much energy. That is one reason, that the course of Bitcoin may rise over 
longer time. Look up price.bublina.eu.org.

The use of blockchain is not only to mine cryptos or tokens. It is a usefull 
tool for secured communication groups. It works like a diary. Every person 
belonging to the group can make a notice and the receiver or some or all 
belonging to the group can read it. It's sending Satoshis (sat) with a message
(1 BTC = 1000 mBTC, 1 mBTC = 100000 sat). Look up bitmessage.org.

The newest child of blockchain is the Internet Computer (IC) from Dominic 
Williams and his team working with the ICP (Internet Computer Protocoll) 
starting with 48 servers a decentralized expansible network sharing programs, 
values and datas by smart contracts and canisters. Look up internetcomputer.org 
or internet-computer.de. They hope this is the internet of future, not depending
on big companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Nobody knows what is going 
on in this supercomputer. This is deviding rich and poor people, because you 
have to buy a token as adress for your Server or PC and you have to pay for any 
information running through the network. You can get onto the IC by running a 
node or by internet-computer.de. They are running several applications like a 
blog, a platform for ICP trading, a secure messenger, a platform for programming
in Motoko, the language of IC, and for hosting websites and apps.

You find good graphs on coingecko.com, the biggest marketplace for 
cryptocurrencies. If you can write on a termial: curl rate.sx .
Some graphs are not correct and the server is often overloaded. You can look for
courses also on gopher: lynx gopher://magical.fish/1/cryptocurrency, even over 
the anonymisation network tor. Download the Orbot App for Android and the 
Overbite App from gopher.floodgap.com or the DiggieDog App from Google Apps or
the Termux App from termux.org and go for magical.fish:71 . 

Reliable marketplaces in the EU are bitcoin.de and coinbase.com .

scn@sdf.org
08.06.2024