Category: Crypto News

Save Pakistan with your spare crypto

Leave a comment

Save Pakistan is urgently requesting your support today.

Over 33 million individuals have now been displaced following unprecedented flooding in Pakistan and we hope you can help with any spare crypto you have. We have been supporters of the Trust Wallet for many years and we were able to use it today to seamlessly send ETH to the Crypto Fund for Pakistan Flood Relief.

Save Pakistan Relied Fund

Pull out your phone and type or paste SavePakistan.crypto into the recipient address field, enter the amount you wish to donate and click Next. The address of 0x54e0c…b8982c3 will be shown on the confirmation screen as per the official site for savepakistan.org. Click Confirm and your ETH will be sent to the multisig wallet managed by Rev Miller (Unchained) , Bilal Bin Saqib (Tayaba Organization), Sam Thapaliya (Zebec Protocol) and others.

Since June this year the floods have killed over 1300 people, including 300 children. 3 million acres of much needed crops have been destroyed in the floods. Global warming is affecting Pakistan right now and we are all guilty of using too much energy. Following the successful Merge of Ethereum in recent days you can now donate ETH safe in the knowledge it’s now using 99.9% less energy than when it was a Proof of Work chain.

It takes less than a minute of your time, as shown in the video below, to help the people of Pakistan.

The initial target for the funds raised are:

  • 5000 Ration Bags
  • 5000 Relief Tents 
  • 5000 Hygiene Kits 
  • 50,000 Cooked Meals 
  • 5000 Help-2-Others (H2O) Wheels  
  • 200 Water Trucks for 5000 Families Daily 
  • No. of Households/Families Targeted: 20,000  
  • No. of People Targeted: 140,000 people 


If you prefer you can donate via Gitcoin here and if you would like to help save Pakistan, but don’t currently have any spare ETH available, please follow and retweet on Twitter.

DOGE NFT Domains

Leave a comment

To be able to obtain your own DOGE NFT domain you will need to purchase our Unlock token with 15 MATIC on Polygon or pay with your credit card.

If you are not sure what NFT domains, with awesome utility, are please check out the videos on our dweb site. The DOGE NFTs are listed on OpenSea and will be sent to your wallet address as soon as we have received confirmation funds have been received.

With an NFT domain you get:

A web3 domain with no renewal fees.

No gas fees for domain management!

A free web3 site on IPFS.

Your own web 2.0 profile page.

Check out this video which covers the workflow to obtain an NFT domain:

If you prefer to pay in DOGE please contact us here with your wallet address.
Once you have purchased an Unlock token you will be able to click the link below to view a DOGE NFT!!!

If you don’t see the DOGE NFT after purchasing our Unlock token please email the details to us including your wallet address via this form.

Polygon blockchain chosen by Unstoppable Domains

Leave a comment
Polygon blockchain and Unstoppable Domains

Polygon blockchain was announced as the layer 2 scaling solution for Unstoppable Domains on the 21st October 2021, with a launch date for minting of the NFT domains due to begin 15th November 2021. With gas fees around 1000x cheaper than Ethereum it should be a welcome boost for web3 development.

Prior to Unstoppable Domains adopting the Polygon blockchain, domain buyers were paying their own gas fees to mint them, as is normal for all NFTs. From the 15th November Unstoppable Domains will pick up the cost and this is expected to see many more domains being used in the ecosystem. Free minting, free domain management and no renewal fees is unheard of in the industry to date.

Unstoppable Domains CEO, Matthew Gould, took to Twitter Spaces following the official announcement to provide the reasoning behind their choice for the eagerly awaited layer 2 scaling solution. He said the thousands of apps already on the Polygon blockchain were potential applications that could now support NFT domains. A few of the other NFTs, from the thousands of applications already using the network, include Off and Marble Cards.

Off

From the artists FAQ “Why is Off on Polygon? The are three main reasons this project is on Polygon: low transaction fees, low energy usage of the network, and compatibility with Opensea. The debate around energy use and blockchains is complicated and ongoing, but in the simplest case when it is possible to avoid proof of work and its energy consumption, I think one should do so.“

One of the Off NFTs listed for sale on OpenSea is the HTC One M9 and yes it’s currently a plain black image in it’s current form. Please check out the details in the Off FAQ if you want to know how the artwork is revealed.

Marble Cards

A very popular NFT on the network and one we will cover in more detail in a follow up post that ties The Greats NFT launch and the Polygon blockchain together very nicely.

The Greats NFT From Wolfgang Beltracchi

One comment

The Greats NFT release is now underway and this is a follow up to the short article we published a few days ago on our NFT page. In partnership with Hashmasks, Beltracchi’s set of 4,608 pieces of art as NFTs is a rare opportunity to obtain digital artwork from one of the best forgers of the 21st Century.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the art world reacts to Beltracchi’s NFT as he’s banned from exhibiting his artwork in most of the top galleries around the world. After decades of selling his forgeries to galleries he was eventually convicted and imprisoned in 2011. Will the art world now accept he’s a very accomplished artist in his own right and exhibit the NFTs in their galleries or purchase them for their clients?

The Greats NFT
Will The Louvre ever exhibit The Greats NFT?

Traditionally museums of fine art and galleries relied on customers physically visiting them to see the art works but in recent years, following the Covid pandemic, more and more have online galleries. This makes art work available to the masses and many would argue that The Greats NFT by Beltracchi should be included. Only time will tell if the art world will accept their own shortcomings regarding provenance of Beltracchi’s former works.

Although there are fake NFTs available in the market it’s a simple procedure to check their authenticity (provenance) based on the Smart Contracts and cryptographic hashes that generated them. Would the master forger himself be offended if galleries had exhibitions containing hundreds of copies of his NFTs rather than the originals? As the sale progresses we will monitor media coverage to see if museums, galleries or known art collectors acknowledge they have obtained one of The Greats. Personally we feel it would be misguided for the art world to miss out on this rare opportunity and we want to see fine art NFTs made available to all, either through ownership or online galleries.

MEKAVERSE NFT News

Leave a comment

This week the big news for NFT releases was the MekaVerse collection. Buy in price was 0.2 ETH for those that were lucky enough to win the lottery and right now the floor on OpenSea is up to 7.1 ETH.

Although the NFTs are currently listed on OpenSea the MekaVerse team have Tweeted in the last few hours to announce “Rescheduled Reveal date : October 12th at 7PM CET“

MekaVerse tweet

Some people have questioned the need for a big “reveal” on OpenSea as it’s a very well established marketplace and more than capable of handling the expected traffic. The MekaVerse servers no doubt experienced a heavy load during the 0.2 ETH lottery and minting to the blockchain. Even though demand is expected to be high from the many thousands of people that missed out we don’t envisage any issues if you want to pick up a Meka before the marketing push ramps up another gear.

As with almost all NFT releases at the moment there are many people missing out on the initial minting and some will have to keep scouring the internet in search of another project, or revert to the secondary market. It’s always going to be difficult to know when a project scales back on their marketing during the initial launch phase for NFTs. They need to create a buzz to ensure the launch is a success but when more than 90% of the whitelist miss out it’s going to leave most of the community feeling very disappointed.

Secondary marketplaces do provide residual income to artists for their NFTs, with OpenSea offering up to 10% for each resale and some sites more, but perhaps the artists should consider a second marketing phase after the initial launch. In follow up articles we will cover whitelisting and coping with bots looking to game the system for the initial NFT launch.

If you are looking for additional exposure for your particular NFT release please provide the details via our contact form.

Is coinbase a GOOD way of buying bitcoin?

One comment
Will Coinbase offer NFTs

We are fast approaching 2022 and Bitcoin recently celebrated its 13th anniversary. Despite this, there are very few low-cost ways to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Let’s start by saying that for now, the best way is to purchase crypto from a trusted friend. They should be able to help you set up a suitable wallet and transfer the tokens at your agreed price.

If you don’t have a friend that’s clued up on crypto or they are looking to HODL their CDAs (Cryptographic Digital Assets) then what do you do?

  • Buy Bitcoin at an ATM
  • Buy Bitcoin with Paypal funds
  • Buy Crypto on Coinbase with a bank transfer or debit / credit card
  • Check out LocalBitcoins.com

We don’t recommend using ATM’s at this current time. They are convenient if you have one in your area, but the costs are worse than old school, fiat transactions. Hopefully in time the fees will come down but for us ATM’s are a last resort route to owning crypto. There are ways of buying Bitcoin with Paypal but the systems we have tested cost more than using an ATM. Around 20% in costs and unless you have no way of spending your Paypal funds its another route best avoided.

We have never used LocalBitcoins.com so we will leave our review of what they offer to a later article. Ultimately most owners of crypto are going to use an exchange to trade between the thousands of different tokens. There are hundreds of exchanges, ranging from low volume niche markets to multi-billion dollar global enterprises.

Coinbase Exchange

One very well known exchange is Coinbase and it’s one we recommend to people new to the blockchain. Coinbase can be used from a PC or a smartphone but we prefer the Trust wallet for mobile use. This URL is a referral link and anyone purchasing a $100 or more of cryptocurrencies will receive an extra $10 from Coinbase. The referral link also helps us to fund this site. The exchange accepts funds via bank transfers and credit / debit cards but many credit card providers block purchases of CDAs. In Europe, a SEPA transfer to their nominated account costs just €3 and takes 2 or 3 working days.

Once your funds have been credited to your Coinbase account you should purchase a token such as Ethereum Classic (ETC) and then transfer the tokens to your Trust Wallet. Trust wallet is about to add Bitcoin support to their iOS and Android wallet but for now our suggestion is to buy ETC on the exchange. Once you have transferred the ETC to your Trust wallet your smartphone should show something like the image at the top of this article. Costs for using Coinbase in Europe, excluding the UK, are quite reasonable:

Costs of using Coinbase are broadly similar across the globe but some countries, like Australia, Canada and Singapore don’t have the bank transfer account funding option. Funding your account from a UK bank account is free and withdrawals cost £1. Trust wallet is preferred to the Coinbase wallet as it accomodates all the major blockchains including Ethereum, Tron, ICON, Wanchain and Callisto etc. We will publish a follow-up article on some of the major exchanges but for this exercise, we just used Coinbase as an easy route to your first CDA purchase.

Ethereum ETC Faucet

Leave a comment
Ethereum ETC faucet

Today we are going to cover the Ethereum ETC faucet.

To be able to move BitUnits from one address on the Ethereum Classic network you will require a tiny amount of ETC. The is equivalent to “gas” used on the Ethereum network.

Many owners on BitUnits start with the user-friendly Trust wallet which was recently taken over by Binance. However, if you want to trade your BitUnits on the Saturn network decentralized exchange (DEX) you will need to:

buy bitcoin with your credit card

It can be quite frustrating for owners of UNITS that don’t have any ETC as it effectively leaves them dead in the water. The easiest way to obtain ETC is to ask a “crypto” savvy friend to send you some. 0.0003 ETC is all that is required, and in fiat terms, this is less than one cent.

If you don’t know anyone that could send you a small amount of Ethereum Classic ETC you could buy or trade with changelly. The big positive with changelly is that they allow you to buy cryptocurrencies with your credit card. Many banks have blocked crypto purchases with credit cards as they know it speeds up crypto adoption by the masses and will ultimately bring about the demise of the old school fiat financial institutions. Click the changelly image to the left (above if you are on mobile) or use this link to set up an account with changelly.

Another way to obtain ETC is via a faucet and in theory, they are ideal as they provide small amounts of many cryptocurrencies, for free.

The Best Ethereum ETC Faucet

We spent several days testing out various faucets and we think we have found the best one. To keep our site free of ads you will find that some of our articles are partly concealed by a paywall. This is one such article and to read the rest of the article you will need to make a nominal payment as indicated below. For Android users, we recommend the Eclair wallet to make Lightning Network payments or Spark if you are running your own node.

Please pay just 0.00001 BTC (approx 4 cents) to continue reading this article.

Click to pay with the low cost, high-speed Lightning Network

How to Buy BitUnits on the Saturn Network DEX

3 comments

How to Buy BitUnits on the Saturn Network DEXIn a previous article we covered the news of the first day listing of BitUnits on the Saturn network DEX, and in this article, we will look at the mechanics of how to buy BitUnits. Essentially there are four different types of trade available on the DEX:

  • Accept a seller’s open sell order to buy UNITS
  • Create an open buy order for someone to sell UNITS to you

 

  • Accept a buyer’s open buy order to sell some of your UNITS
  • Create an open sell order for someone to buy your UNITS

With the first two options, you will be buying UNITS and selling with the last two options. Or specifically, with two of the four options, you hope you will be buying or selling BitUnits. When you create an open buy/sell order, you have to wait for a seller or buyer to accept your offer. For a token like bitcoin or ethereum if you set a realistic buying or selling price on a popular DEX your order will normally be snapped up within a few seconds. Conversely if to set a bitcoin buy order at $3,000 today when the market rate is currently around $6,388 you could be waiting a lifetime.

On some exchanges, you can leave your order open indefinitely and hope it gets filled at some time in the future. Occasionally you might get lucky on an exchange with “fat finger” syndrome where a trader miskeys a price and fills your order by mistake. Saturn eliminates many fat-finger incidents because you have a single click option to select an open sell or buy order. The crypto markets are generally more volatile than traditional stocks, and you could win big with a flash crash or pump of the price.

Saturn DEX Trading in Detail

The screenshot below is a desktop view of the DEX of open orders to sell and buy BitUnits. It shows you the prices you can accept right now and you can part-fill an order if you wish so if a seller has 20,000 UNITS for sale you could just buy 2,500, or whatever quantity you require up to and including 20,000.

Saturn DEX of open sell and buy BitUnits orders

Note the SELL ORDERS on the left are allocated green Buy buttons for you to buy BitUnits and the BUY ORDERS are on the left with red Sell buttons. On mobile you will need to familiarize yourself with the different trading areas of the screen as they are not currently laid out as clearly as shown above.

Scrolling down the page brings up the recent trades of BitUnits including the 2 UNITS I bought earlier today. The screenshot is fairly self-explanatory.

Recent trades of BitUnits

If you have already bought and sold UNITS on the Saturn DEX the first section to appear will look similar to the screenshot below, but we are assuming you haven’t traded on the DEX yet. Again fairly self-explanatory but post comments if you are unsure.

BitUnits My Open Orders and My Completed Trades

In addition to accepting open orders, you can open your own orders to find a seller or buyer for BitUnits. Just click the green Create Order button as shown above. The button really should be a neutral color because when you click it, you can set up buy or sell orders as shown below.

Create open Buy order or Sell order for BitUnits

Simply select one of the two tabs and enter the required amount of UNITS and price in ETC, not dollars. In the Firefox browser for mobile or Chrome (and Firefox) for desktop, you will need to be logged into the Saturn wallet for some of the details above to be available. The Saturn DEX can be accessed directly with this link or indirectly with this link. If you select the indirect link just scroll down the page until you see the BitUnits link in the Assets section. When you confirm a trade in the DEX, you will also need to bring up your Saturn Wallet (in a separate tab if you are using a smartphone) to confirm gas settings etc. as shown below.

Saturn wallet DEX gas setting and trade confirmation screen

 

We would recommend that you keep the default gas settings for your trades but do remember this means you will require a small amount of ETC in your Saturn wallet. Best way to obtain ETC is to ask a crypto friend to send some to your wallet as the minimum trade for ETC is relatively high on main exchanges. It is perhaps only $5, but that would cover hundreds or thousands of trades on the DEX. One dollar, about 0.1 ETC is ample to start with. If you don’t have sufficient ETC to complete the transaction on the Ethereum Classic blockchain, you will not be able to SUBMIT the trade.

In our next article, we will run through transferring BitUnits from a Trust to a Saturn Wallet.

Android Acinq Eclair Bitcoin Lightning Network Wallet

Leave a comment
Android Acinq Eclair Bitcoin Lightning Network Wallet

We have previously covered the Trust and Saturn cryptocurrency wallets for handling BitUnits, but this article will cover the Eclair lightning network wallet.

Watch how the Eclair wallet is used at Brisbane airport to buy a coffee in the video below. More and more merchants are adopting the lightning network for “micropayments” with some not accepting any other form of payment. This makes it important for you to have a basic understanding of how to set up the Elcair wallet.

We are not going to go into great detail about the lightning network but what we will say is that it is likely to become more important than the Bitcoin blockchain network. The lightning network (LN) is a second layer network primarily used to prevent the Bitcoin blockchain getting to an unmanageable size. Today it’s around 200 GB, and that is duplicated across thousands of full nodes around the world.

As crypto payments become more and more popular, we are going to use a “temporary” record for most of the transactions. This temporary network is much faster and cheaper than the full Bitcoin blockchain network. It can take several hours for a Bitcoin transaction to be confirmed whereas a lightning network transaction is processed within seconds.

If you go into a coffee shop to buy an Espresso, the shop owner can’t wait hours to decide if you have enough Satoshis to pay for the drink. So you need a wallet which works with the lightning network. For Android users, we recommend the Eclair wallet by Acinq.Eclair lightning network wallet

The screenshot above is my Eclair wallet paying a 2 cent invoice which I raised via the Zap desktop lightning wallet. Taking a closer look at the wallet and ignoring the actual payment we see a wallet balance of $25.71 with $13.04 in Bitcoin and $12.67 allocated to the lightning network.Eclair lightning network wallet balances

Eclair Lightning Network Wallet

The Eclair wallet can be used as a regular Bitcoin wallet, but there are far better wallets available if you are not using the lightning network. Currently, you can fund channels on the lighting network with a minimum of 0.001 BTC and a maximum of just under 0.043 BTC. With BTC trading around $6,300, that’s $6.30 to $270. So if your local coffee shop has adopted the lightning network you might open a channel for $6.30 (0.001 BTC). The $12.67 shown in my wallet for lightning channels was two channels, each with 0.001 BTC. With some merchants, you might have to open a channel directly with them but as the network expands an open channel with a major node should allow you to pay most merchants.

With Eclair the process is to send an on-chain (regular Bitcoin blockchain transaction) balance of BTC to the address shown in your wallet. Remembering it will need to be at least 0.001 BTC after network costs, so perhaps 0.0011 BTC. When you add a channel with Eclair it asks if you want the on-chain transfer to be completed fast (approx 20 minutes), medium (2 hours) or slow (12 hours). The network fees will be higher the faster you want it processing but note the quickest is 20 minutes. This means you should be funding the channels ahead of spending the Bitcoin you allocate to the channel.

If you open a 0.001 BTC channel directly with the coffee shop and use the Elcair wallet to pay for your $3.00 Espresso, you will still have $3.30 for the next time you visit. However you are not paying for your coffees in advance, you are simply putting funds on one side “in the fast lane” for when you need them. You can close a channel in Eclair whenever you want by selecting the channel in the Lightning Channels tab.

Closing a channel in Eclair

As shown in the screenshot above, you will be asked to confirm the channel closure but only select force-close if the merchant’s node is shown as offline. If you force-close a channel, you will have to wait for 144 blocks to be added to the Bitcoin blockchain before the funds become usable on-chain. With each block taking about 10 minutes it means a 24-hour wait whereas a regular channel close will normally be completed within one hour.

We will be covering some great things you can buy with your Eclair lightning network wallet in future articles so be sure to have at least one channel adequately funded.

Setting up the Trust Digital Wallet to HODL BitUnits

5 comments

Trust Digital Wallet and BitUnits Club

The Trust digital wallet allows you to control access to digital assets like BitUnits and Ether but do beware that the tokens are stored on the blockchain, not on your smartphone. BitUnits are ERC223 compliant tokens which use the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain network whereas Ether uses the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. We recommend the Trust digital wallet for the following reasons:

  • Available for Android and iOS devices
  • Has the financial backing of the digital exchange giant, Binance
  • Audited as a secure digital wallet
  • Ease of use

Installing the Trust Digital Wallet

Links for Android and iOS are available at trustwalletapp.com, and they also provide direct access to the Android apk for users that aren’t able to use Google Play. Wherever possible use Google Play as their servers are generally more secure than developer sites.

When you have set up your wallet but before you have received your first BitUnits it will look something like the first image below and once configured, and you have received BitUnits it should look similar to the second image.

 Trust digital wallet before it is configured for BitUnits  Trust digital wallet after it is configured for BitUnits

When you first install the app, you will be asked to create a new wallet, and you will be provided with 12 very important words. These words are known as your seed phrase and allow you to restore your wallet to another smartphone. For security reasons, the app prevents you from taking a screenshot of the actual seed phrase process, so the blurred image below is a photo (not a screenshot) of the seed phrase for my wallet.

Trust digital wallet backup and restore phrase

 

The 12-word seed is shown as the “Backup Phrase” in the screenshot, but it should be more accurately be called the “Restore Phrase” as that is the purpose of the seed phrase. You need to store a copy of your seed phrase in a secure location, and many crypto enthusiasts suggest etching it into metal as paper degrades over the HODL years.

 

Do not let anyone have access to your seed phrase as that would give them control of your digital tokens on the blockchain. Once you have been through the validation process to confirm you have recorded the phrase the screen will show you have zero tokens on the Ethereum blockchain (ETH).

 

We now need to add Ethereum Classic (ETC) tokens including BitUnits. This is done by selecting the + at the top right of the screen. You will see a selection of different tokens that you can control via the Trust digital wallet. ETC is below ETH and UNITS (the ticker for BitUnits) is further down the list. NOTE: BitUnits will only appear in the list of available tokens if you have already sent your ETC address for a BitUnits airdrop, or similar, and had the BitUnits sent to your address.

The two screenshots below show the tokens, and you move the slider to the right for ETC and UNITS for control to be given to the wallet.

   Add Ethereum Classic blockchain tokens to the Trust digital wallet Add BitUnits tokens to the Trust digital wallet

Now let’s get some token for the wallet by clicking the BitUnits row to reveal a screen with a SEND and RECEIVE button. You will not be able to send any BitUnits at this stage as you don’t have any, so click RECEIVE. You will be shown a QR code and a button labeled COPY WALLET ADDRESS. If you click this button, it will copy your address to the clipboard, and you can then send this to the BitUnits sender via email, SMS or posting it in Telegram, Twitter or Facebook.

Securing your BitUnits

As the Trust digital wallet does not hold the tokens in your phone, it is vital that you secure access to your digital assets. Trust provides a six digit pin code which you should activate from the Settings menu at the bottom right of the software screen. This ensures that if your phone is stolen that the thief can’t transfer your BitUnits to their wallet.

Write a comment below or in our Telegram group if you have any questions or spotted the gift we provided for the first observant reader. [Update: gift now claimed]

1 2