While I was perusing through this weeks crypto news, on our versions of mainstream crypto media like CoinDesk and CoinTelegraph, I came across a couple different articles that peaked my interest. So I want to share them with you in addition to my reactions and perspectives on them.

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Bill Clinton weighs in on Blockchain and Golden Eggs

Bill Clinton gave his two cents on many topics during his time spent at a Ripple conference two days ago. He spoke about gun laws, foreign policy and his new book. He also touched on a topic that was actually relevant to the conference and had some words about this new technology that is the blockchain.
Maybe this is Bill trying to stay relevant in order to score some more book sales, and I won’t get into the fact that he was referencing specifically to blockchains and not the real power of decentralized cryptocurrencies, but he did have this to say about blockchain technology,

“The permutations and possibilities are staggeringly great. But we could ruin it all by negative identity politics and economic and social policy.”

The thing that I hope Bill realizes is that Bitcoin was created despite politics and governmental regulations and because of this it very well has the ability to continue to exist despite politics and governmental regulations. I hope eventually the U.S. will understand that the crypto world certainly doesn’t revolve around them, it will continue with or without their persuasion and permission.

PigeonCoin Networks suffers the consequences of Bitcoins Bug

Here’s a perfect example of how this space is still very early and theres a whole lot to be learned.
A couple weeks ago Bitcoin developers discovered a bug that had it been exploited would have had devastating effects on Bitcoin’s network and coin supply. Luckily it was caught in time and remedied.
Now the thing with Bitcoin being open source software is that many other cryptocurrencies that exist today have taken this code and used it to create their own unique coins. Many of these new coins have not exactly made drastic changes to this code. In fact, most are just copy and paste jobs by less than qualified developers.
The beauty of Bitcoin being open source is that when bugs like this are found and fixed, this information is also made available so that other projects can have the ability to make the same fixes to their respective codebase.
The problem with one of these projects called PigeonCoin, is that they did not recognize the importance of updating their code to prevent this bug from allowing a hacker to print what would amount to a quarter of the total supply. Now not only is there someone out there with a ton of PigeonCoins, but it’s subsequently diluted the already huge supply of coins, effectively diminishing the value for those who actually invested in it.

So for those of you who are wondering if that small cap coin you’ve invested in is the real deal, here’s a hint, check their GitHub or wherever they publish their repositories, and make sure they have made the appropriate updates that address this issue, and any others moving forward.

Political Campaigns Accepting Volunteered Mining Power

This one was really interesting for me to read about.
First of all, let’s address the fact that these political campaigns are using the very same concept that many hackers have been using for years now to shadow mine by using unsuspecting visitors of certain websites.
Basically, what would happen is people would visit a website that a hacker had injected code that allowed them to have access to these users computing power. They’d use that computing power to mine cryptocurrencies without the users knowledge.
Now we’re seeing things like political campaigns take this idea and use is as a way to get easy donations.

So you know that argument that criminals use cryptocurrencies? This doesn’t exactly help that cause…

I mean, it’s not exactly the best use case for cryptocurrencies, you know, supporting something as deceptive as politics, the very system it can render irrelevant if applied correctly. But regardless, it is an example of people having a need and seeing cryptocurrencies as a solution.
I’d be interested to see how this plays out in the long run, it’s not like these politicians are volunteering to place their campaign promises on the blockchain. That’d I’d like to see ;)

HodgeTwins (CryptoTwins) Learn a hard lesson

The HodgeTwins, AKA CryptoTwins learned a hard lesson recently, that is finding a place to store your cryptocurrencies is no laughing matter.
I really enjoy their youtube channel, they’ve gained a huge following in the health and fitness world and they give hilarious advice to all kinds of people who ask them for it. But this time it seems they had to learn one piece of advice the hard way. Selecting the wallet that will be storing a large amount of your cryptocurrencies should not be taken lightly. This particular scenario involve EOS coins and a mobile wallet. I know EOS is relatively new and there aren’t a whole bunch of options for safe storage, but there are options.

I personally would never recommend using a mobile wallet to store any amount of cryptocurrencies that you would be sad to see go. It seems that this particular wallet they chose to store their EOS already had a few complaints about similar occurrences. Let this be a reminder to all that these types of warning signs should not be ignored.