For more than a decade, Kickstarter PBC has convinced the public to pay people to follow through on their ideas to build a gadget, make a film or create a piece of art. It was, in some ways, a harbinger of today’s digital economy built around cryptocurrencies, decentralized organizations and NFT art.
On Wednesday, Kickstarter plans to unveil a project that will merge the two worlds. It’s hatching a standalone company to build a crowdfunding system much like Kickstarter’s but based on blockchain technology. When it’s ready, Kickstarter will switch its own website to the new infrastructure, and the new company will make the tools available for anyone to create a competing crowdfunding site.
The new company does not yet have a name. Development is slated to begin in the first quarter of next year, and Kickstarter expects to transition its site to the new protocol sometime in 2022. The change will take place entirely behind the scenes and shouldn’t affect how people use the site, the New York-based company said.
It’s a large, technical undertaking. Embarking on the project was a “big decision,” said co-founder Perry Chen, but it was ultimately an easy one to make because it fits with Kickstarter’s mission, which is “to help bring creative projects to life.”
Chen started Kickstarter with a pair of art-loving friends in 2009, and it was a near-instant hit with cash-strapped go-getters and eventually with celebrities and big companies looking to test consumer demand. The Peloton stationary bike started with a Kickstarter campaign ($307,332 raised), and so did the Oculus VR headset ($2.4 million). Kickstarter helped finance new records from Amanda Palmer ($1.2 million) and the pop group TLC ($430,000) and revived cult classic TV shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 ($5.8 million) and Veronica Mars ($5.7 million).
Coinbase breaks down 11 of the most popular pieces of crypto lingo.
If you’ve spent any time reading crypto Reddit or Twitter, there’s a 100 percent chance you’ve encountered — and were potentially baffled – by a dense thicket of acronyms, misspelled words, gamer memes, and more. From FOMO and FUD to laser eyes and whales, get crypto-literate with this beginner’s guide to eleven of the most common pieces of slang.
Diamond hands
Or as Elon Musk put it in a May tweet: 💎🙌. Diamond hands is a meme popularized by crypto and stock traders on Reddit. It connotes a hardcore adherence to the HODL philosophy (see below) — and is often used by online groups that have banded together to try to drive up the price of a memecoin or other asset. (The related-but-derogatory term for skittish traders? “Paper hands”/🧻🤲. )
FOMO
Stands for “fear of missing out” — and is generally most intense when markets are rising fast. FOMO can lead to emotional trading and bad decision making — it’s dangerous because hindsight is 20/20, making it all too easy to regret the gains you would have made if you had only timed all your trades perfectly. (Nobody times all of their trades perfectly.)
A good way to reduce FOMO is to have a strategy and stick to it, especially if you believe that the asset you’re investing in will rise in value over the longer term. One popular option is dollar-cost averaging (or DCA), in which you invest the same amount every week or month without worrying about what the market is doing.
FUD
Stands for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt.” It’s a classic public relations and propaganda tactic. The idea is to warp public perception about a product, technology, or candidate by strategically releasing misinformation designed to create a negative emotional response.
Mainframe-computer architect and entrepreneur Gene Amdahl is often credited with popularizing the term in the 1980s. He used it to describe the way IBM salespeople of the era worked to delegitimize competitors’ products, painting them as unreliable and untrustworthy.
In the crypto space, FUD often refers to general skepticism around the technology (from the media or from traditional-finance analysts), but the idea can also be used by proponents of a specific token or protocol in an attempt to disarm criticism.
What should you do when faced with FUD? Embrace another popular crypto acronym, and DYOR. Do your own research.
The flippening
The flippening is a hypothetical event in which Ethereum’s market cap will one day eclipse Bitcoin’s. It can also be used to describe any similar situation where a smaller or less-established token or protocol might overtake a larger rival.
HODL
HODL is probably the most prevalent piece of crypto slang. It originally came from a drunken typo in the subject line of a 2013 Bitcoin forum post: “I AM HODLING”. (It should have read “holding.”)
HODL — usually pronounced “hoddle” — simply means to buy and hold for the long term, no matter what the market is doing. Bitcoin fans have even retroactively turned it into an acronym that stands for “hold on for dear life.”
The original forum post is riddled with typos, but the underlying message was prescient. At the time, Bitcoin’s value had plummeted from $1242 to $480 in a month. Panicked traders were bailing out, but GameKyuuubi — real name Mike, a programmer — wasn’t selling: “In a zero-sum game such as this,” he wrote, “traders can only take your money if you sell.”
The sentiment soon spread throughout the Bitcoin community and countless memes ensued. Crypto has experienced multiple bull and bear cycles, but so far at least, HODL has been good advice — with Bitcoin emerging as one of the best-performing assets of the last decade. (As mentioned in the FOMO entry above, one good way to HODL is via DCA.)
Laser eyes
In 2021, avid Bitcoin proponents began signalling their support for the cryptocurrency by adding “laser eyes” to their Twitter photo. NFL superstar Tom Brady, Paris Hilton, Elon Musk, Wyoming senator Cynthia Lummis, and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor are a few of the famous names who have taken part. The meme is often associated with the hashtag #LaserRayUntil100K — indicating support for the cryptocurrency’s potential to break the $100,000 mark.
Memecoin
Dogecoin (DOGE) is the original memecoin — it’s literally a cryptocurrency based on a meme that was popular around the time it was invented. But in 2021, when Dogecoin dramatically rose in value, a huge wave of other tokens with absurd names emerged (in part made possible by decentralized exchanges like Sushiswap, which allow anyone to easily list a token). In May 2021, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin donated more than $1 billion in DOGE-inspired memecoins like AKITA, SHIB, and Dogelon Mars (ELON) towards COVID-relief efforts in India and other causes. The coins had been deposited in Buterin’s crypto wallet in an attempt to make traders believe he was an investor.
Moon (or mooning)
When a cryptocurrency is seeing strong upward momentum, traders tend to describe it as going “to the moon” or “mooning.”
Pump and dump
A coordinated effort to artificially inflate the price of an asset and cash out before it tumbles back to earth. Cryptocurrencies with smaller market caps are particularly vulnerable to pump and dump schemes. A group of traders will work together to drive up the price of a specific small-cap altcoin. As prices rise, the schemers will promote the opportunity on Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Facebook, YouTube comments, and elsewhere, attracting more investors and driving the price up further. When the asset hit their target value, the original group will cash out — taking big profits and leaving everyone else “holding the bag” as the token collapses.
Rekt
What happens if you get swept up by FOMO and end up becoming the victim of a pump and dump? You get rekt. Getting rekt in its original gaming context means to lose badly, and the definition is pretty much the same in crypto.
Whale
The biggest holders of crypto are known as whales. For Bitcoin, anyone with more than 1000 BTC is generally considered a whale. Unlike the vast majority of crypto traders, whales have the potential to move markets with their trades. As of mid-May 2021, the top 100 Bitcoin addresses (out of more than 800,000 active addresses) held more than 20 percent of all BTC according to bitinfocharts.com.
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If you have heard of cryptocurrency then we are sure that you probably have heard the word blockchain.
But, what exactly is blockchain?
Blockchain is a system of recording information on a cloud ledger in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or cheat the system.
The mechanics of blockchain are extremely complex, hence why many followers of cryptocurrency do not bother learning about it. The basic idea of blockchain is very simple: to decentralize (the process of shifting control from one main group to several smaller ones) the storage of data so that such data cannot be owned, controlled or manipulated by a central actor.
Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general is extremely volatile which is all the more reason why people invested in should know why it exists and how it works. Those who do their research on the value of blockchain in the end will be the most successful as the world continues to adapt to cryptocurrency.
Blockchain shows a lot of promise for a diversity of useful technologies.
Blockchains depend on the utilization of public/private key pairs to identify contributors in transactions or contracts. Therefore, it can be used in other real-world (familiar) cases.
What else can blockchain be used for other than cryptocurrency?
Real Estate, Land, And Auto Title Transfers
One of the key objectives of blockchain is to remove paper out of the processing method, as paper trails are frequently a primary cause of uncertainty of record keeping. When buying or selling land, a house, or a car, the individual transfers or receives a title. As a replacement for of handling this on paper, blockchain can store these titles on its ledger, permitting for a crystal clear view of this transfer and rightful ownership.
Prescription Medication
Currently Merck is testing such a blockchain system for prescription drug returns. Blockchain could be a means of clearly tracking prescription medicines. Because prescription returns do occur, counterfeit medications are intercepted (and sometimes not) blockchain propositions prescription drug companies the ability to track their products based on serial and/or batch numbers to ensure that consumers are getting the real deal when they pick up their medications from the pharmacy.
Payment Processing And Money Transfers
Arguably, the most understood use for blockchain is as a means to expedite the transfer of funds from one party to another with digital currency. Since the US dollar isn’t disappearing just yet, there still needs to be ways to make its transactions more secure. With banks soon eliminated from the equation, and authentication of transactions ongoing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, nearly all transactions that are processed over a blockchain ledger can be settled within a matter of seconds.
Trading
In the future blockchain could compete with current dollar trading platforms to buy or sell stocks. For the reason that blockchain systems confirm and settle transactions immediately, it could eliminate the wait time traders and investors confront when selling stock(s) and requesting access to their funds for the objective of reinvestment or withdrawal.
Wills And inheritances
As a replacement for establishing a paper will, people could have the preference of creating and storing their digital will on a blockchain network. When used with smart contracts (self-executing contracts with the terms of the contract between individuals directly written into lines of code), which could distribute inheritances, both money and property, based on when certain criteria are met (such as trust fund agreements). Thus this would leave no issues as to who should receive what assets when an person pass away.
Article By Kadesh Carter – Earthy Realist CEO
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