Comment of the Day @fluffypony:
Overheard after my talk last night: “I can’t believe Monero are in financial difficulty and can’t pay their developers…did they not raise enough in the presale?”
h/t @CEO— Riccardo “fluffyblockchain” Spagni (@fluffypony) January 30, 2018
Competition Heating Up
Samsung has entered the bitcoin mining race, revealing its plans to make chips designed specifically to mine bitcoin. Details are currently scare but the company mentioned that it expected higher profits driven in part from cryptocurrency mining chips in its fourth quarter earnings report.
“Samsung's foundry business is currently engaged in the manufacturing of crypto-currency mining chips”
Bitmain is the leading ASIC chip maker and produces the most efficient ASIC chips at scale. However, this reign as the top chip maker could soon come to an end. Samsung has the resources and expertise to produce more efficient chips at greater scale than Bitmain, seeing as it has one of the largest semi-conductor plants in the world.
Here's the long awaited Bitcoin ASIC commoditization phase. If large fabs spit out high end chips at high volumes, Bitcoin mining market could become as diverse as the smart phone market. https://t.co/fouSRAShWF
— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) January 30, 2018
This is an excellent opportunity to decentralise the bitcoin hash rate. Two months ago Chinese regulators announced that they would cut-off cheap subsidised electricity to bitcoin mining plants. It seems the control of bitcoin production is slowly slipping from China after almost a decade of dominance.
Facebook Bans Ads
“Learn how average Joe’s are riding the cryptocurrency BOOM!”
These are classic examples of the archetypal Facebook crypto ads that has been plaguing Facebook over the last year. As the crypto-asset market boomed over 2017 so did the number of downright awful crypto ads promising riches.
Facebook has banned all ads relating to cryptocurrencies as they wish to protect users from “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”
The majority of feedback from the community on Twitter has been positive as everyone knows that the ICO market is filled with scams. Advertisements have been the ICO scammers’ key into the pockets of retail investors. @VinnyLingham welcomed the news but @LilCobie was quick to point out that this man ran an ICO and was guilty of the same practices:
Man who did an ICO and owes Bitcoin for the majority of his wealth celebrates Facebook banning advertisements for ICOs and Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/HAUN3AZzZR
— LIL CO฿IE (@CryptoCobain) January 31, 2018
Although hypocrisy is common on CryptoTwitter, Lingham does have a point. The ICO was a different beast in early 2017 and it has morphed into the predominately scammy and uncouth market that we know today.
Of course there are great ICOs but they are getting tarnished by the overwhelming number of bad actors that are here for a quick buck. This ban will be a useful catalyst in cooling the overheated and greed filled ICO market that has lost its values.
