The Book about Cryptocurrency №1. Second edition expanded

© Viacheslav Nosko, 2023

© Maxim Burkov, 2023

ISBN 978-5-0060-8843-6

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Preface
to the second edition

⠀

«Cryptocurrency Book №1» was written in 2018—2019.

At that time, the cryptocurrency market was booming, new coins appeared every day, trading was active, the bitcoin rate fluctuated in the corridor from 3 to 7 thousand $ (ridiculous figures at the level of current prices). Facebook¹ and Telegram announced the launch of their blockchain projects, the capitalization of cryptocurrencies grew to almost $200 billion.

Over the past five years, the cryptocurrency industry has changed enormously. New directions, interesting projects have appeared, large international companies are growing, such as Binance, which we had the honor to assist in its expansion in the CIS market.

A few years ago, the terms DeFi (decentralized finance), DEX (decentralized exchanges), NFT (non-fungible tokens) were not yet in circulation. And now these are commonplace.

The world of cryptocurrencies has become more complex, more interesting, more dynamic. Our company, Pro Blockchain Media, has changed dramatically. We have turned from a small project into an international media agency. We have won many awards, launched hundreds of advertising campaigns and developed strategies for the best players in the cryptocurrency market.

In addition to our media agency, we also created bitbrain.me cryptoacademy and its main product – a closed community and investment club called DeFi Hunters. With over 1300 members from all over the world, DeFi Hunters is the best crypto community in the CIS region (although community members have been living in different cities and countries for a long time, it’s time to open local branches). We invite you to explore our Bitbrain Academy and join our vibrant community.

Over the past five years, we’ve produced thousands of videos on our YouTube channels, providing free access to knowledge about new technologies to people around the world. We’ve also written several other books, excerpts from which we’ll share with you in this updated version of the #1 Cryptocurrency Book. This book has become a bestseller in the CIS region, with almost 400,000 copies sold, and we are grateful for the feedback from our readers that prompted us to release this updated edition.

As we continue to work, develop and learn, we are committed to sharing the best content with you. That’s why we have updated some chapters of the book, added a separate chapter about DeFi, AirDrop and bitcoin mixers.

We hope that the new edition of our book will inspire you to new discoveries and actions in the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrencies. Remember, we are the keepers and creators of our own happiness and our own path.

Enjoy the journey!

Vyacheslav Nosko and Maxim Burkov

Beginnings…

A letter from the future

⠀

In 2013, a text appeared on Reddit.com, the author of which called himself Luka_Magnotta. The published entry detailed what planet Earth would turn into in the future. The letter from the future was dated 2025.

What was the mysterious author warning about? And now, when we have almost reached his time of living, what of the predictions – the truth, and what – so far – fantasy?

Every year, the price of bitcoin has risen 10 times on average. From $0.1 in 2010 to $1 in 2011, then to $10 in 2012 and $100 in 2013. Then the growth slowed down a bit, with the value increasing tenfold every two years: to $1,000 in 2015, to $10,000 in 2017, to $100,000 in 2019, and to $1,000,000 in 2021.

Well, so far it hasn’t reached the value of $100,000 per bitcoin, with the maximum bitcoin price reaching $68,789.63 in November 2021. After the decline in 2022, we are seeing the cryptocurrency rise again, so we may see Luka’s prediction gradually come true in the medium term.

Luka has raised major issues and described the fears of many opponents of cryptocurrency as coming true in the not-too-distant future. The author cites the price for 1 BTC in different years. Part of the predictions came true, the value of the coin roughly corresponded to reality.

As of 2019, Luka is wrong by a whole order of magnitude. Bitcoin is not worth $1 million, and so far its price has not even reached $100 thousand. The volatility of the asset does not allow you to make far-reaching predictions.

It is known that more than 19 million bitcoins have been issued in the world today. Several million have been permanently lost. The population of the planet is still just over 7 billion people.

And here is this prediction almost matches reality as of July 2023. The world has already mined 19,425,118 bitcoins. In general, this figure has already been calculated mathematically, based on the peculiarities of the mining algorithms. The maximum possible number of bitcoins is 21 million coins. Because of the mathematical model governing the issuance of bitcoins, it will take even more than 100 years to mine the remaining 9%. However, already, according to various reports, about 6 million bitcoins have been irretrievably lost. So because of the limited number of coins, it is logical to assume that the rate will grow even more, eventually reaching both $100,000 and a million dollars.

There are already more than 8 billion people on earth, of which, according to various data, from 100 million people or more own cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin blockchain data shows that there are currently more than a billion wallet addresses. But people may have more than one wallet or store their bitcoins on centralized custodial exchanges, making it difficult to estimate the actual number of people using bitcoin in the world.

In a letter from the future, Luka_Magnotta mentions Citatel (Citadels) – closed and fortified cities where bitcoin mining machines are located. Perhaps such cities have already appeared and will eventually really become free territories, uncontrolled by any states.

Now most bitcoins are mined in the United States, Kazakhstan, Canada, and Russia. Just in these countries Citadels will probably appear.

Further Luka_Magnotta predicts a complete collapse of traditional states.

In my world, which will soon become your world, most governments no longer exist because bitcoin transactions are anonymous and therefore most governments are unable to organize taxation of their citizens. Bitcoin’s success is primarily due to the fact that it has proven to be an effective method of hiding wealth from the government. At first, people entering «rogue countries» (such as Luxembourg, Monaco, and Liechtenstein) were chased by drones to ensure that the government knew who was trying to hide their wealth. Then, when people started hiding their funds using bitcoins, the government no longer had ways to control the process.

So far, complete anarchy has not happened on Earth, governments are working. But here’s a prediction about the use of unmanned drones could very well become a reality. UAVs are increasingly being used for both military and civilian purposes.

The economy is growing at about 2% per year. Why? Because if you have more than 0.01 bitcoin, you are probably not doing anything with your money. There is no inflation, and therefore no incentive to put your money anywhere.

And that prediction hasn’t materialized so far. Perhaps because cryptocurrencies have not yet displaced other assets and there is not yet a critical mass of owners who can only live off of the coin’s steady appreciation.

And further in the letter, the author increasingly thickens the colors, as if immersing the reader in a fantastic world of cyberpunk and post-apocalypse.

What happened to the Winklevoss twins? The Winklevoss twins were among the first to die. After the damage to society became clear, terrorist movements began to emerge that sought to hunt down and kill anyone they knew had a large hoard of bitcoins or who they believed was responsible for developing the cryptocurrency. Ironically, these terrorist movements use bitcoin to anonymously fund their operations.

The Winklevoss twins are fortunately doing just fine, their fortune in cryptocurrencies has long exceeded a billion dollars, the brothers have launched the Gemini platform, within which they have implemented their own unique key-holding scheme.

What other unpleasant things did Luka prophesize?

• Owners of large amounts of bitcoins are forced to go into hiding, change their identity.

• A quarter of bitcoin holders fell into the hands of extortionists and were tortured.

• In Africa there was a «tragedy» when 60% of the accumulated crypto-money was lost as a result of a hacker attack on cell phones that could be used to access the state ID and bitcoin wallet. These events sparked a wave of civil wars on the African continent, confusion and chaos that only the governments of Saudi Arabia and North Korea were able to stop.

• An underground network of rebels is preparing a powerful hacking attack on nuclear warhead control centers to launch several missiles and destroy major cities where computers are concentrated.

At the end of the letter, the author admits that the bitcoin situation has reached a dead end and this damned project must be destroyed now to prevent a nuclear winter in a few years.

So far, the identity of the author of this letter has never been established. Definitely the nickname Luka Magnotta is a pseudonym. The letter made a noise, quickly spread on specialized and not only resources, it was copied by hundreds of sites and translated into almost all languages of the world. There are also rumors that the message from the future was written by the same person (or group of people) who hides under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto – the creator of the first protocol for cryptocurrencies.

Be that as it may, so far the information voiced in the text is partially coming true. But in recent years we can see that blockchain technology is not only a market for cryptocurrencies, but also many other niches for application.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have emerged from blockchain technology (we will talk more about this in the first part of the book).

Blockchain today can be compared to the Internet as it was when it emerged back in the 1980s.

The technology is constantly evolving, and we may see many different applications in the future.

First of all, blockchain is associated with cryptocurrencies and payment systems that allow you to anonymously send money to anyone who has their own cryptocurrency wallet.

Besides the usual cryptocurrencies, this list includes utility tokens, digitized stocks, natural asset tokens, stablecoins, etc. At the end of 2020, there were about 1,000 different cryptocurrencies. In 2022, the number of them is more than 20 thousand units.

Another direction where blockchain technologies are applied is decentralized finance and DEX exchanges. Over the past five years, this direction has been actively developing, and only a lazy person has not heard about NFT. This topic deserves a separate conversation, so in this edition of the book there is an additional chapter about DeFi.

This sector falls into the category of rapid development with the help of innovative developments. Decentralized finance can include instruments created on the basis of blockchain and operating with the help of smart contracts.

While bitcoin has traditionally been opposed to fiat money and classical financial institutions, we see blockchain technology increasingly penetrating the banking industry. Blockchain can make global payments and money transfers faster and cheaper by eliminating intermediaries and intermediate steps. This can lead to lower fees and more efficient cross-border payments. Also, blockchain technology allows issuers and investors to issue and trade securities, such as stocks or bonds, directly and without intermediaries. This can simplify the process of raising capital and increase the availability of financing for SMEs. Blockchain can help banks improve customer verification and anti-money laundering processes through the creation of secure and shared databases. It can reduce costs and improve accuracy in meeting regulatory requirements. And blockchain can also provide transparency and immutability of financial data, which can be useful for record keeping and auditing. It can also help improve security and protection against data manipulation. In the future, no one will examine the credit history as the information will be shown due to the registry in blockchain.

International trade. In this sector, working with smart contracts makes it possible to simplify the issuance of customs invoices, licenses, certificates and other documents. All this is achieved through the speed of transactions and automation of processes. The development of this trend will reduce overall costs, time to clear cargo and reduce corruption.

Impact on value creation. Blockchain gives additional transparency, any transactions can be traced in data chains, ensuring reliability. This creates global value chains for goods. Future improvements in the technology will lead to transformations from cost reduction to increased efficiency, utilizing new operating models.

As we can see, so far the dire predictions of a global catastrophe have not come true. But in some ways, the mysterious Luka was right: blockchain, bitcoin and other currencies have changed our lives irrevocably.

From the authors: who we are and why we can be trusted

Hi! If you are reading this book and are already fascinated by the topic of cryptocurrencies, you are probably sure that crypto is a new age currency and that in time the world will change a lot thanks to it. What, in fact, the author of the letter from the future has already warned us about.

Most likely, you already realize that you can make good money on crypto. Maybe you are already counting the millions that you will have after the next jump of bitcoin or another coin?

It is and… it isn’t.

There is an illusion in the mind of the average person that you can make quick money with cryptocurrency. Buy bitcoins and ethers and wait for their value to increase many times over.

However, the crypto market is subject to general market laws, and there is much in it from traditional trading.

Although there is no denying that this market is more accessible, the entry threshold is minimal, unlike the stock market.

It is impossible to enter this market from scratch and lose nothing if you behave unwisely and wastefully on the market without analyzing information and knowing the principles of work. At least, our personal experience and the experience of other crypto traders confirms this. We ourselves started working with cryptocurrencies in 2015 and saw how the market was growing, the number of exchanges, coins and tokens. And we ourselves were at a disadvantage and spent hours and hours of time and hundreds and thousands of dollars of personal funds to figure it all out.

So, who are we?

We are Maxim and Vyacheslav, the creators of the media platform Pro Blockchain, where you can see what’s happening with the cryptocurrency market in real time. This is the leading media on cryptocurrency in the CIS countries.

We run a YouTube channel, a channel on Telegram, we are on social networks – Vkontakte, Facebook² and Twitter.

The ecosystem of our products already has a total of 500,000 people. Every month we have 50,000 unique visitors to our website, the audience of our Telegram channel (56,000 subscribers) and YouTube (200,000 subscribers) is growing.

On the YouTube channel we regularly broadcast live and thematic broadcasts and answer users’ questions.

Experts in crypto and investing often come to visit us. They share their experience and their thoughts on the market situation.

If you regularly read, watch, listen to Pro-blockchain materials, you will gradually begin to understand what is happening in the crypto market and where this, perhaps, the youngest and fastest growing global market is moving.

The channel and all resources named Pro Blockchain Media are our educational endeavor. It’s not the first year we have been densely involved in the topic of cryptocurrencies, we want to share knowledge and help others to better understand the technology, which we are sure is the future. The future is interesting and full of opportunities for everyone who is ready to learn, delve into it, and take risks.

We have personally, through our own experience, studied how the cryptocurrency market works, and we continue to study, monitor it and keep track of meaningful information.

We have been closely involved in this topic since the end of 2015. We started with Bitcoin, then worked with Ethereum.

Before this book was born, we lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on the two of us.

Maxim: «Before I started working with cryptocurrency, I was involved in different types of businesses – construction, catering, consulting. My path into crypto was not the easiest: once I lost all my investments. I bought Ripple after seeing how the market was gaining momentum, but then I lost almost 6 thousand dollars due to a rate hike. I quickly withdrew the rest of my funds and was extremely happy to have gotten my feet out of there. But this story, on the contrary, made me study the cryptocurrency market and its mechanics.

The most important lesson I learned after the first few years of working with cryptocurrencies is that there is no such thing as easy and fast money. To be an expert, you need to understand how the blockchain world works and what influences it. The biggest mistake beginners make is the desire to make money fast. No, it doesn’t work that way.

Over time, I began to understand it not at the level of an ordinary person, but at the level of a professional. The market is alive, it has its own dynamics. You need to know when it makes sense to enter it, and when you need to leave quickly.

If you are going into cryptocurrencies, I congratulate you. It’s a good decision. No matter what the skeptics say, Bloxxain is the technology of the future.

Once you start delving into this story, you will have a huge amount of knowledge on different subjects that you will then apply to your life. Working with cryptocurrencies, I started to understand how the media works, how it works, how news is manipulated. I can see what the future holds in smart contracts, in the future it will help formalize any transaction, from car leasing to real estate sales. It will help remove unnecessary middlemen.

Cryptocurrencies are good as a means of settlement. Imagine that all currency has run out, there are no rubles or dollars. But there is bitcoin or several cryptocurrencies. You can use them to pay with, to make exchanges, bypassing banks, bypassing expensive swifts.

You can keep savings in cryptocurrencies.

The more you know about crypto, the more you delve into this topic, understand, learn, the higher will be your value in the market as a specialist.

You don’t have to invest and build portfolios. Bitcoin can be used as a means of keeping savings.

There is a saying: first people laugh, then they shut up, then people have nowhere else to go. And this is characteristic of any new technology. People used to laugh when they bought pizza with bitcoins. When Facebook³ was first invented, no one thought it would grow from a student network into the biggest social network in the world. Don’t mind the ridicule, but you should definitely go into the world of Bloxxain with your head and take your time.

Vyacheslav: «I spent 10 years in the army, 5 years studying, 5 years serving in the Crimea. I got two higher educations and finished a lot of special courses, from analyst to courses on building sales departments. Then he quit his job and tried different jobs and businesses: trading, intermediary services, catering, consulting.

When I met Maxim, I already had an office. We consulted on various financial products. There were various partnership programs, we earned money as intermediaries, and we did quite well. How did we end up in crypto? We were developing our own cryptocurrency. Just in 2015, Ethereum had just appeared. We were leading the technical part of a project, and we needed an internal cryptocurrency for it. We were working with the Ambisafe team at the time, they had a great swing and were doing ICO projects on their own platform. Just with them they created a cryptocurrency that still exists somewhere.

In late 2015 and early 2016, my immersion into the world of cryptocurrencies began.

In January 2016, I bought 50 bitcoins (now and at the peak in prices in 2021, it was a huge amount), converted them to Ethereum and invested everything in the ICO of TheDAO project. It was the largest ICO that raised a lot of money, tens of millions. Ethereum alone was about 30—40% of the total amount. The ICO was very successful. But at one point it was hacked. After this story, Ethereum split into two currencies. The so-called Ethereum Classic appeared. That’s when I realized what it was like when all your funds were invested in one place, what it was like not to diversify them, but to just pour them all into one project. At that exchange rate this mistake cost me more than 10 thousand dollars. But if you recalculate it at the current Ethereum exchange rate (ed. – at the end of June 2023, the exchange rate is about $1900), it’s a colossal amount of money. I had about 1000 ETH, multiplied by $1900, and even at the current exchange rate it’s almost 2 million dollars!

But I was lucky, I managed to get the coins back and even some Ethereum Classic.

That information you will read in the book cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the very least. And you get it for free. Or for symbolic money.

It’s up to you how you want to use it. Either way, good luck. We are sure you will never want to leave the path of conqueror of the Blockchain world.

Everything you will read in this book is the result of our experience, sometimes sad, sometimes successful. But absolutely we are not theorists, we are practitioners.

Everything we tell you about Bloxchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and other cryptocurrencies is tested on successful and unsuccessful transactions.

In addition to our own funds, we also manage portfolios. The volume of portfolios in different periods varies from 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 dollars.

For those who are especially advanced and motivated, there are recommendations from traders at the end of the book.

If you have the desire to learn and develop further, you can learn the profession of a broker in the cryptocurrency market and, due to your experience, flair and expert knowledge, advise others and manage other people’s assets.

I hope we’ve convinced you that we know a little more about cryptocurrencies than the average, run-of-the-mill citizen?»