Weekly Top 3: September 3

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In this edition, you can learn more about financial privacy in the fiat and crypto world, how to get $1 million, and what ERC-20 tokens are! You can visit our blog to find our previous editions in?German?or?English, or?download our app?and create an account to start tracking your whole crypto portfolio for free!

Crypto & Financial Privacy

Many people think our monetary future will be a choice between today’s analog currency and the future’s digital one. However, this is a misconception, as we already use?primarily?digital currency. Only 8% of today’s money in use is cash; the other 92% is virtual and intangible and exists only on databases. As a result, 92% of the transactions can be monitored, and the remaining 8% is the last remaining mechanism that allows people to coordinate and trade value without intermediaries.

By using conventional digital payment systems, we are monitored in three different ways: first - what transactions we make; second - what we purchase; and third - where we are located. If you consider these three to be essential aspects of privacy, then you grasp the dilemma when using credit cards. The government that has power over financial information can exercise economic censorship and gains enormous political power. It can monitor the activities of dissidents or political opponents and oversee their campaign spending, but it can also impose its rule by criminalizing some forms of expression.

With cryptocurrency, we get a shot at a very different form of digital currency - one that isn’t controlled by a government and isn’t centralized. Cryptocurrencies differ in the various degrees of privacy they offer, but they are a much more flexible form of payment, as they don’t require intermediaries and can operate completely transnationally. And most importantly - they leave little room for people to be left out of their country’s financial and monetary infrastructure at a regime’s whim.

How to Become a Millionaire this September?

Ahead of the long-awaited Ethereum network merge, the Ethereum Foundation posted a big announcement for white hat hackers and programmers. Ethereum developers have increased the network's so-called bug bounty program four times from the $250,000 cash prizes paid hitherto for critical risk bugs to ensure a smooth transition. Security testers can now earn $1 million for identifying essential vulnerabilities in the network by September 8, when the Ethereum blockchain’s transition to the environmentally friendly Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism is roughly expected to occur.

The amounts for busting minor bugs will also increase proportionately during this period. A dedicated page on the Ethereum website lists the bug types valid for submission and the respective bounties. If you've got some time on your hands, you better get down to some bug hunting in the name of a better future for humanity (and hefty rewards)!

Why Do We Need ERC-20 Tokens Anyway?

NFT is short for “Non-Fungible Token,” which translates as “non-exchangeable asset.” A thing or product becomes a virtual asset, which is encrypted using blockchain technology to be subsequently unique. Unlike “fungible” tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum, where each unit of the same token is consistently exchangeable and identical, NFTs cannot be copied and are therefore protected against forgery. Owners of an NFT are thus the owners of a digital certificate proving they are the owner in a forgery-proof manner. NFTs are a great fit for many industries since the authenticity of each unique NFT can always be definitively verified through the records within the chain.

NFTs are most commonly used as art, digital collectibles, online gaming, music, real estate, and logistics. NFTs are helping to bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds in many sectors, and as they mature, we can expect greater adoption of more experimental use cases.