Money is an essential commodity to humanity beyond the notes and coin; it is how we live. We live by giving what we have for what we want; we exchange value for what kind of value we want (which we live by). As the world evolved, there began to be diversification of the kinds of money we use and that was how currencies were birthed and today we have some many currencies in the world used by different countries: ranging from Pound to Euro, Dollar to Yen and the list goes on; there are even varieties of the Dollar currency too, but that is not the purpose of this article. You can read more about money and how it works here.

Well, if you read the recommended article, I guess you must have had a sneak pick into how the money thing works. So I’ll just jump right in, but I’ll leave you a trial so what you just read doesn’t just fall off your head a we journey through what this term block chain actually is. So here goes: First we have MONEY, then we have CURRENCY, and then there is a diversification of currency which we call CRYPTO CURRENCY which in itself gives its meaning away — an encrypted currency. How is this done ? you may ask, by Encrypting which is a method called Cryptography.

It is a collation of binary data that works as a medium of exchange (money). This does not exist in physical form like the normal currencies we carry about in our purses or go to withdraw in banks, rather it uses a decentralised control system and is a tradable digital asset or digital form of money that is distributed through a ledger community called BLOCK CHAIN.

Well, as earlier said, it is a ledger technology that records all transactions of Cryptocurrency such that they never get lost, and that means accountability is intact. The implication of this is that no crypto coin can go missing since it is a digital currency that stores all transaction information and also a track record of the cryptocurrency that goes round; you are sure that it is the same cryptocurrency that was minted that is still going round to everyone, unlike the paper and physical coin that can go missing and unaccounted for.

We Senior Alpacas are excited to welcome our newest addition to the range — Berry Data.

With this partnership, all you Alpacas will be able to open leveraged yield farming positions up to 1.75x on PancakeSwap’s BRY-BNB pair, which currently yields over 95% APR in CAKE Rewards! The pool will go live on May 14th, 2021 at 10 AM GMT.

As part of the Grazing Range program, you’ll also be able to stake ibALPACA for $200K USD in BRY rewards which will be distributed over 4 weeks.

Leveraged yield farmers in the BRY-BNB pool will also receive $25k USD in ALPACA rewards per week for every ~1 million TVL in the pool, on top of the leveraged yield farming rewards and trading fees.

Total Rewards: 32,000 BRY (~$200k USD)

BRY Token Address: 0xf859Bf77cBe8699013d6Dbc7C2b926Aaf307F830

Rewards Period: 4+ weeks

Rewards Start Block: 7,395,000 (Approx. 14 May 2021 10 AM GMT)

Rewards End Block: 8,201,400 (Approx. 16 June 2021 10 AM GMT)

Distribution Schedule:

To be eligible, you must stake ibALPACA in the BRY Grazing Range pool before May 15th, 10 AM GMT and stake through the campaign period or for at least 30 days(whichever is shorter).. The NFT tier you receive will be based on the amount of ibALPACA staked.

Berry Data is a transparent community-verified price oracle on BNB Chain. Berry Data provides a trustless and decentralized alternative for off-chain data. Also, it provides the infrastructure for decentralized applications to query off-chain data by properly incentivizing miners to provide data.

Berry Data’s ecosystem has four key components:

Miners are incentivized to submit data using inflationary rewards, and which data types they update are chosen based upon the rewards assigned to each query.

Data Users can access the latest data feeds by paying BRY as the service fee.

Data Feeds: In every 3 minutes the BERRY smart contract groups the top five most funded data types and creates a PoW challenge for miners to solve.

Reward System: The miners risk losing this stake if they submit data that is successfully disputed by BRY holders.

Berry Data has been audited by Certik with a current security score of 92 https://www.certik.org/projects/berrydata

February 16th, 2021, Berry was launched via Pancake IFO

No

All the protocol upgrades go through community voting on Snapshot.

PancakeSwap, Gate.io, MXC

Yes, maximum supply is 12,500,000 million

There is a weekly token burn as a deflationary mechanism.

6% — Team: will be locked for 2 years and will be released every quarter. Team vesting will start from the second quarter after the listing https://docs.berrydata.co/whitepaper/berry-token

Relevant wallets disclosure can also be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x_keXPfVy-e6EKX-Pc0furoQBNXup-xKHM607mh6RyA/edit#gid=0

Berry Data’s team has 6 full-time team members, including 3 developers and 3 operations members. Information of key team members are as follows:

John WU — Berry Data CTO

Former IRISnet Senior Technical Architecture for 2 years; ex community code contributor for Cosmos; ex- senior Developers for JD.com. Graduated from Peking University with a master’s degree in computer science.

Mandy NG — Berry Data COO

Former Kucoin Exchange BD manager, experienced in coin listing in the APAC region, she has close connections with most of the mainstream exchanges and leading blockchain projects. Before Kucoin, she worked for IBM as a Sales Manager for 3 years. Graduated from University College London with a master’s degree in marketing.

Dr. Tom HAO — Berry Data Leading Scientist

He received his Ph.D. degree from Jilin University(China) in Computer Science. Focus on cryptography and computer security. Berry Data’s developing leader for product security.

https://docs.berrydata.co/whitepaper/berry-roadmap

To learn more about Berry Data, you can visit their official communication channels:

Website: https://berrydata.co/#/home

Docs: https://docs.berrydata.co/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/berry_data

Telegram: https://t.me/berrydata

Medium: https://medium.com/berry-data-official

Github:https://github.com/berrydata

These Metaverses are created starting from blockchain technology which grants: digital proof of ownership (your private keys on a crypto wallet can prove ownership of your assets or activities on a blockchain), digital collectibility, transfer of value, governance, accessibility, and interoperability (blockchain can make it possible for distinct spaces in the Metaverse to communicate with one another). If you’d like to know more about the Metaverse you can check one of our previous articles right here.

The majority of Metaverse projects are currently games that provide the 3D part of the Metaverse. For harmonizing with Metaverse’s fundamental vision, blockchain offers a secure, cost-effective, and transparent option. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most promising metaverse blockchain projects.

Decentraland

Decentraland is a virtual reality platform backed by the Ethereum blockchain which allows users to create, experience, and monetize their content and applications. Three layers make up Decentraland and these are: track land ownership and its content, download assets using a decentralized distribution system, and enable users worldwide to connect.

Decentraland, in reality, was a well-known metaverse project long before the hype surrounding the Metaverse began to build earlier this year. The simple 2D game created in 2016 has grown into one of the best metaverse crypto ventures, with NFTs valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. MANA, Decentraland’s native ERC-20 standard utility coin, is also available.

Digital Currency Group (DCG) and global real estate firm Jamestown, owner of One Times Square, recreated the 26-story tower for the famed Ball Drop in a MetaFest 2022 event. Essentially, Jamestown has snapped up 170 LAND and recreated One Times Square, located at -106, -119 on Decentraland to host the celebrations. This is what Jamestown’s CEO Michael Phillips stated about entering the Metaverse:

“The future of real estate is the thoughtful integration of the virtual and physical worlds, optimized for user experience. The Metaverse is an important part of the evolution of real estate and the built environment. While physical real estate is largely limited to people with geographic proximity, the Metaverse can give people around the world meaningful access to places through immersive virtual experiences”.

Peculiarities:

The Sandbox

Originally The Sandbox is a sandbox game (a video game with a gameplay element that gives the player a great degree of creativity to complete tasks towards a goal within the game) created for mobile phones. Sandbox’s brand was acquired in 2018 and used to create the now world-famous blockchain game.

It is now a virtual reality platform where everybody can build, own and monetize their gaming experiences in the Ethereum blockchain using SAND (the token created to buy NFTs). Three things are possible on the Sandbox: create voxel assets using software called vox edit, sell and collect the best assets on the marketplace and build 3D games for free.

NFTs, user-created environments, and other content are all part of The Sandbox’s virtual universe. The Sandbox has grown into a complicated ecosystem where Ether and its native currency, SAND, are used to power the in-game economy.

Players can create their own digital identities and avatars, which they can attach to a cryptocurrency wallet to manage their NFTs and SAND tokens, as well as other blockchain assets. Players can construct virtual objects and games with exclusive economic potential as NFTs using powerful programs.

Peculiarities:

Star Atlas

The final, and probably, one of the most innovative metaverse crypto projects, is Star Atlas. Star Atlas is a next-generation gaming metaverse that combines cutting-edge blockchain, real-time graphics, multiplayer video games, and decentralized financial technology. The use of non-fungible tokens gained and traded within Star Atlas provides an economy that is tangibly similar to real-world assets and ownership. Grand strategy, exploration, role-playing, and space flight simulation are all represented inside the game.

The whitepaper of Star Atlas introduces the game as follows:

Star Atlas is a virtual gaming metaverse based in the year 2620. In this distant future, three major factions have emerged;

These factions are in an ongoing struggle for resources, territorial conquest, and political domination. As a faction citizen of Star Atlas, you will have the ability to influence the outcome of this intergalactic conflict while creating the opportunity to earn rewards for your contributions.

Peculiarities:

The all metaverse concept is still at a primordial stage. Simultaneously, the number of metaverse projects is significantly expanding. Interoperability, security, ownership, and decentralization are all characteristics that blockchain can provide in these digital spaces.

MyLime is the linchpin for smooth integration between the digital and the physical world. Its patented platform grants a true and indissoluble link between the physical asset and its NFT counterpart, strengthening the interoperability and ownership concepts in this rising reality.

What do you think? Will the blockchain-metaverse relationship thrive in the future?

Key Insights: Bitcoin (BTC) fails to re-enter the $40,000 range, with downside risks remaining.Increased government monitoring and a broadening ban on Russian crypto accounts might put…

In the meantime, to celebrate Chad’s win, as well as to tell his story to the world, a written interview was recently conducted with questions from the HypeX community on social media.

Very soon, HypeX will also host a video interview, so if you forgot to ask any questions, you still have a chance!

I am 21 years old, and I’m a 3rd-year industrial design student.

No, this is one of the many competitions that I have entered before. I also entered design competitions by Pensole Academy such as the 21 days of design challenge, and the world sneaker championship 2019, and I’ve got to the top 16 in the apparel category in that competition. I also joined the colorway contest by WAU (we are underdogs) and the Garrixon x atmos competitions as well. I’ve also joined competitions like the Laceless Design challenge by Laceless.

My experience in joining these competitions made me grow as a designer. Even though I did not win in all of my previous competitions, it made me strong as a designer because it taught me how to deal with setbacks and how to stand up again and to do my best at 200 percent more in my next competition.

My friends shared the contest with me and they are the ones who encouraged me to join the competition. My main goal was just to have fun in designing the sneaker and to also share my skills or what can I do as a footwear designer with the world and also to the metaverse.

I got interested in footwear design when I was 14 -15 years old. Basketball sneakers made me fall in love with footwear design. When I was 14 years old I also had a vision/dream that I was facing myself in the mirror as a footwear designer creating footwear for people and athletes. Since then I decided to become an industrial designer and now as an industrial design student I was able to learn more about overall design but footwear design is my passion and my favorite.

My sneaker design idol is Tinker Hatfield. When I saw his Netflix documentary I found a person that I can relate to, being able to think more about feet than other people and being able to innovate and create iconic designs that lasted for decades. I also like being able to work with an athlete to create a design that meets their needs. D’Wayne Edwards (Founder of Pensole Lewis College) is also one of the people that I look up to. He was able to make a community of footwear designers. Not only that, it is because of the Pensole Footwear Design Academy I was able to develop my skills as a designer. Even though I was not able to physically attend or join Pensole classes, because of their design contests I was able to learn and get to know people who I can relate to as a footwear designer. The Pensole Academy’s contests opened a lot of doors for me even if I didn’t win at some of the contests.

I also have Filipino footwear designers that I look up to. Archie Tolentino was one of them. Archie inspired me because of his designs and footwear sketches that taught me how to be consistent and how to design sneakers proportionally.

My design process started with the inspiration of the sneaker and I chose the Golden State Warriors for that. After I chose the main inspiration for my design I searched for Images that can inspire me in designing the sneaker. Then I had rough sketches in procreate just to be clear on what path to follow and what parts to remove.

After sketching I started to design and finalize and fix my design in 3d by adding more components as I progress then after I modeled my design in 3d I imported my 3d file in keyshot and chose materials and then I rendered it.

The hardest part of designing the sneaker is that it was my first time doing 3d for sneakers I found it difficult to execute some of my ideas and also the rendering process because it takes a lot of time to render a clear image.

The easiest part of designing the sneaker is picking up ideas and inspiration on the internet.

I used Fusion 360 in designing the 3d model of the sneaker and I rendered my design in Keyshot.

I picked the Warriors because it is my favorite team in the NBA. My passion for sneakers started way back because of basketball sneakers. I gained interest in sneakers because of the details and the technology that goes into a pair of those types of shoes. That made me fall in love with the design.

The Warriors was my first and only basketball team that I root for every NBA season, win or lose! Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are the best shooters in the league and are my favorite players in the NBA.

I imagine myself as a footwear designer in big brands such as Nike and Jordan. I’m aware that it can be hard but I’m willing to work my way up.

My favorite design of the top 6 is the design of Kaine Gerry-Ofor. He had cool renders of his design and at a first glance, you can tell that it is inspired by the Toronto Raptors.

My family and friends helped me a lot in this contest. They helped me in my struggles and they trusted in my capacity as a designer and they showed their support by being proud of me no matter what the end result of this contest would be.

My schools La Consolacion College Bacolod and Don Bosco Technical Institute Victorias helped me tremendously by sharing my design. My schools also supported me by voting for my design.

Lastly Zapateria, a creative hub for footwear design in the Philippines also shared my design, encouraged people to vote and supported me in this competition.

The key to my win is hard work. I had put 200% effort into designing and promoting my design to other people. Being able to have time for my school work while promoting my design was hard for me but all of my hard work paid off.

Yes, knowing that I’ll be designing a wearable sneaker in the metaverse changed my approach in design because I was able to have an opportunity to explore and to add features that are not possible in the real world. I was able to add features to my design so that would be really cool wearable features in the metaverse.

Yes, having NFTs and metaverse utility related to sneakers and apparel will open a lot of opportunities for designers to show their work to the world and the metaverse.

It is an honor to be part of the HypeX community because for me they built a community for us designers to be able to share our works with other people. We can also communicate and share our ideas with other people that are also interested in design and sneakers, especially in discord.

I would like to thank my family and friends for supporting me in this journey as a footwear designer. I would also like to thank my schools and all of the people who voted for my design.

Lastly, Thank you HypeX for making this possible.

Thanks Chad, for this interview, it was a pleasure getting to know you more in-depth. Now our community and those who will join us in the future, know you better, which gives your winning design much more meaning. Now you are part of not just HypeX’s drop, but also part of the NFT and metaverse history.

Stay tuned for updates related to the drop and upcoming events.

Let’s make history together!

➡️ Make sure to follow our socials links below:

We have some great news and updates for you all. After lots of revamping we can now provide some solid updates for you all.

— Our token has been created! — Website near complete (FAQ and Whitepaper will be added in the upcoming days) — Presale date is set!

Presale is set to start on Friday 14th May 2021 at 1pm UTC+2 and finish Monday 17th May 2021 at 1pm UTC+2

Once the presale is released send however much you want to buy of the presale to the presale address (NOT the token address). Be aware that there’s a maximum of spending 10 BNB per address on the presale.

There is a soft cap of 0BNB and an hard cap of 250BNB

Presale address: 0xCCBf09DC5E8aEc3709ad413f6d0BC30A218E9802

1 billion BULL tokens = 1 bnb Presale price is 0.000000625 usd for 1 BULL (at the current rate of BNB)

Keep up to date with our socials! Twitter: https://twitter.com/bullaidcharity Telegram: https://t.me/bullaid

Firstly let’s start with topic of where new bitcoins even come from, I dug into this in depth within my piece How does new cryptocurrency come into existence but a recap of this is that every c.10 minutes a new block is added to the blockchain and the miner who successfully adds it is rewarded with some newly mined bitcoins (as well as claiming the transactions fees for all the transactions within the block).

However it’s important to note that this supply of bitcoins is not sat in a pool waiting to be distributed, nor is some ethereal being sending the new bitcoins out with each block, instead when a block is successfully mined the new bitcoins are sprung into existence within what’s called the coinbase transaction. I also have an in-depth write up about this transaction type in my piece What is a coinbase transaction? but this is essentially a special transaction type where there are no inputs and instead just outputs bringing these new bitcoins to life.

The bitcoin code specifies that the block reward given in the coinbase transaction should start at 50 BTC and then halve every 210,000 blocks — roughly every 4 years. This event is referred to as a “Halving” and there’s always a notable amount of price speculation around these dates. Perhaps unsurprisingly I also have a piece about this too …. What is a halving?. The most recent halving was 11th May 2020 and the next halving is expected to occur in May 2024 with the final one predicted to be in May 2140. You might note that no set date is given, and this is because although blocks are found on average every 10 minutes they can be found much quicker or slower and so although an estimate of the next halving day can be made, it becomes more precise as the 210,000 block epoch progresses.

Knowing that the block reward started at 50BTC in the genesis block (3rd January 2009) and halves every 210,000 blocks is almost enough to compute the rate at which new bitcoins will enter the ecosystem and the final number of bitcoins which will every be created. However we need one more key piece of information… the number of decimal places a bitcoin has. The answer is 8 with the smallest unit being called a Satoshi after the pseudonymous founder of the network (who’s not Craig Wright :P) Cryptocurrency Base Units. This means a bitcoin can be divided into 100,000,000 units and we therefore see a bitcoin creation schedule as per the below table:

But the beady eyed among you will have noticed that we don’t have a supply of exactly 21m bitcoins, we in fact have just 20,999, 999.9769 . The reasons for this are due to rounding errors which means that where the reward at block 2,100,000 ‘should’ be 0.048828125 BTC, because this is to 9 decimal places and bitcoin is limited to 8 then the extra 0.000000005 is discarded. This continues for all halvings thereafter and shaves off a portion of the total supply. In addition to this, there are numerous examples where miners have actually underpaid the block rewards and therefore reduced the total supply. One example of this is in block 124,724 where a user called midnightmagic mined a block and set the reward to 49.99999999 rather than the maximum value allowed of 50 BTC. This was likely the result of a bug but as reported by Amberdata there are 1,123 instances of this which puts the actual maximum bitcoin supply likely at 20,999,971.02187096.

With over 18.7m bitcoins already mined, the next c.120 years will see the remaining bitcoin mined in increasingly smaller volumes.

Whilst all this sounds programatic and deterministic, couldn’t a miner just create a coinbase transaction which has more than the allowed new bitcoins in, or could they have two coinbase transaction in a block, or could a consensus in the network just decide to increase the total supply?

Let’s dig into these very important questions by looking at the technicals …

To calculate the block reward the miner must call a function in the bitcoin code called GetBlockSubsidy. This function is essentially checking the current block height and comparing this to the rule that the block reward should start at 50BTC and halve every 210,000 blocks. As such this provides them with the maximum block reward they can claim in the block.

Therefore, if the block the miner is creating is height 439,528 then the calculation will be (n.b this is heavily simplified but paints the picture!)

439,528 / 210,000 which results in 2.09. This is rounded to the lowest value integer which is 2 and therefore the block reward to be given is 50 halved twice so 12.5 BTC.

Similarly if the miner was creating block with height 1,857,375 then the calculation would be

1,857,375 / 120,000 which results in 8.84 so requires 8 halving from the initial 50BTC reward value. The miner would therefore receive 0.1953125 BTC for successfully mining the block.

The output of the function is therefore easily verifiable by other nodes on the network and ensures that the miner cannot award themselves more than the maximum block reward. However as noted above in the block 124,724 example, a miner is completely free to reward themselves a value below this maximum.

Alas Satoshi though of this too! For every new block which is created and propagated through the system, all the full nodes on the network (who are keeping a complete history of all transactions and blocks) run a few validation checks as stated in the CheckBlock function. One of these checks is to ensure that there is one and only one coinbase transaction. This is simple to check as a coinbase transaction should be the only transaction in the block with no inputs. If there is more than one transaction of this type the whole block will be rejected and the miner will have expended all the energy to mine the block with no reward.

The Bitcoin network is software and can therefore be upgraded and evolved — in fact the bitcoin network has had 21 major upgrades and numerous minor changes (with v0.21.1 being released just last week). As such it’s not technically infeasible that, with consensus, the community could decide to increase the bitcoin supply- however the key question is cui bono — who benefits?

Bitcoin is deflationary by its very nature due to a fixed supply and with (what’s hoped to be) rising demand, therefore the price should increase [this is not financial advice!!]. As such for any bitcoin hodlers the idea to add more supply into the market would be unappealing since this could have a negative effect on the price.

However what about people who missed the boat and want some bitcoin post 2140? In the same way the majority of new bitcoin owners do now, they would need to use an exchange or service to buy bitcoin from someone else. However whilst bitcoin transactions now are on average 2 BTC, if the USD value continues to increase [this is also not investment advice] then the amount of bitcoin someone may need/want to purchase could be considerably smaller and have the same or higher value. Therefore with c21m bitcoins and 8 decimal places of value there are 2.1 quadrillion satoshis that could be owned and distributed, enough for every person on the planet to own 300,000 satoshis.

Finally, what about the miners, after all whilst they are currently receiving 6.25 newly mined bitcoins plus transaction fees, after 2140 they will only receive the transaction fees per block. However as noted above, the expected increase [still not investment advice] in BTC value should ensure that mining stays profitable even with the removal of the block reward. This was predicted by Satoshi and has held true through the last 3 halving, despite some miner burn off following each event:

“Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free.” (bitcoin.org/bitcoin-paper)

In the next piece I’ll take a look at these c.21m bitcoins to explain what the spendable supply is.