How to Create Ordinals on Bitcoin via OrdinalsBot – OrdinalsBot Review

 Bitcoin Economy  No Responses »
Feb 282023
 
Bitcoin ordinals via ordinalsbot review

This is an OrdinalsBot review. OrdinalsBot is an easy to use tool from the Satoshibles team to create ordinals on Bitcoin and send it to your own custodial Bitcoin address. The service works by simply taking a fee and minting an ordinal on your behalf, and then sending the ordinal to your address. Payment is through the lightning network on Bitcoin.

The service honors the traditions of Bitcoin like privacy and freedom to transact. There is no need to sign up or create an account to use OrdinalsBot. All you need to do is pay a lightning invoice and you’ll get the ordinal sent to your Bitcoin address.

Ordinals as NFTs on Bitcoin

For those living under a rock, ordinals are Bitcoin NFTs in a nutshell, but come with several important differences compared to NFTs on chains like Ethereum. The UTXO model of Bitcoin also makes it very unique – more like ‘inscribing satoshis’ than ‘holding NFTs’. You can read more about ordinals in the ordinal docs.

Ordinals are taking off a nascent emerging scene on Bitcoin, something the Bitcoin community (minus the toxic maxis) have been clamoring for. Ordinals has been a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant ecosystem. Major NFT players like Yuga Labs (behind Bored Apes) have announced projects on Ordinals.

In terms of investor interest, the first big milestone was 10,000 ordinals which have been sold for 5-6 figure USD amounts. You dear reader have probably missed the boat on inscribing an ordinal that early. The next milestone would be 1,000,000. The million mark would be interesting. Unlike NFTs on Ethereum where every NFT project is on a unique contract, ordinals are literally numbered (hence ordinal) and everyone inscribes on the same sequence. Therefore, it is a good idea to start inscribing ordinals today and hold some as a collectible.

After all, Bitcoin is probably going to be the dominant censorship-resistant chain especially with Ethereum’s transition to proof of stake. Holding information on the Bitcoin blockchain has always been the gold standard and ordinals brings the fun of NFTs on to the grandfather-chain.

Finally, all inscriptions in ordinals are stored on the Bitcoin blockchain itself, so no dangling IPFS links to nowhere.

How to Create Ordinals

In general, if you want to create ordinals by yourself, you will need to run a Bitcoin node. You will need a wallet with Taproot enabled, so you can pay for the transaction fees to inscribe your ordinal. You will need to check with the list of wallets on Bitcoin wiki. You should also be very careful not to spend your Ordinal inscription as a satoshi, basically rendering it worthless.

If you want to avoid the technical burden involved with the above, the simplest way is to use the Ordinals Bot built by the team from Satoshibles. All you need to do to use this bot is to pay a lightning invoice, which you can do with Bitcoin lightning wallets or traditional wallets as well. Lightning will make it cheaper. Make sure to send your ordinal to a BTC wallet that you control, and ideally a wallet built for Ordinals. That way, you won’t accidentally ‘spend’ your ordinal as a satoshi and lose it.

Here are the steps to create an ordinal on Bitcoin (Bitcoin NFT)

Step-1: Go to OrdinalsBot and upload your Ordinal (text, images, videos, etc.) Note that all data is stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, so the larger the file, the more fees you’ll need to pay.

Step-2: Send some Bitcoin into a lightning wallet like Muun which can pay via both lightning and regular Bitcoin.

Step-3: Get an ordinals supported wallet like Ordinals Wallet to keep your inscriptions safe.

Step-4: On OrdinalsBot, pay for the transaction via lightning (cheaper) or regular Bitcoin transaction. Make sure to add your ordinals wallet as the recipient.

Step-5: OrdinalsBot will inscribe your content on Bitcoin and send you the ordinal inscription in the address you provided. Make sure the address is right since this action cannot be reversed.

Congratulations, you have now inscribed ordinals and created Bitcoin NFTs! Do this before the numbers reach a million.

How Bitcoin Enables a Sovereign Individual

 Bitcoin Economy  No Responses »
Dec 032022
 

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that is based on blockchain technology. It allows for secure and transparent transactions without the need for intermediaries, such as banks or governments. This unique characteristic of Bitcoin has led many people to view it as a tool for enabling sovereign individuals, or individuals who have the freedom and power to make their own decisions and shape their own lives.

If you have already read the book The Sovereign Individual, you absolutely should. It provides a view of the world not commonly held among the ‘professional-managerial’ class.

Bitcoin, Digital Economy, and the Sovereign Individual

One way that Bitcoin enables a sovereign individual is by providing access to a global, digital economy. With Bitcoin, individuals can easily and securely send and receive money from anywhere in the world, without the need for traditional financial institutions. This allows individuals to bypass traditional gatekeepers and participate in the global economy on their own terms.

Another way that Bitcoin enables a sovereign individual is by providing financial privacy and security. Traditional financial systems often rely on central authorities, such as banks or governments, to manage and regulate transactions. This can lead to the loss of privacy and security, as these central authorities have the power to monitor, control, and censor transactions. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is decentralized and allows individuals to control their own transactions, without the need for intermediaries. This gives individuals the power to protect their financial privacy and security, and to make their own decisions about how and where to spend their money.

Alternatives to Central Bank Currencies

Furthermore, Bitcoin enables a sovereign individual by providing an alternative to traditional currencies, which are often subject to inflation and other economic challenges. Traditional currencies are typically backed by governments or central banks, which have the power to manipulate the supply and value of money. This can lead to inflation, devaluation, and other economic challenges, which can erode the value of people’s savings and purchasing power. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is not subject to these challenges, and its supply is limited and transparent. This allows individuals to protect the value of their money and make long-term financial plans without worrying about inflation or other economic challenges.

In conclusion, Bitcoin enables a sovereign individual by providing access to a global, digital economy, financial privacy and security, and an alternative to traditional currencies. It is a powerful tool that gives individuals the freedom and power to make their own decisions and shape their own lives.

Bitcoin Dominance Crosses 50% for First Time in 2018 as Bear Market Continues to Deepen

 Bitcoin Economy  No Responses »
Aug 112018
 

Bitcoin Dominance

In a recurrence of history not repeating but rhyming, as the crypto bear market of 2018 deepens, the Bitcoin dominance index has been on the rise. Today, for the first time in 2018, it has passed the 50% mark. Based on historical trends, during the exuberance of a bull market, ‘altcoins’ rally relative to Bitcoin. During the bear markets, however, Bitcoin takes away what it gives during the bull markets, i.e. the relative ‘altcoin’ prices fall with respect to Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin dominance index, which measures the relative weight of Bitcoin in the full tradable basket of cryptocurrencies, has crossed the 50% mark, an important psychological level but otherwise without fundamental merit. It should also be noted that today there are an order of magnitude more cryptos in the market than even 2 years ago, so Bitcoin retaining 50% of the entire market even as new entrants enter this market is impressive.

Dominance History

Bitcoin dominance peaked around 80% before the bull market of 2017, when it dropped to as low as 35%, before recovering. This has usually been the case with Bitcoin and the crypto markets when the relative weight of Bitcoin falls during a bull market. The altcoins tend to be more volatile than Bitcoin.

This was also the time of the ‘flippening‘ narrative put forth by the Ethereum community that the Ether market capitalization would exceed that of Ethereum very soon. That was not to come in 2017. Even prominent venture capitalists who have invested in the space for a few years, like Fred Wilson, were completely wrong on their prediction of the flippening. It is a common human bias to project a recent trend into the future, and recency bias makes us weigh recent data more than older data. Needless to say, even prominent investors are not immune to these, and seldom correct their world view distorted by these biases.

Different Value Sources

The other thing for crypto investors to keep in mind is that the value of different ‘altcoins’ today come from very different sources, and thus it is not always fair to compare Bitcoin to them. For example, the value of a coin like Golem primarily comes from the usage of its network for compute resources. This is not true for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is more of a true store of value that is converting to a convenient medium of exchange via innovations like the lightning network.

This was different when the best known altcoins were similar to Bitcoin, such as Litecoin. Today, the crypto market is much more diverse in its offerings.

The value of Bitcoin is affected also by the broader economy and market, such as providing shelter to ordinary people in countries like Venezuela, Iran, and Turkey where inflation is rampant. Bitcoin provides a way for these people to store their wealth in a non-depretiating asset or work for foreign entities and capture some of the value they create.

How to Travel Using Digital Currencies

 Bitcoin Economy  No Responses »
Aug 022018
 

This is a guest post by Anupam Varshney

“Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen” – Benjamin Disraeli

We all love to travel. Some prefer a weekend getaway, others go out for a few weeks and then there are avid travellers who have been travelling for years. One thing all international travellers can agree on is the hassle of currency conversion when you visit another country.

My friend visited Vietnam a few months ago and this is how his $500 in Vietnamese Dong looked like:

Travel Digital Currencies

“I’d have been screwed in Vietnam if it wasn’t for Bitcoin” – Vibhor Jain

As it turns out, 1 USD is equivalent to 23,042 Vietnamese Dong!

The worst part is, you don’t even know where to get the best rates for converting to local currencies. Is it the airport or somewhere in the city? Your guess is as good as mine.

And what happens when you’re left with the local currency after your trip is done? Well, they usually stay with you. I’m sure my friend still has some Dong lying around.

Let’s not even get started on how much ATMs charge when you withdraw cash internationally using your card. It’s anywhere between $5 to $25 for each withdrawal. Swiping your credit card at stores will cost you even more.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a global currency that eliminates the hassle of high fees and carrying a lot of cash?

Digital currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and others allow you to do so.

Five years ago it may have been slightly difficult to travel using just cryptocurrencies, but blockchain space has evolved so fast that you can pretty much use cryptocurrencies in all aspects of travelling and replace it with fiat.

Before you travel

Planning phase of travelling is probably the most exciting part for some people, however, entire process can be very tedious. On average, a traveller spends 30 hours and browses 38 websites before finally booking a trip.

If you’re a DIY kind, you can still do everything with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies one by one.

Flights

Accommodation

  • Expedia is one of the largest travel booking websites. It accepts Bitcoin for hotel bookings.
  • Gyft.com allows you to buy gift cards in Bitcoin that can be used on Hotels.com, which offers 150,000 hotels worldwide

Watch out for Beenest, a platform to book Airbnb like homes using their native BEE tokens.

Car Travel

  • CheapAir and Destinia allow users to rent a car and pay in Bitcoin
  • There are decentralised carpooling apps: Lazooz and ArcadeCity
  • Many local travel agents now accept payments in digital currencies who’d happy to rent you a car

While you travel

When you’re travelling in a different country, use digital mapping tool CoinMap to locate stores and restaurants where Bitcoin is accepted.

A few companies offer their native cards just like Visa and Mastercard, which are filled with digital currencies and can be used at any store where Visa or Mastercard are accepted. So you pay in the local currency but Bitcoin (or some other supported digital currency) equivalent of that amount is deducted from your personal wallet.

The most popular project working on this is Monaco. They support BTC, ETH, MCO, BNB, and fiat, whereas TenX supports BTC, ETH, and LTC. Bitpay is another company that offers this service, but for US residents only. It supports Bitcoin and charges 3% for international transactions.

If carrying another card is not your thing, you can simply use Bitcoin ATM Map to locate a Bitcoin ATM nearest to you and fill your digital wallet with Bitcoins!

Conclusion

The tourism industry is one of the earliest adopters of digital currencies because it perfectly fits a traveller’s needs – a currency that is safe to carry around and accepted internationally. So the next time you decide to go to another country, try leaving your credit and debit cards at home.

This is a guest post by Anupam Varshney of Please.com. With Please.com you can book your travel in minutes. The platform provides a list of pre-designed trips created by the locals of the city you’re visiting. All you need to do is say, “Please, book me a romantic dinner in Paris” – that’s all.

How to buy Fractions of Bitcoin in UK

 Bitcoin Economy  No Responses »
Nov 272017
 

Buy Fractions of Bitcoin UK
This is a guide to buy fractions of a Bitcoin in UK. When I lived in London and introduced several of my co-workers, friends, and their friends to Bitcoin, it seemed harder to buy Bitcoins in London than New York. I hope this guide helps my UK friends to buy fractions of a Bitcoin more easily. Also, see our previous post on how to buy fractions of Bitcoin.

Before we proceed, a quick note on buying fractions of a Bitcoin in the first place. At the time of this writing, one Bitcoin costs around $9600 or £7200. That’s a lot of money for someone just trying to buy their first Bitcoins. However, the good news is, you don’t need to buy a full Bitcoin. You can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. Here’s a quick sample guide:

  • 1 mBTC (milli Bitcoin) is 1/1000th of a Bitcoin. The cost is £7.2 – the cost of your Shoreditch avocado sandwich.
  • £100 is 0.014 BTC – the cost of your black cab from Heathrow to your shared flat in Shoreditch above the avocado sandwich place.

You get the point. Bitcoin is in fact divisible into 100,000,000 parts, so really, you can buy a penny’s worth of Bitcoin if you’d really like.

To buy fractions of a Bitcoin in UK, you need a provider where you can easily pay GBP to get your BTC. The easiest way to do this is with Coinbase. In fact, if you have your UK drivers license with you right now, you can start buying Bitcoin on Coinbase instantaneously. This is the smoothest buying experience, in my experience, for my UK friends who are new to Bitcoin and don’t have an account anywhere.

Coinbase essentially functions very similar to a bank account. You can go sign up right now, with an email address and create a password. To really buy Bitcoin though, you need to connect your bank account, which you can do with a debit card. If you use a debit card, you can start buying Bitcoin with Coinbase immediately. If not, you will need to wait for a SEPA bank transfer. Both options are fairly good, but the debit card one might be more convenient in a fast-moving market.

Remember that Coinbase is a wallet and exchange provider, which allows you to quickly buy Bitcoin in UK. It will therefore need to do basic identity check on you, called KYC (Know Your Customer). If you have a drivers license, you can just take a photo of it, and it is processed instantaneously in most cases. If not, someone will need to manually review it, which may take time. In my experience, it is usually fairly accurate and I haven’t had many issues with friends. Make sure the photo is taken in good lighting.

If it goes into manual review, I’d advise patience. This is because Coinbase is adding 100,000 users a day, so obviously they are a little swamped at the moment.

After you buy your Bitcoin through Coinbase, you can leave it on their online wallet or transfer to your personal wallet. If you leave it with them, it acts as a custodian wallet. If you transfer to your own wallet, you need to be extremely careful with security. There are different risks with each approach – research them before you make a final decision.

If you plan to hold a large number of Bitcoin, say over £2000 or so, I’d suggest getting a hardware wallet. These are secure against most online attacks (your computer is likely not secure enough, and you can lose all your Bitcoin on an infected computer). You can buy a ledger nano s or trezor for this purpose.

Finally, Coinbase lets you buy with your bank account or debit card. If you instead want to buy with cash, then LocalBitcoins is your best bet. You can meet up with someone and do a cash transfer. Otherwise, if Coinbase takes too long to verify you, you can use LocalBitcoins to transfer money via your bank account, and get the Bitcoins sent to your wallet.

How to Sell Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for Bitcoin (BTC)

 Bitcoin Economy  2 Responses »
Nov 142017
 

This is a guide to sell Bitcoin Cash for Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash was hard forked from Bitcoin on 1st August 2017. This means anyone who held Bitcoin on this date would be able to access an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash on its own blockchain. This of course assumes that you held your private keys and didn’t leave Bitcoin with third-party custodians like Coinbase or exchanges. If so, then your ability to access Bitcoin Cash is restricted to what this custodian wishes to do. For example, Coinbase users still cannot access their Bitcoin Cash, but Coinbase plans to make it available around early next year in 2018. In the future, if you need to hold your Bitcoin private keys for future forks, you should buy a hardware wallet like Trezor, Ledger Nano S, or KeepKey.

During the subsequent months, its price against Bitcoin has fluctuated wildly, with a peak around 35% of BTC and a trough around 5%. In price terms, BCH/BTC saw a peak around 0.35 and a trough around 0.05.

A lot of Bitcoin holders see Bitcoin Cash as a sort of ‘dividend’ that is paid to them. Therefore, many Bitcoin holders want to sell their Bitcoin Cash for Bitcoin, in order to increase their Bitcoin holdings. If you sold at the peak, you could have increased your Bitcoin holdings by 35%. At the time of this writing, Bitcoin Cash trades around 0.2 BTC, i.e. if you sell all your Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin, you will get 20% of your Bitcoin holdings. This is a great benefit to long-term Bitcoin holders.

Accessing your Bitcoin Cash

The first step is accessing your Bitcoin Cash in the first place. Depending on how you hold your Bitcoin and in what wallet, there are various options to access it. Here are some common ones:

Bitcoin Private Key

If you have access to your raw Bitcoin private key, then the easiest wallet that I found to use for Bitcoin Cash is Electron Cash. Electron Cash is a clone of the popular Bitcoin desktop wallet Electrum. It is open source and you’re free to audit the code. It allows you to input your private key directly, and lets you access your Bitcoin Cash that you’re entitled to.

Ledger Nano S

If you held your Bitcoin in Ledger Nano S, then you can use the same hardware wallet, Ledger Nano S, to access your Bitcoin Cash. However, note that you need a firmware upgrade to your Nano. This wipes the device out, so be extremely careful! Read the official Ledger guide for more information.

Trezor

Trezor created a handy ‘splitting tool’ that can be used to access your Bitcoin Cash. Just to be safe, make sure to send your Bitcoin Cash to another address inside Trezor, so that there’s no scope of confusing between chains. You just need to go with the splitting tool after connecting your Trezor, and ‘claim’ your BCH. Read the official Trezor guide for more information.

KeepKey

KeepKey has a simple way to claim your Bitcoin Cash. They have a beta version of the KeepKey client that you can use to access your Bitcoin Cash. Read the official KeepKey guide for more information.

Selling Bitcoin Cash for Bitcoin

Now that you have access to your Bitcoin Cash, it is time to sell it for Bitcoin. For this, you need exchanges, or other ways to convert your Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin. Here are the ways to do it:

ShapeShift

ShapeShift is perhaps the simplest way to convert your Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin. All you need is a Bitcoin address, and a return Bitcoin Cash address (in case the transaction doesn’t go through for some reason). Then ShapeShift will send you a unique address to send Bitcoin Cash to, and send the Bitcoin to your address. Just like that. You don’t need to create any account, no registration, no order books, nothing. Of course, you will likely pay a higher fee going through ShapeShift but it is a very simple option and definitely very convenient.

Changelly

Changelly is very similar to ShapeShift in that you just select that you want to convert Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin, and it just does the conversion for you, sending Bitcoin to the address that you specify. They do ask for a basic account via email but nothing too elaborate. There’s no need for order books though, and you get your Bitcoin instantly to your wallet.

Online Exchanges

By now, you probably are a user at several online exchanges. These are proper exchanges in that there is an order book and you can put market orders or limit orders to sell your Bitcoin Cash for Bitcoin. There are several exchanges today that trade the pair BCH/BTC, depending on your accounts.

If you’re not on any crypto exchanges and want to trade BCH/BTC pair, Bittrex is probably the best place to trade. If not, HitBTC and Poloniex are also good options.

 

How to Buy Bitcoin in India

 Bitcoin Economy  1 Response »
Jul 112017
 

This is a guest post by Anupam.

Bitcoin has been on a wild ride since the beginning of 2017. It started the year off trading at around $900 and has since tripled in less than 6 months. With daily volumes at over $2 billion, the currency shows no sign of slowing down.

India has always been an interesting region for bitcoin. Even though people at large are still unaware about the cryptocurrency, the small number of people who do understand and are interested in Bitcoin has been growing rapidly.

According to the Economic Times (a leading Indian newspaper), there are more than 2500 Indians investing in Bitcoin every day, despite the warnings from the central bank. It is important to note that buying bitcoin in India is legal. However, it is not regulated by the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

On December 24, 2013, the RBI issued a press release on virtual currencies (like Bitcoins, Litecoins, Ethereum, Dogecoins, etc.) stating that creation, trade, and usage of virtual currencies as a medium for payment is not authorized by any central bank or monetary authority.

After the recent wannacry attack, Indian government finally looks serious to tackle bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Last month, they sought public opinion on whether or not to regulate bitcoin. It seems like the government is in the process of drafting regulations around cryptocurrencies.

Regardless of what government comes up with, there is no way they can completely ban bitcoin. People are buying bitcoins in India and will continue to do so.

Up until two years ago it wasn’t very easy for an average Joe to get hold of bitcoins in India. Today, however, there are several exchanges from where Indian citizens can legally buy bitcoins. Few exchanges outside of India also let Indians buy bitcoin.

Bitcoin Exchanges in India

Zebpay

Zebpay is the largest Indian bitcoin exchange with daily volumes hovering around 4000 bitcoins. It has Android and iPhone apps that make it easy to buy bitcoins with a connected Indian bank account. Zebpay charges a minimal amount of INR 10 on every withdrawal.

Coinsecure

Coinsecure provides an interactive trading platform along with the exchange. The transaction fee is 0.3%.

Unocoin

Unocoin is another great exchange but their prices are usually a bit higher compared to other exchanges. They charge 1% fees on every transaction.

Pocketbits

Pocketbits is a new player in the market. Founder of the exchange is very active in buying and selling bitcoins on localbitcoins. They are super quick with verifications and deposits.

Local Bitcoins

LocalBitcoins is an escrow service which helps to match buyers and sellers. In India, the most common method of making the payment is IMPS transfer. It’s easy and quick. With LocalBitcoins you don’t need to go through any KYC process. Just select a reputed seller and buy bitcoins.

You may also find people willing to meet you in person to do the transaction. These meetings are not facilitated by LocalBitcoins in India.

Bitcoin Exchanges Outside India

Coinmama

Coinmama allows customers to buy bitcoins from any country including India via debit or credit card. They charge a ~6% fee on every purchase. You don’t need to verify your identity if you’re buying less than $150 worth of bitcoins.

BTCC

BTCC is based out of Hong Kong and let’s people trade in USD. You will need to wire USD into your BTCC account in order to buy bitcoin from the exchange.

ShapeShift

Shapeshift lets you buy bitcoins with altcoins like Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin etc. You never need to create an account on Shapeshift. Exchanges happen almost instantly because ShapeShift never actually controls your tokens but simply exchanges them.

Conclusion

After the demonetization scheme, there is a sudden push by the government to move towards a cashless society. The move has made people in India to look at bitcoin as an investment opportunity.

India also has one of the largest remittance markets with a total value of more than $70 billion. A user generally ends up paying up to 15% in bank charges and conversion fees. This is where bitcoin’s true potential lies – quick transfers with negligible fees.

Clearly, the adoption of bitcoin is at a steady pace in the country. Only the time will tell if it can go mainstream.

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