See Also
ELI5 What’s a stablecoin?
Since the beginning of cryptocurrency history, most crypto assets have been known to experience enormous oscillations against the US Dollar (or some other legacy fiat currency). This has arguably scared many risk averse investors away from cryptocurrencies. More conservative investment instruments such as blue chip corporate bonds and Treasuries usually oscillate very little. Bitcoin, on […]
Opinion: Tether is likely backed by Bitcoin U$ equivalents, not by cash US Dollars [June 2018]
A lot of the controversy surrounding the Tether cryptocurrency seems to focus on whether it is fully backed by US Dollar funds or not. Several relevant questions have been posed in this respect, such as why investors would keep U$ 2.5 billion (as of May 2018) in cash deposited as reserves for Tether, with little […]
Proof of Trust (PoT) Summary [Cryptocurrency consensus mechanisms]
In a Proof of Trust system, users in a network gain trust as they participate in special activities within the network. If a user tries to defraud the system, the trust is lost and they lose an equivalent amount in value (the cryptocurrency or token employed). In a Proof of Trust system, “trust” is staked […]
Proof of Elapsed Time (POET) Summary [Cryptocurrency consensus mechanisms]
In this poetically named consensus mechanism, network participants prove that they have slept for a random amount of time before being able to mint a block. POET was released by Intel in 2016 and was originally aimed at trusted computing using Intel CPU’s. A special instruction set called Software Guard Extensions (SGX) allows programs to […]