This week’s highlights from our YouTube channel look at two hot topics within the crypto community. So, get ready for the lowdown on proof of work vs proof of stake and what went down when the US Treasury decided to sanction a popular privacy tool.   First up, you’ll hear our take on a recent report from the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, which looks at the two most well-known consensus mechanisms in crypto: proof of work and proof of stake. Both have their detractors and their champions...

Last week’s discussion about the idea of a cashless society got pretty in-depth, so we thought we’d divide it up into two. So, here is part 2, in which we talk about the groups of people for whom cash is a lifeline and look ahead to where going cashless could one day lead us.    The rise of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) is unstoppable and state-issued digital tokens will be a fact of life for many of us by the end of the decade, if not before. We look at why governments are...

Back for some more midweek action with a couple of selections from Coin Bureau’s YouTube channel. The audio you’ll hear this week is from our videos on what makes the perfect cryptocurrency and why we could be about to witness a housing market crash.    The developers and fans of many crypto projects like to claim that they have solved the so-called blockchain trilemma. This term, coined by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, posits the idea that no cryptocurrency blockchain can be...

As our lives become ever more digital, a world without cash edges seemingly ever closer. For many of us, cash makes only fleeting appearances in our day-to-day lives, as we transact with cards, phones, apps and, of course, crypto on an increasingly regular basis. The cashless society is nigh.   Going cashless can certainly seem more convenient in most situations. Who has time for the money that jiggles and folds anymore? Cash use was crashing even before the pandemic came along and dealt...

It’s time for another selection from our YouTube channel and this week, we’ve chosen our deep dives into the organisations that want to see crypto die and what you can do to beat inflation. What you’re about to hear is the audio from those two videos, which between them have been viewed over a quarter of a million times and counting.    The current financial system serves the interests of a select few over those of the rest of us and those few would rather things stayed that way. Among them...

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for crypto: markets have shown a slight recovery and there’s a renewed sense of optimism in the air from some quarters. Some are speculating that, with the disasters of Terra, Voyager, Celsius, Three Arrows Capital and many others now receding in the rear-view mirror, the worst could, perhaps, be over. Is the stage set for a recovery?   We need to look at the bigger picture to find any sort of answer to that question. Crypto is now inextricably bound...

Welcome to the inaugural Wednesday edition of the Coin Bureau Podcast! We’re changing up the format a little for these extra weekly shows to bring you even more invaluable insights from the team here. Once-upon-a-time we used to upload the audio files from our popular YouTube videos as podcasts and, due to popular demand, we’re going to be doing so once more.    Each week, we’ll select two videos to bring to you in audio format, so that you can enjoy some of our YouTube content in the same...

Chances are you’ve heard talk of the metaverse before and there’s perhaps an equally strong chance your eyes glaze over when you hear the term. But, the metaverse is coming, money is being spent on it and we should all be paying attention.   In this episode we dig into what the metaverse is, where the idea for it comes from and - crucially - where it's all heading. Ever since Facebook rebranded to Meta last year, the concept of the metaverse has become harder and harder to ignore and the...

Having looked at the various categories of cryptocurrency coins last week, it’s now time to explore the world of tokens. This is where things can get a little out of hand.    Ever since Ethereum came along and made creating a crypto token an easy thing to do, the number of different tokens in existence has skyrocketed. Many are worthless, many are scams and many - however well-intentioned - will come to nothing. But, despite that, some of the biggest cryptocurrencies out there exist as...

There are thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, which means it can be hard to see the wood for the trees. But one easy way of initially assessing a crypto project is to look at what category it falls into. This is a vital first step towards understanding what its use case is (if indeed it has one).   Over this and the next episode, we’ll look at some of the principal categories cryptocurrencies fall into. The first distinction to make is that between cryptocurrency coins - those which...

We’ve talked before about the importance of self-custody for your crypto assets, but recent events have served to underscore how vital it is. In the past, we’ve discussed the vulnerability of exchanges to hacking and theft (ask Mt. Gox users about that) and this is still a concern, although exchange security has come on leaps and bounds since then. But, as the recent woes of platforms like Celsius and Voyager Digital have shown, hackers are not the only threat to your crypto’s...

The crypto space is evolving from day to day and keeping on top of everything that’s going on is a time-consuming job. There’s a lot of noise out there and it can often be difficult to trust whether what you’re reading is true or not. Credible sources are therefore invaluable.   One such source is Cryptoslate, a crypto news, data and opinion platform that is one of the best resources out there for trustworthy information about what’s going on in the space. Founded in 2017 and fully...

Normal service is being resumed this week, as we take our final look (for now) at Ethereum.  The project which started off as an idea in the head of a supremely gifted, 19-year-old Bitcoin enthusiast has now grown into a behemoth. It underpins a huge sector of the crypto industry and has triggered an avalanche of development, both of projects looking to build on top of it and of projects looking to emulate or outdo it. Without Ethereum, crypto would look completely different. In this...

You might have noticed that the crypto market - as well as pretty much every other market - is once again in freefall. As the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world raise interest rates to try and combat runaway inflation, and fears of a global recession intensify, these are tough times to be an investor in… well, pretty much anything.   There are however some crypto-specific crises unfolding which, combined with everything happening in the wider economy, have helped push...

We ended on a cliffhanger last week, with the infamous DAO hack having hit Ethereum and its community hard. So, how did they deal with it and what did it all mean for Ethereum?   With millions of dollars worth of ETH having been stolen by a hacker who had spotted a flaw in the DAO’s smart contract, Ethereum’s developers and community were faced with some tough decisions. Do nothing, or take action? And if so, what sort of action to take? And what would the implications of their possible...

We only scratched the surface of what Ethereum is all about in the last episode, so it’s time to dive deeper. Last week was mostly about the early history of Ethereum and the colourful characters who came together to create it. Before we pick up that thread though, it’s worth taking a look at what Ethereum makes possible.   It’s no exaggeration to say that the cryptocurrency space has been transformed almost beyond recognition thanks to Ethereum. From tokens to NFTs to decentralised finance...

It’s time to delve back into crypto’s history and start looking at the project that is second only to Bitcoin in terms of scale and recognition.    Ethereum may not have been the first altcoin to emerge in Bitcoin’s wake, but its influence on the crypto industry has been seismic. Since it first appeared on the scene back in 2015, Ethereum has been the driving force behind much of crypto’s evolution, triggering a wave of innovation and growth.   In this episode, we take a look at...

After we recorded last week’s episode, things only got worse for crypto. The collapse of Terra and the plunge in the prices of LUNA and UST have all made for one of the most dramatic and harrowing weeks this industry has seen.   In this episode, we try to make some sense of what happened and also try to pinpoint what lessons can be learned from it all. The only way to take something positive out of the disaster is to try and ensure we prevent something similar from happening again.   If...

It’s perhaps appropriate that our 13th episode is an unscheduled one discussing the current, dire state of the crypto market.    At times like this, it’s often good to get a bit of context. When your net worth has taken a dive, it’s natural to want to know why. This episode should provide some explanations as to what’s going on out there.   The principal reasons for the downturn in crypto - and other markets - are macroeconomic factors. The world is going through one of the most turbulent...

Once Bitcoin started to gain traction, it became inevitable that other cryptocurrencies would start to appear. And so the altcoins were born.    An altcoin - as you may remember from the last episode - is any cryptocurrency that isn’t Bitcoin. There are now thousands of altcoins in existence, but the flood began as a mere trickle with the release of Namecoin in 2011. Slowly, other altcoins began to emerge - some of which are still with us today, many of which have faded into...

Now that we’ve covered blockchain and Bitcoin, it’s time to tackle one of the most daunting and downright intimidating aspects of cryptocurrency. It’s a minefield that’s not for the faint-hearted. It is, of course, crypto jargon.   Like any community, crypto has its own unique phraseology that can be baffling to outsiders. For newcomers, getting to grips with the lingo is one of the first steps to becoming a fully-fledged cryptopian.   So, in this episode, we unpack some of the words and...

We’ve been talking about Bitcoin for a while now, but then there’s a lot to discuss. After the dark days of Mt Gox and the furore surrounding Silk Road, you might think Bitcoin’s difficult days were behind it. As we’ll see in this episode, there was plenty of drama still to come.   As well as bringing Bitcoin’s history up to the present day, we also talk about the wider Bitcoin community and its often conflicting views on the whole project. Nowhere were these differences more pronounced...

Everything we did, saw and heard on our visit to Bitcoin 2022 in the Magic City

The story of Bitcoin starts to get a lot spicier!

We’re delving deeper into the story of Bitcoin and meeting some more of the other major players from its early days