Cryptocurrency
The legal status of cryptocurrencies varies substantially from country to country and is still undefined or changing in many of them. At least one study has shown that broad generalizations about the use of bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly overstated and that blockchain analysis is an effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool https://polaris-pos.com/. While some countries have explicitly allowed their use and trade, others have banned or restricted it. According to the Library of Congress in 2021, an “absolute ban” on trading or using cryptocurrencies applies in 9 countries: Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, and the United Arab Emirates. An “implicit ban” applies in another 39 countries or regions, which include: Bahrain, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Gabon, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Macau, Maldives, Mali, Moldova, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Qatar and Vietnam. In the United States and Canada, state and provincial securities regulators, coordinated through the North American Securities Administrators Association, are investigating “Bitcoin scams” and ICOs in 40 jurisdictions.
In 1996, the National Security Agency published a paper entitled How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash, describing a cryptocurrency system. The paper was first published in an MIT mailing list (October 1996) and later (April 1997) in The American Law Review.
Physical cryptocurrency coins have been made as promotional items and some have become collectibles. Some of these have a private key embedded in them to access crypto worth a few dollars. There have also been attempts to issue bitcoin “bank notes”.
Pi network cryptocurrency
Circulating Supply includes all Migrated Mining Rewards and all tokens that entered circulation from other buckets of the allocations, which at its maximum could be summed up to equal the Effective Total Supply.
Pi Network’s core team includes two Stanford University researchers who founded the project in 2018. Head of Technology Dr. Nicolas Kokkalis is the instructor for Stanford’s first decentralized application class. Alongside him, the head of product, Dr. Chengdiao Fan, holds a Ph.D. in computational anthropology with a focus on human-computer interaction.
This is set to change with the launch of Open Mainnet. In February 2024, exchanges are preparing to list the free mining coin (initially OKX and Bitget) deposits are already live. Trading officially starts on Feb. 20, 2025.
The total supply of Pi Network is 100 billion PI. However, the self-reported circulating supply is 68 million PI. Upon launch, 20% of PI will go to the team, while the remaining 80% will go to the community. Since the token has yet to be listed and is governed by referrals, the formula for calculating the token supply and distribution differs.
Mining cryptocurrency certainly isn’t a new concept. However, many mining protocols require miners to invest in expensive hardware or use up considerable amounts of electricity. Pi Network is unique in that no expensive hardware is needed. In fact, you don’t need to invest any money at all. Here is a rundown of some of the features that set the Pi Network apart.
After five or more trusted referrals, you get promoted to the Contributor level. And after 23 referrals, you become an Ambassador. In addition to the membership tier, one can move up to the Node level if they run the Pi node software on their computer.
Cryptocurrency market
The term DeFi (decentralized finance) is used to refer to a wide variety of decentralized applications that enable financial services such as lending, borrowing and trading. DeFi applications are built on top of blockchain platforms such as Ethereum and allow anyone to access these financial services simply by using their cryptocurrency wallets.
A stablecoin is a crypto asset that maintains a stable value regardless of market conditions. This is most commonly achieved by pegging the stablecoin to a specific fiat currency such as the US dollar. Stablecoins are useful because they can still be transacted on blockchain networks while avoiding the price volatility of “normal” cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Outside of stablecoins, cryptocurrency prices can change rapidly, and it’s not uncommon to see the crypto market gain or lose more than 10% in a single day.
Cryptocurrency market capitalization (market cap) refers to the total value of a particular cryptocurrency that is currently in circulation. It is calculated by multiplying the current market price of a cryptocurrency by the total number of coins or tokens that have been issued. The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies for today is $3,560,331,487,296
Tokens, on the other hand, are crypto assets that have been issued on top of other blockchain networks. The most popular platform for issuing tokens is Ethereum, and examples of Ethereum-based tokens are MKR, UNI and YFI. Even though you can freely transact with these tokens, you cannot use them to pay Ethereum transaction fees.
Bitcoin is the oldest and most established cryptocurrency, and has a market cap that is larger than all of the other cryptocurrencies combined. Bitcoin is also the most widely adopted cryptocurrency, and is accepted by practically all businesses that deal with cryptocurrency.