The Winklevoss twins are fortunately doing just fine, their fortune in cryptocurrencies has long exceeded a billion dollars, the brothers have launched the Gemini platform, within which they have implemented their own unique key-holding scheme.
What other unpleasant things did Luka prophesize?
• Owners of large amounts of bitcoins are forced to go into hiding, change their identity.
• A quarter of bitcoin holders fell into the hands of extortionists and were tortured.
• In Africa there was a «tragedy» when 60% of the accumulated crypto-money was lost as a result of a hacker attack on cell phones that could be used to access the state ID and bitcoin wallet. These events sparked a wave of civil wars on the African continent, confusion and chaos that only the governments of Saudi Arabia and North Korea were able to stop.
• An underground network of rebels is preparing a powerful hacking attack on nuclear warhead control centers to launch several missiles and destroy major cities where computers are concentrated.
At the end of the letter, the author admits that the bitcoin situation has reached a dead end and this damned project must be destroyed now to prevent a nuclear winter in a few years.
So far, the identity of the author of this letter has never been established. Definitely the nickname Luka Magnotta is a pseudonym. The letter made a noise, quickly spread on specialized and not only resources, it was copied by hundreds of sites and translated into almost all languages of the world. There are also rumors that the message from the future was written by the same person (or group of people) who hides under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto – the creator of the first protocol for cryptocurrencies.
Be that as it may, so far the information voiced in the text is partially coming true. But in recent years we can see that blockchain technology is not only a market for cryptocurrencies, but also many other niches for application.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have emerged from blockchain technology (we will talk more about this in the first part of the book).
Blockchain today can be compared to the Internet as it was when it emerged back in the 1980s.
The technology is constantly evolving, and we may see many different applications in the future.
First of all, blockchain is associated with cryptocurrencies and payment systems that allow you to anonymously send money to anyone who has their own cryptocurrency wallet.
Besides the usual cryptocurrencies, this list includes utility tokens, digitized stocks, natural asset tokens, stablecoins, etc. At the end of 2020, there were about 1,000 different cryptocurrencies. In 2022, the number of them is more than 20 thousand units.
Another direction where blockchain technologies are applied is decentralized finance and DEX exchanges. Over the past five years, this direction has been actively developing, and only a lazy person has not heard about NFT. This topic deserves a separate conversation, so in this edition of the book there is an additional chapter about DeFi.
This sector falls into the category of rapid development with the help of innovative developments. Decentralized finance can include instruments created on the basis of blockchain and operating with the help of smart contracts.
While bitcoin has traditionally been opposed to fiat money and classical financial institutions, we see blockchain technology increasingly penetrating the banking industry. Blockchain can make global payments and money transfers faster and cheaper by eliminating intermediaries and intermediate steps. This can lead to lower fees and more efficient cross-border payments. Also, blockchain technology allows issuers and investors to issue and trade securities, such as stocks or bonds, directly and without intermediaries. This can simplify the process of raising capital and increase the availability of financing for SMEs. Blockchain can help banks improve customer verification and anti-money laundering processes through the creation of secure and shared databases. It can reduce costs and improve accuracy in meeting regulatory requirements. And blockchain can also provide transparency and immutability of financial data, which can be useful for record keeping and auditing. It can also help improve security and protection against data manipulation. In the future, no one will examine the credit history as the information will be shown due to the registry in blockchain.
International trade. In this sector, working with smart contracts makes it possible to simplify the issuance of customs invoices, licenses, certificates and other documents. All this is achieved through the speed of transactions and automation of processes. The development of this trend will reduce overall costs, time to clear cargo and reduce corruption.
Impact on value creation. Blockchain gives additional transparency, any transactions can be traced in data chains, ensuring reliability. This creates global value chains for goods. Future improvements in the technology will lead to transformations from cost reduction to increased efficiency, utilizing new operating models.
As we can see, so far the dire predictions of a global catastrophe have not come true. But in some ways, the mysterious Luka was right: blockchain, bitcoin and other currencies have changed our lives irrevocably.
From the authors: who we are and why we can be trusted
Hi! If you are reading this book and are already fascinated by the topic of cryptocurrencies, you are probably sure that crypto is a new age currency and that in time the world will change a lot thanks to it. What, in fact, the author of the letter from the future has already warned us about.
Most likely, you already realize that you can make good money on crypto. Maybe you are already counting the millions that you will have after the next jump of bitcoin or another coin?
It is and… it isn’t.
There is an illusion in the mind of the average person that you can make quick money with cryptocurrency. Buy bitcoins and ethers and wait for their value to increase many times over.
However, the crypto market is subject to general market laws, and there is much in it from traditional trading.
Although there is no denying that this market is more accessible, the entry threshold is minimal, unlike the stock market.
It is impossible to enter this market from scratch and lose nothing if you behave unwisely and wastefully on the market without analyzing information and knowing the principles of work. At least, our personal experience and the experience of other crypto traders confirms this. We ourselves started working with cryptocurrencies in 2015 and saw how the market was growing, the number of exchanges, coins and tokens. And we ourselves were at a disadvantage and spent hours and hours of time and hundreds and thousands of dollars of personal funds to figure it all out.
So, who are we?
We are Maxim and Vyacheslav, the creators of the media platform Pro Blockchain, where you can see what’s happening with the cryptocurrency market in real time. This is the leading media on cryptocurrency in the CIS countries.
We run a YouTube channel, a channel on Telegram, we are on social networks – Vkontakte, Facebook2 and Twitter.
The ecosystem of our products already has a total of 500,000 people. Every month we have 50,000 unique visitors to our website, the audience of our Telegram channel (56,000 subscribers) and YouTube (200,000 subscribers) is growing.
On the