Key takeaway from Injective AMA with Coin.fyi

Injective AMA - Key Takeaways

Every week we compile the top news stories weekly within the crypto, blockchain, metaverse, and NFT space. Here's what you need to know for this week.

Weekly Market Review - January 27th 

In this Educational article, we will explain how to bridge from ETH network to EGLD network

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Disclaimer: During the time of this article, MultiversX (previously Elrond) announced a rebranding to their Ad Astra Portal - namely xBridges. The team is currently working on updates and will announce releases in the future. For the time being, the portal is still Elrond Ad Astra and will work in the same manner until further notice. To learn more about what xBridges has in store, read full article <a href="https://egld.community/blog/general/multiversx-new-products/" style="text-decoration:none;">here</a>. 
 
Bridging between chains is a service centralized or decentralized platforms create to build a connection between different blockchains so that one can transfer another token between them. For example, ETH and EGLD are two unconnected tokens hosted on their respective blockchains. Bridging the ETH networks to the EGLD network allows cryptocurrency holders to spend, swap, or invest in ETH to gain EGLD another blockchain. 

 

The MultiversX (previously Elrond) team developed the Ad Astra Portal for people to bridge freely between EGLD and ETH. Read more about the launch of the portal <a href="https://elrond.com/blog/ad-astra-portal-elrond-ethereum-bridge-goes-live/" style="text-decoration:none;">here</a>.

 

<img height="364" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/jxk_rdsAL9WNwgekf9OLb8xTdZ4cs8flZw9d3YRL6qZ93lJZz1LeA-filoATQCYCrfVeiEEdbODl5eBhr6wHlIlFIAB8fSL_2IupiwwSPLksW3eDjqMaXE0zx8yOV3-dQxVwbhfSrLhWk-dVEy-1FNYHtR2uM5NT6BQZJ0t7n1EoFMF5I2OmTJX4L9wkyg" width="624">

<h2 class="customH2">Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can bridge ETH and EGLD: </h2>

<ol>
	<li style="list-style-type:decimal;">
	Make sure you have a MetaMask Wallet. Find out more on how you can get a MetaMask wallet <a href="https://metamask.io/" style="text-decoration:none;">here</a>.
	</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:decimal;">
Make sure you have a MultiversX Wallet. For example, the Maiar Defi Wallet or Maiar App. You can add the extension or download the app <a href="https://maiar.com/" style="text-decoration:none;">here</a>.
</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:decimal;">
Now, once that is all set, it’s time to bridge. Go to <a href="https://ad-astra.elrond.com/" style="text-decoration:none;">Ad Astra Portal </a>
</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:decimal;">
Select Ethereum from the “FROM” menu and Elrond from the “TO” menu. Meanwhile, also select the coin. In this case, we will USDC and how much you want to transfer.  
	 </li>
</ol>

<img height="445" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/QzmXxhCgd5WBNObh2pxGUWQYRVyD4BQFm6Qo9IqBxVirDtwvoO26qXq7e_lQN9SotyUpyT0j6uD1L8BmOab2Fr5pDH_sA-FRPj-AU8YASuaceKxrw6eerw11xEmMIxC17rNW99VkLnib4rd360VNl3r_XCAcqZRXV_P30Wib61OqSxl-FdErdfoUElYzAw" width="471"> 
 

- Click “Connect Source Wallet,” and a pop-up of the MetaMask wallet will appear. Click connect.  
 

<img height="340" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/FstnybZXY6c80bSdKQp5xhDn6E7MZpgZWBleMvcsVhnzTnnOFHDgZQJ1mWlUAISdAdBypHTZeOg9-FEzcTXDug4BUekFB36w1jM5xMN3WdnKzwMJvH3R0TYatPm-374KhW51teS3b-yCLrIBEnsKVUA8jvOtOJFEehfE37fcUzHr8hpdS-7CqBKgzQXO5w" width="624">

 

- Sign into your MetaMask wallet where you have USDC, and permit the Ad Astra Portal

<img height="345" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-wDAigEjg-SJm_i4BBqaocOgzeIbTHnfTUyKQrBk9Gq76CP0UTU57xS9BFUW_MIYGcocteVimGkMg-jos6myIbcPhPmKmRbcDgPRRe7236j2fBISe8cVFirktz3hLtGi8FcyVCR_INxOOoG8fVS2WZjmDk0mj7FIkJfFMTqcS5CZs8r6VWLVfE_cWXdfDA" width="624">

 

- Then sign into your Maiar extension, where you will receive the bridged USDC

 

<img height="425" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/FAfCovCP6YzAdvt70jgI4zl4PepYXW9bpQGxRLTTju0F387MekhRUzQE_Ra0u3otg8GC6Ho1Y-vX-ihqjJfJWCG6KAeB3-iVQnT4S-0iRNsRcjY4AQLCdJNl6ltSO6unv-WmffXHaitWQRCZVj7r58ZY6pWPDUWeUIKHl-vTA71A1R8iv13KrIlV4YNTKQ" width="398">

 

- Confirm the “Swap,” and you will see your MetaMask Wallet pop up again. Go ahead and confirm the swap on the MetaMask app to finish the first step of the transaction.  
 

<img height="565" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/x0g1qh-odo5BXFcz99sD_pLwjojKDWSuBb8MBCj5VMQZ3hIy7zoJXbpOTcrX_25KmPkVu785dOnHwIENbPOrl1X_4SCor6sSAn0O6dYD64jwIqOFxDZ2QJqA-udaX9f3R26kgjx6S85wEDQWboWW6in_Az4xlRYr1G1Vv_4_q1y4bPKPWCLmqAcIMkf2aw" width="537"> 
 
 
 

<img height="353" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/zhpyMnMennKCMuVPyApgcFiFwz_aYgZgFT1GRj6mqrl6HeU-UWnWHt7q8UNdfqDeLBW8uTAKAwedo1fTBjOK96K9BW1aXI4ZQEf4LTt__TgI1y2ikpGjLkVZzHFgWcdUJxTcB1FGgQ09QBR-w2CfDCEEuFGUItKP5IrGdXQ3H51jv1RdEXY96t220uNPmg" width="624">

 

- Finally, confirm the 2nd step of the transaction on MetaMask and wait for the swap to finish. This takes bout 10 minutes. 

 

<img height="412" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/jEIPcoiyKR3tQgWnhnUPrjw3d6S49Jk0omNIX9vi9_wMl8avtLGVOyEUwArT71CwMvhXqzAnDDjHYOTDYHuq7tNbNPAnXREj0IgGHoL8K2pUhzOV2beAv7o8higeBi_ixd_JnXDq_XcYgW5wbkxjALBm6YHqEaI9N_zcHZTSM5rMiijjb7NtqmyCwwbOCA" width="624">

 

<img height="536" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/jkMRozvIUO2G8zSiDthvv_T51vQCaDXuMTNZVsSxK8LlF7y2FsC9thtmqk-gPWy6-bGeFiHoSFZ_0fo_P_Vr60H7BFfqxEAnkrM-QnJesTvjbGo7KvKASu24GyFYfxJqojaMr4VzMU1UKa_G3rkTeHeegbf3SJBPZ8iks-KEnc5fVRNH3Ew1bqNxVEJJmw" width="519">

 

- DONE! After waiting, the swap is finished, and you can check the transaction hash and your Maiar Wallet to make sure everything went smoothly. 

 

<img height="634" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/vrEOLoaJenxSTJbWWJ8BBGRdnVwiuTE2vzakiPsvnKcGzn5G6Yg5aZua9uTRqhbnq0cvpUdMW0B7jLj9A6MB2rIAzuVBJ5YCTVu9uzDDWEvem_ZhgmWrlf63z60ur_1Ilhl5nEPcToWZpML3ZLlour6sSM0FTRRbk2pWpJ9ZCi1bXxe4sHkluKuc_ode_A" width="602"> 
 
 
<img height="551" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/nf74cS1IJo8L0kvaejrNoqCZ4leeocDalimkUCVu93LZFLItkSiFFGgEohcf_Aom5bUgKd-Nb7GNJAvfXWQ7n01IhEeGtoLPcZdo4df7zrlMdT9I4HZuckE_nGeB2blugmXRdzJq-puC0oXZR3mrLxtXUjVWyWjnMwEFwh5H36orxL0PucsskGuu9C6WZg" width="624">

For more information on how to bridge ETH to EGLD, check out the video posted by the MultiversX team <a href="https://elrond.com/blog/ad-astra-portal-elrond-ethereum-bridge-goes-live/" style="text-decoration:none;">here</a>.

Want to learn more about bridging blockchains? Let us know which ones you like us to cover next in the comments below.
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How to bridge from Ethereum network to MultiversX network

Weekly Market Review - January 20th

By Brian Deese, Arati Prabhakar, Cecilia Rouse, and Jake Sullivan 2022 was a tough year for cryptocurrencies. In May, a so-called “stablecoin” imploded, prompting a wave of insolvencies. Just months later, a major cryptocurrency exchange collapsed. Many everyday investors who trusted cryptocurrency companies—including young people and people of color—suffered serious losses, but, thankfully, turmoil in…

The Administration’s Roadmap to Mitigate Cryptocurrencies’ Risks | NEC | The White House

Dogecoin saw modest gains after a report suggesting that Twitter’s payments product could support crypto.

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 Twitter continues to persist in its push into the payments space.

CEO Elon Musk wants Twitter payments to be primarily in fiat currencies, but engineers will build the payments product in such a way that crypto payments could be added in the future, Financial Times has reported.

Dogecoin—a cryptocurrency Musk has previously pumped—saw a spike in price after the news was announced Monday, sending DOGE from $0.08 to $0.09. DOGE has since settled back to roughly $0.08, according to CoinGecko data.

DOGE continues to be impacted by Musk, with its price seeing gains when Musk finds success and its price falling when Musk struggles.

Since taking over the social media site late last year, Musk has been exploring ways to monetize and reimagine Twitter as a social payments platform. Twitter registered as a payments business in November 2022 and is developing a “Coins” feature that allows users to pay with fiat to receive virtual Coins that can be redeemed to give users “Awards” for content, similar to Reddit. On Twitter, users will be able to pay for Coins using the payment platform Stripe. 

Twitter’s Director of Product Management Esther Crawford is overseeing Twitter’s payment products.

While Twitter Coins will not involve crypto initially, it’s clear Musk doesn’t want to remove that option entirely.

Twitter itself is no stranger to crypto. Although its crypto engineering lead left in November, Twitter still offers NFT “verification” as a part of its Twitter Blue subscription benefits, and users can still tip select creators with Bitcoin payments via Strike. Eligible Twitter users with monetization enabled can also still display their Ethereum and Bitcoin wallet addresses to receive tips. 

Crawford previously confirmed to Decrypt that Twitter still does not have a Communications team. She declined to comment on Twitter's plans for its payments products.

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to include response from Twitter Director of Product Management Esther Crawford.


 Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox. 

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Dogecoin Fans Still Hopeful After Elon Musk's Twitter Payments Update

Is mixing or coinjoining ethical? In his essay the author discovers how much harm banking regulation cases to customers and why mixing is ethical.d

The Ethics Of Mixing

Bitcoin price is up, but BTC mining stocks could remain vulnerable throughout 2023

Discover the power of Chainlink Price Oracles. Get real-time, accurate crypto pricing data from multiple decentralized sources. Learn more about the Indexing Company's transformation engine and its capabilities. Email us at hello@indexing.co to get !

Indexing Chainlink Price Oracles - Reliable and Decentralized Web3 Pricing Data

It is obvious that no one agrees on “how to do CoinJoins right” and how to best optimize user privacy with block space efficiency

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 It is obvious that no one agrees on “how to do CoinJoins right” and how to best optimize user privacy with block space efficiency on the Bitcoin network. In this article we will look at all the different Coinjoin implementations and help you find the right option for your needs. 

This article was originally published by Thibaud Marechal on thibaudmarechal.com

“Divide and conquer” is a battle-tested military strategy to fracture a group of people by making them disagree and fight each other instead of joining together against a common enemy. Wasabi and Samourai, two popular bitcoin wallets with different CoinJoin implementations have been fighting for many years. JoinMarket, a third CoinJoin implementation, has also been involved in colorful debates with other privacy developers.

Learning about bitcoin privacy and CoinJoins has become quite hard with ongoing drama. Who to trust? How can one verify for themselves? It’s all very unclear. What does it bring for precoiners, casual bitcoiners and purists alike? Confusion, fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). The state of bitcoin privacy is embarrassing with all this perpetual drama scaring away new users. Precious time is wasted by developers, educators and regular users who would probably be better off doing anything but trying to keep up with the drama.

It is obvious that no one agrees on “how to do CoinJoins right,” let alone, how CoinJoins should be implemented to optimize user privacy and block space efficiency on the Bitcoin network? What are the tradeoffs between different implementations? Are some implementations outright flawed? How do CoinJoins “cross the chasm” from early adopters to mainstream users when billions of people will turn to bitcoin in the coming years?

Let’s now take a look at CoinJoins by asking fundamental questions and raising some assumptions to build some sort of mental models, which will be useful in evaluating different implementations in future articles.

Not All CoinJoins Are Made Equal 
Blockspace efficiency should be considered to make sure CoinJoin transactions scale as Bitcoin gets used by more people across the world. This is rarely discussed as a top priority. Any CoinJoin design that ignores blockspace scarcity is unnecessarily spamming the block chain while accumulating technical debt, which will be difficult to pay back as more users CoinJoin in the future. Having a minimal footprint on the block chain is one goal that seems very reasonable to aim for: a small number of transactions to get to an acceptable level of anonymity sounds ideal.

What is an acceptable level of anonymity?
What does anonymity even mean in the context of bitcoin privacy?
How are particular CoinJoin designs dealing with blockspace scarcity?

Reclaim Your Privacy 
Anonymity in bitcoin would mean that there are no outstanding or unusual features that would make a given transaction remarkable from other transactions on the ledger. That, of course, is not by design on the Bitcoin network, which is a pseudonymous system where coins (UTXOs, which stands for Unspent Transaction Output in technical terms) are by default not fungible due to having unique transaction histories.
CoinJoins add a level of anonymity to the bitcoin network by breaking links between transaction inputs and outputs primarily making resulting UTXOs indistinguishable from each other. There are other heuristics that chain analysis companies use to watch the bitcoin network, such as common input ownership, self-spending, round amounts or timing analysis to name a few, which may or may not be obscured by CoinJoins.
CoinJoins help bitcoiners reclaim their privacy but are not the solution to everything. If privacy is understood as the choice to share information about oneself, great privacy can be achieved through CoinJoins but picking the right implementation is essential.

What is my privacy goal using CoinJoins?
Which heuristics does a CoinJoin implementation protect me against?
What are the risks that I want to avoid?

Number Of Participants 
Existing CoinJoin implementations have very different ways of improving privacy. Irrespective of each CoinJoin implementation design, the anonymity set (one measure for the level of anonymity) seems to be the most traditional way to evaluate how much privacy one gets from a CoinJoin. There are other ways that will be discussed in other articles. The assumptions are that either a high anonymity set is achieved with a large CoinJoin transaction or that it is achieved over multiple smaller CoinJoin transactions. These two parameters are both important, but is there one that is more important than the other?
In terms of blockspace efficiency, the assumption would be that achieving a large anonymity set with a single very large transaction that has many participants is better than multiple very small transactions with a few participants.

Is one single large CoinJoin or multiple small CoinJoins better for privacy?
How can that be verified truthfully and rigorously? How small is too small for a CoinJoin?
What is the right metric to evaluate how much privacy you can get from a CoinJoin?
What is the most blockspace efficient when it comes to the size and number of CoinJoins to reclaim your privacy?
Is it realistic to expect coins to participate in multiple CoinJoins over time as more people start using CoinJoins? How many CoinJoin rounds is enough or too much?

In simple terms, CoinJoins allow bitcoiners to reclaim their privacy by giving them plausible deniability. Plausibility is a measure of probability. How likely is it that your bitcoins were spent or simply moved to another address you still control? How likely is it that one input is linked to a given output?

Obviously, the smaller the probabilities across many options, the better plausible deniability you get as a hodler. Plausible deniability is hard to preserve because errors are easy to make. Change outputs are often problematic for bitcoiners who care about privacy and are often a source of contentious discussions and criticism. Why is change output such a controversial topic in CoinJoins?

Change Output 
It’s all about deterministic links. If bitcoin transactions had a spectrum of privacy, on one end would be a transaction with absolute plausible deniability, meaning 0% chance of knowing the link between inputs and outputs. This is also referred to as randomness or entropy in a CoinJoin. The assumption is that the more random or higher the entropy, the better. On the other end would be a transaction with 100% deterministic links between its only input and single output.
Unintuitively, a high entropy doesn’t necessarily mean that a transaction provides good privacy. A transaction with three inputs and three outputs of equal amounts technically has 100% entropy, meaning there is no way to distinguish each output from each other; and yet, there is a 33.33% chance that each input is linked to a particular output. High entropy does not necessarily mean good plausible deniability.
Change almost always has a very high deterministic link to its previous transaction. In other words, there is little doubt that a change output is not tied to the previous transaction that spent it. That can be a considerable privacy issue if a given change output were to be co-spent with other anonymous inputs following CoinJoins (though exceptions may apply in certain cases). This is usually referred to as UTXO consolidation and can be fatal to your privacy if done naïvely.
Change outputs can de-anonymize outputs that have gained some plausible deniability from CoinJoins if spent together. Errors are commonplace for bitcoiners and sometimes the realization comes too late, undoing years of diligent privacy enhancements in one single spend. How to get rid of this change output problem?
Existing CoinJoin implementations have three ways of dealing with change outputs: isolate the change into another wallet that is not CoinJoining, include the change output in the same wallet that is CoinJoining or get rid of the change output by not having change outputs at all. The latter seems to be the most advisable in terms of privacy and blockspace efficiency but further digging is required to validate or reject this assumption.

Is a high entropy score enough to qualify a CoinJoin as good for your privacy?
Is it better to isolate change outputs in another wallet or should it be removed entirely?
Is a change output always bad for your privacy?

Coin Denominations 
Getting rid of change outputs in CoinJoins requires that coin denominations be variable in a CoinJoin. In other words, the inputs registered in a given CoinJoin cannot have a fixed size like 0.1 BTC, otherwise it becomes impossible (or at least very hard) to consume inputs without creating change outputs as most UTXOs don’t have round numbers (i.e. 0.19572394 BTC where 0.09572394 BTC would be the change in a 0.1 BTC fixed coin denomination CoinJoin).
Change outputs can be dangerous for your privacy, remember? Having multiple sizes for inputs and outputs in a CoinJoin seems to be a bad idea as it brings us closer to deterministic links between inputs and outputs, right? Well, yes and no. It depends. If a CoinJoin has a small number of participants (meaning few inputs and few outputs), then different denominations are a bad idea. But what if a large number of inputs and outputs are included in a given CoinJoin?
In a large CoinJoin, multiple denominations can bring a high level of plausible deniability to each resulting output without creating change outputs and requiring additional transactions, which is a highly efficient use of blockspace. It seems that many boxes could be ticked at this point.

Is it better to have fixed or variable coin denominations in a CoinJoin?
How big should a CoinJoin be for variable denominations to make sense?
Are variable coin denominations the best way to get rid of change output in CoinJoins?

It goes without saying that CoinJoin rounds interconnectivity should not be tolerable in any circumstances regardless of whether coin denominations are different or if the CoinJoin is a large or small transaction, right? Well, here again, there is an important nuance to understand.

Coinjoin Rounds Interconnectivity 
It is claimed that registering inputs from past shared CoinJoins into new CoinJoins is ill-advised in all cases. Participants from mutually shared past CoinJoins do not seem to benefit from mixing together in other CoinJoins. It seems harmful to privacy, and is often criticized.
What if a CoinJoin is large and some registered inputs come from multiple other CoinJoins, each being also downstream from multiple other CoinJoins? In such a case, participants remixing together are still improving their privacy despite coming from a shared past CoinJoin. If each CoinJoin is large enough, the participants are not required to remix multiple times, though they can if they want to further increase their anonymity sets.
If many large intertwined CoinJoins are involved, the resulting anonymity set should provide plenty of plausible deniability, despite sharing past CoinJoins as origin of funds.

Is CoinJoin rounds interconnectivity, which is sharing mutual past CoinJoins, a bad thing on its own?
How large should a CoinJoin be for remixing with other past inputs to be considered safe?

Personal Full Node 
Should you run your own bitcoin full node when participating in CoinJoins? On the surface, it seems like a great idea, and it usually is. Some CoinJoin implementations allow that, while others outright require it. Others won’t allow you to even use your own full node. Is that to condemn absolutely? If you’ve read until now, you should know that the answer is nuanced and opens up a deep rabbit hole to be explored later.
Running your own full node comes with usability tradeoffs, and may not add much privacy protection if not all users do it. Running your own node may even give you a false sense of security and privacy if few CoinJoin participants do it, which can be deeply harmful. If Tor is used as an anonymous way to CoinJoin (and we’ll leave it as that for now), then using a trusted full node to broadcast the CoinJoin transaction can be fine as the default. Lots of nuances, and of course, don’t trust, verify.
There are some essential questions to ask so as to not fall in the trap of privacy virtue signaling.

Does the CoinJoin implementation allow to run full nodes, require them by default or don’t allow them?
If personal full nodes are not mandatory, what are the privacy shields in place? i.e. Tor, block filters, etc…
If I run my own full node, but expect most users to use a default trusted node to CoinJoin, how does that affect my privacy? Can the coordinator de-anonymize me?

With privacy concerns, it is always important to understand what you’re trying to protect, and against whom. Running a full node and using it with your own wallet is the right way to use bitcoin as it allows you to verify your wallet balance and broadcast transactions to the network without trusting anyone. But when it comes to CoinJoins, there is usually a coordinator in charge. What does the coordinator do and how is it selected? Read on.

The Coordinator 
The CoinJoin coordinator is in charge of having every participant register their inputs and outputs, and sign the collaborative transaction before broadcasting it. Most CoinJoin implementations default on a central coordinator, which is a single point of failure. Up until now, this has been an accepted tradeoff in most bitcoin communities. Can a central CoinJoin coordinator fail? Absolutely. Other implementations allow anyone to be a coordinator for each different CoinJoin, though there are other sets of trade offs here that will be discussed later.
Coinjoins being non-custodial, no loss of funds could occur if any coordinator would fail. The coordinator should never know more than what everyone knows publicly on the bitcoin network. Why? If a coordinator knows more than what is publicly available, a CoinJoin coordinator becomes a honeypot with highly sensitive data that can be exploited against bitcoiners trusting the service.
You should never trust a CoinJoin coordinator. If a CoinJoin coordinator cannot be evil, good. If it can be evil, it will be eventually, out of errors, omissions, coercion or outright dishonesty.
An example of sensitive user data would be XPUBs, which undeniably leak all the information about a wallet, its addresses, including past, current and future bitcoin transactions. Another example would be the ratio between users running their own full nodes and users trusting the coordinator’s full node to broadcast CoinJoins, as it could de-anonymize users running their own nodes, and therefore deterministically know the links between their inputs and outputs. This is yet another nuanced topic, which would require further investigation and discussion.

Does the coordinator know more than what is publicly available on the bitcoin network?
Do users leak sensitive data to the coordinator, such as their XPUB or whether or not they run their own full nodes?
Does the coordinator claim that users should trust them using legal defense mechanisms? (i.e. warrant canaries, regulatory arbitrage, etc…)

Fees 
Bottom line, who pays for what in CoinJoins? These bitcoin transactions can be expensive and sometimes fee structures are unclear for bitcoiners. It’s hard to know how much good privacy will cost you or even if you are getting any privacy out of it. Some CoinJoin implementations allow a single input to buy its privacy from other inputs who only participate for free to increase their own anonymity set. Getting paid to CoinJoin? With patience, yes.
Some models rely on shared fees where only some UTXOs pay fees while others don’t. Other models rely on inviting an ever growing number of new clear inputs (not mixed yet) to fund the existing CoinJoins for remixing inputs that do not have high enough anonymity levels. Some models seem unsustainable over the long term while others are naïve, or way too expensive for most users.
And what fees are we talking about? Well usually, inputs participating in CoinJoins pay both a coordinator fee or taker fee, (the service fee to get some level of anonymity) and the bitcoin network fees. In particular CoinJoin models, these fees get waived in certain circumstances. The economics of CoinJoins is a deep rabbit hole which requires further investigation for a much deeper understanding.

Who pays for what in a CoinJoin? What are all the fees?
What are the incentives of the CoinJoin coordinator?
Are all CoinJoin rounds paid for or is there any free remix?

Having read thus far, the hope is that bitcoiners shopping around for CoinJoins would not necessarily have all of the answers, but the right questions to ask. A mental model or framework to evaluate different CoinJoin implementations can be quite helpful for anyone who is considering using CoinJoins to reclaim their privacy on bitcoin. Sorting through the noise of social media requires intellectual honesty and the right evaluation system rigorously applied.

🔏Coinjoins are making #bitcoin privacy great again, if it ever was.But there's a ton of drama around different implementations, so it is very hard to see through the noise. How to do coinjoins right to reclaim your privacy?1/16 Strap in 👇https://t.co/a2h3q5UdfX— ThibaudMarechal.com (@thibm_) December 7, 2022
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CoinJoin: Compare All Implementations 2023

While there have been improvements to mining practices in recent years, 
significant environmental risks remain. Negative impacts can vary from the 
sedimentation caused by poorly built roads during exploration through to 
the sediment, and disturbance of water during mine construction. Water 
pollution from mine waste rock and tailings may need to be managed for 
decades, if not centuries, after closure.

Gold mining contaminates land and fresh water, so why all the focus on just bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin prices in Nigeria have skyrocketed as much as 60% above market value as the central bank imposes limits on cash withdrawals.  

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 The price of Bitcoin (BTC) in Nigeria has skyrocketed to well above global market levels amid continued efforts by the central bank to push its citizens into digitalized cash.

At the time of writing, the price of 1 BTC on the Nigerian crypto exchange NairaEX is 17.8 million nairas, equating to a whopping $38,792.

This is more than a 60% premium over the current market price of Bitcoin, around $23,700 at the time of writing. 

It comes as the Central Bank of Nigeria has continued to impose limits on ATM cash withdrawals amid an ongoing effort to accelerate its shift to a cashless society.
 

#Bitcoin is Hope‼️BREAKING: Bitcoin is selling for a 60% premium in Nigeria (37,235 USD) because of increased demand.Central Bank of Nigeria started limiting cash withdrawals to $44 per day earlier this month.Now leads the world in Google searches for "Buy #Bitcoin " pic.twitter.com/SI861WUhVy— SHIB Bezos (@BezosCrypto) January 29, 2023

Earlier this month, the central bank imposed a limit on cash withdrawals following a December announcement. 

As of Jan. 9, citizens are only allowed to withdraw a maximum of 20,000 nairas (around $43.50) from cash machines per day, with a weekly limit of 100,000 nairas (roughly $217).

The move also came just days before new naira banknotes went into circulation with the aim of curbing inflation and money laundering. The central bank imposed a deadline of Jan. 24 for Nigerians to exchange their old, higher denomination bank notes for the new currency.

However, there were long queues and complaints that there was insufficient time to meet the deadline. The central bank has now extended that deadline to Feb. 10, the BBC reported on Jan. 29.

It is not the first time the Bitcoin premium has surged in Nigeria. In February 2021, the central bank banned regulated financial institutions from providing services to cryptocurrency exchanges in the country, driving the BTC premium as high as 36%.

Related: Nigeria set to pass bill recognizing Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies

The recent interest in Bitcoin has also seen Nigeria becoming the leading country for Bitcoin web searches, according to Google Trends. 
 

BREAKING: Nigerian central bank introduces new cash withdraw limits (20,000 naira ~ $44 daily) and announced that all old naira bills will be worthless at the end of January.Nigeria is leading the „How to buy #Bitcoin“ search worldwide pic.twitter.com/O26si2nHde— Carl ₿ MENGER ⚡️ (@CarlBMenger) January 18, 2023

Additionally, on Jan. 26 Reuters reported that the Central Bank of Nigeria launched a domestic card scheme to rival foreign cards like Mastercard and Visa. 

The "AfriGo" card scheme was designed to give Nigerians better access to bank card services and circumvent often expensive foreign card fees and exchange costs.
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Bitcoin premium hits 60% in Nigeria as country limits ATM cash withdrawals

Q1 2023 Roadmap, we are unveiling a new experience at Litemint! Redesigned UX, VR Quest and mobile stores release, integrated wallet, and more...

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 2022 has been a defining experience for us at Litemint. With the opportunity to meet and get live feedback from so many of you, across the world, we are filled with more motivation than ever to keep on building our platform to empower creators and users with the realest decentralized ownership experience.

The past few months have been very productive and to kick off the first blog post of the year, we wanted to share some exciting highlights on our 2023 Q1 roadmap.

A New User Experience 
This is something we cannot wait to share more about—expect a few demos from Jieun in the coming days! Our new experience is featuring a revamped interface with improved, faster navigation, discovery and stronger focus on content and creator profiles.
Think of a mix between Pinterest and Instagram for decentralized content, with media ratios preserved across the entire platform, individual item tags and description visible on all listings or collections, goodbye pagination and page reload, e.g. users can place bids on items without leaving the current search result page! We also added the ability to follow creators, collection and topics. And there is much more!
Screen featuring art by artists Ink, In25d, bttmsup on Litemint.
In general, the aim has been to provide a more mainstream, alive and modern experience while still offering all the tools and freedom you have enjoyed so far.
 Integrated Non-custodial Wallet 
Our new experience ships with its own integrated wallet on all platforms including mobile. Essentially, users won’t need to rely on third-party wallets anymore if they wish so.
We continue to support connection to external wallets (e.g. Freighter, Wallet Connect…) however we hope this addition helps smooth out the onboarding experience for most new users especially those coming from the non-crypto world. This has often been a major point of friction which we wanted to avoid with our new release targeting users from mainstream and VR stores like Meta Quest and mobile app stores (learn more below).
 Mobile, Virtual Reality, Web and Desktop Experiences 
This new update brings Litemint natively to the mobile world with a release on Apple App Store and Google Play Store. We are also targeting Virtual Reality (VR) stores.
 Virtual Reality? 
We believe that NFTs (i.e., decentralized ownership, persistence, and immutability for digital items) are an essential component to build the metaverse. VR is one of the most promising techs opening the doors to the metaverse and the industry has seen amazing growth recently with platforms like Side Quest boasting more than 2.2 million monthly active users. Litemint is also being released Q1 2023 for Meta Quest and VR Side loading platforms like Side Quest.
And Yes, you will also be able to enjoy our tradable card game directly from your VR headset!
 The Road Ahead 
No doubt 2023 is already one of the busiest years for Litemint. This is only the start. We are also working to leverage the upcoming Stellar smart-contract platform, Soroban, to offer you more options and better tools such as an advanced auction system and decentralized royalties.
We could not be more excited!
Make sure you follow us on our social channels to keep posted about our latest news:
 Website: https://litemint.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/LitemintHQ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/litemint Discord: litemint.gg
Thanks for reading.

Founder of Litemint. Owner Stellarport.

Prev. Developer and Technical Lead for BGC Partners, Crédit Lyonnais Bank (trading systems) and British Government National Program for IT (smart card technology in healthcare). Indie game developer, co-founder of Israeli-based video game company Massive Games (pie.ai) and winner of the Honorable Mention Prize at the 2014 Linux Foundation &amp; Samsung Tizen App Challenge.

Born and live in Korea, studied French Literature and Latin at the university of Angers (one of the most beautiful cities of France) before discovering the poetry of the machines.
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Litemint launches new UX, integrated wallet, VR content support

Mining Bitcoin just got a bit harder as the network's difficulty jumped another 4.68% on Sunday.

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 It’s just gotten even harder to mine Bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has hit a new all-time high, rising roughly 4.68% from 37.59 trillion on Sunday to 39.35 trillion at the time of writing.

Mining difficulty is the figure representing the computational power required to mine a single BTC. It’s updated roughly every two weeks, getting more difficult as more miners enter the network and easier when they leave.

Bitcoin mining difficulty over the past month. Source: CoinWarz.Mining difficulty has been climbing strongly and steadily over the past year, despite temporary decreases, such as in the month of December 2022.
On January 30, 2022, the mining difficulty sat at 26.24 EH/s as per the data from CoinWarz, but it has since risen to 39.35 EH/s, a roughly 50% increase. 
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s hash rate, which measures the amount of computational power dedicated to mining the cryptocurrency, currently sits at 305.81 ExaHashes per second (EH/s). This figure is still below the all-time high registered on January 6 of 348.7 EH/S.
The current hash rate means Bitcoin miners are currently making over 305 quintillion codebreaking attempts every second in attempts to solve the computational equations needed to produce the proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency. 
This time last year, Bitcoin’s hash rate was roughly 182.37 EH/s, making for a total increase of over 67% to the time of writing. 
Bitcoin hash rate from January 31, 2022, to the present. Image: CoinWarz.Despite both Bitcoin’s mining difficulty and hash rate spiraling up throughout 2022, the price of the end product hasn’t kept pace. 
The price of Bitcoin, as per CoinGecko data, has declined from $38,232 on January 30, 2022, to $23,211 today, marking a roughly 39.3% decline.
 Bitcoin miners in difficulty 
This isn’t good news for some in the Bitcoin mining industry, a larger mining difficulty means more advanced machinery, more computers, and more power might be needed to produce the same amount of Bitcoin.
And if the price of Bitcoin isn’t rising at a comparable pace to the mining difficulty, this could make mining a less profitable business. 
Already bankruptcy and debt restructuring news has cropped up almost weekly in recent months. 
In December 2022, Core Scientific, one of the largest publicly-traded U.S. mining companies declared bankruptcy. 
Another major mining firm, Greenidge Generation has gone on record as saying that their continued viability is in “substantial doubt. 
It’s not just low Bitcoin prices and higher miner difficulties putting stress on these firms. Industrial energy prices shot up 16% between 2021 to 2022, which has spelled trouble for firms running fleets of energy-intensive mining machines.


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