Wow, almost exactly a year since my last post.   How some things change and other things don't. On the one hand my father has passed away almost a year ago and that has left a big hole in our lives.  On the other hand a year ago BitCoin was at it's peak and was days away from jumping off the cliff.  Well it fell from about $19,000 all the way to $6000 where it has held for many months...until yesterday when it jumped off the cliff again.  On to Twilio - I'm blown away with how easy it is to get communication components accomplished with Twilio.  We are using it for normal SMS text messages at TapCloud.  We also use it to send out our Authy based 2-Factor authentication tokens, and we are starting to use it for peer-to-peer and one-to-many video conferencing. One of the great things about Twilio is just how easy it is to use.  Here's an example of just a handful of code that will let you go from start to finish so you'll be sending out MMS me...

So a lot of people have heard of Bitcoin, but there are many more people that have not.  If you live in the crypto currency space, like I do, you sometimes forget how far away from mainstream Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are.  But, that may already be changing.  This from an article by Sean Williams shows just how far blockchain technology has come in the past few years. "Just over a week ago, financial giants American Just over a week Express ( NYSE:AXP ) and Banco Santander ( NYSE:SAN ) announced a cross-border partnership that entails utilizing the blockchain network developed by Ripple. Behind bitcoin ($137.4 billion), Ethereum ($35.2 billion), and bitcoin cash ($20.3 billion), Ripple has the fourth-largest market cap ($9.1 billion) of any virtual currency. As reported by CNBC , payments made by American Express' business customers on its FX International Payments platform will be routed through Ripple's blockchain network and allow for instant, cross-borde...

IOTA is not your typical cryptocurrency.  IOTA, which typically stands for the Internet Of Things is a completely new approach to managing a blockchain. Blockchain technology is what made coins like Bitcoin (BTC) possible.  BTC is just a coin that uses the blockchain technology.  As I've said many times before, the "real" invention here was coming up with a blockchain that works.  To show that it works they created BTC.  The success of BTC is a very good indication of how well blockchains can work. Blockchains are what provide the audit trail of each transaction.  It is what allows you to purchase a digital "product" and be assured that the product is authentic and that you are the only one who owns that particular product.  It is what allows us to use BTC as money because it protects against counterfeiting.  Blockchains do have their limitations, most notably transaction speed, and IOTA solves these limitations.  This is hugely impor...

As the November 16th Fork day for Bitcoin approaches I am getting more and more apprehensive about it. I really have a hard time seeing this fork go well. If you've been following me for the past year or so you'll know that's 100% different view from what I normally have. I have already moved most of my holdings to cash (Tether) and for my BTC brethren I encourage you to at least consider sitting this one out. I don't know who is going to be the winner here, BTC, B2X, or some other coin, but I've been hearing more and more about maybe Bitcoin Cash (BCH or BCC) being in play as the survivor. Here's a REALLY interesting article that talks about that possibility. I can't argue against any of what is in this article. https://www.yours.org/content/predicting-the-outcome-of-the-november-bitcoin-fork-89914ce0e1f5/?utm_content=bufferf3dec&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I have a serious question here that I'd appreciate any feedback on. Let me preface this by saying I've been mining, hording, and trading BTC and Alts for the last few years, and the upcoming BTC fork on November 16th, 2017, when block #494,784 is mined, is the most concerned I've ever been.  This is why: Up until now the BTC ticker has always been on the "right side" of any forks.  I know that's really just this past summer's fork with BCC because I'm ignoring Bitcoin Gold, but I also think of the ETH fork that led to ETC and how ETH stayed on the right side of that fork (IMHO).  The "big" coins have always maintained the ticker on the right side of the fork. But, I think that all changes with this next fork.  Even if you disagree with me, go with me here, we'll cover that at the end.  If I understand it correctly, and at least going by what Coinbase is going to do, the BTC ticker will stay with the non-segwit fork and the fork...

As most of you already know, there are 2 BTC forks happening in the next couple of weeks.  One is the Segwit2x fork scheduled for November 16th, 2017.  The other is the Bitcoin Gold fork, which already happened yesterday, October 23rd, 2017. What is a Fork, why are we doing these forks, and what happens to the coins I hold during a fork are the common questions regarding forks.  Let's dig into each of those a little bit. A "Fork" is just a fancy way of saying someone has made a 2nd copy of the code and decided to take it in a different direction.  For example, imagine you have a team of programmers working on some code to make a crypto coin.  Monday morning arrives and the programmers get in an argument about what features their coin should have.  Some want it to be able to be mined by the general public, others want it all to be issued at once and have no mining support.  Some want it as fast as possible even if that compromises anonymity, other...

As per my earlier posts about BitConnect.com and BitFinance.biz, I am getting mixed results and therefore sending out a big caution flag about BitFinance.biz. BitConnect has been doing exactly what they said they'd do.  They've been paying about 1.2% per day for the past 8 weeks or so. BitFinance was doing the same, paying exactly 1.0% per day for the past 4-5 weeks.  I've done several $1250 withdrawals over those weeks, but, I did a withdrawal last week and I did not get paid yet.  Normally I get paid within 24 hours.  That's a warning sign that maybe all is not good.  It still might work out, but until we know for sure I wouldn't recommend putting any money into BitFinance until we know more.