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Bitcoin: What I Hate, Love, and Fear About the Cryptocurrency

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Bitcoin: What I Hate, Love, and Fear About the Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin was born on 3rd January 2009, when her genesis block (block zero) was mined. The first transaction took place on 12th January between “Satoshi” and Hal Finney. Bitcoin’s first “value” was set as 1309.03 bitcoins for $1. That’s right, it was a fraction of a paisa! And now as she prepares to become a teenager, Bitcoin is valued at over $44,000 and has even become legal tender in one country! So what do I hate, love, and fear about Bitcoin?

What I hate about Bitcoin

In my personal opinion, Bitcoin is lousy as a medium of exchange. It is very volatile and suffers from slow transaction speeds. Compare it to UPI payments in India and Bitcoin seems like a cruel joke.

It makes no sense to use Bitcoin for payments in any country. There are so many better alternatives available in the crypto world. You could use dollar-pegged stablecoins. You could use hush/ privacy coins like Monero or you could use regular old coins like Litecoin. All of these are faster, cheaper, and less volatile.

The second thing I hate is the concept of HODLing — holding on for dear life. There are so many memes about this that many people think it’s actually a good investment strategy! The concept is that if you buy a little bit of Bitcoin and hold on to it forever, then you will become super-rich. I wish life were that easy.

This Internet meme shows what HODL really looks like

The third thing I hate is the concept of “buying the dip”. This means that every time that Bitcoin prices dip, you buy more Bitcoin. This is an extension of HODLing. It means that you believe that Bitcoin prices will keep rising forever. So every time prices dip, you buy more.

rohas buy dip meme buy the dip

‘Buying the dip’ is now being turned into memes

The fourth thing I hate is Bitcoin maximalists. They believe that Bitcoin is the only viable digital asset and all other cryptos are sh*tcoins. They are oblivious to the massive innovation being done by Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, Theta, Filecoin, and so many other awesome crypto projects.

What I love about Bitcoin

In my personal opinion, Bitcoin is great as a store of value.

A store of value is an asset whose value either remains the same or increases over time. Some of the most popular stores of value are precious metals, real estate, treasury bills, and even art.

If Bitcoin becomes globally accepted as a store of value, then in my personal opinion, its total market cap would equal that of gold.

Depending upon your source of information, the market cap of all the gold in the world is between 8 to 10 trillion dollars. So the long-term marketcap of Bitcoin could be between $8 to 10 trillion.

Considering a maximum supply of 21 million bitcoins, I think a fair long-term price would be somewhere between $380,000 and $476,000. I expect to see this price by 2030 AD.

This is subject to two critical caveats — the blockchain technology is not “broken” and no meteor crashes into our lovely planet 🙂

What I fear about Bitcoin

Bitcoin is totally dependent upon technology. If a major flaw is found and exploited, then Bitcoin will immediately lose its value and would crash to zero.

While blockchain is a robust technology, it has been hacked in the past — on 15 August 2010 when a transaction created 184,467,440,737.09551616 Bitcoins.

That’s more than 184 billion! Yes, you read that right. We all know that the total number of bitcoins that can ever exist is 21 million. But here we suddenly had hundreds of billions of bitcoins!

The problem was solved within a few hours. This “bad” transaction does not exist on the blockchain anymore. Neither do the billions of bitcoins created by the hackers. But 0.5 bitcoins that were consumed by the transaction still exist and are indelible proof of bitcoin’s hack!

Can another successful hack take place? Of course, it can. And that’s what I fear the most.


Rohas Nagpal is the author of the Future Money Playbook and Chief Blockchain Architect at the Wrapped Asset Project. He is also an amateur boxer and a retired hacker. You can follow him on LinkedIn.


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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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