Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Good morning and welcome back to another edition of Friday Inspiration! This week I think I would summarize every one of these articles as something related to emerging technology. To use a fancy term. Specifically, we have one about bitcoin, 2 related to NFTs, and 1 is actually about quantum computing!
Let’s jump in!
Intel to Join Bitcoin Mining ASIC Market With New Chip
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/intel-to-share-new-bitcoin-mining-asic
Ok, so let’s level set on a lot of things going on in that title.
First, a reminder of what bitcoin mining is. There are two pieces to the bitcoin network. Bitcoin miners and bitcoin node operators.
I’ll try and keep it as simple as possible. Bitcoin is run by a blockchain. A blockchain is just a ledger containing blocks, where each block contains transactions on the bitcoin network. A transaction is something like Bob sending Alice $12. Or Joe bought a tank of gas.
How it works for bitcoin is that each node operator has a full copy of the blockchain (so they have a record of every single transaction ever recorded) and it’s their job to verify that a new transaction is correct. Once a transaction is approved, a bitcoin miner is chosen to add the new block onto the blockchain.
To sum up: node operators make sure transactions are accurate, miners add the transaction onto the blockchain. Neither of these are manual processes by the way; it’s all just special software.
Miners run powerful computers and basically compete by running intense algorithms to try and win so they can add the new block. Think of it like a random number is selected and all the miners try guessing the correct number. The more powerful your computer, the faster you can guess, and the higher chance you win. The winner gets a bitcoin reward. Yesterday miners were paid like $30 million.
A very common type of computer that miners use is called an ASIC. This is just a very powerful, very expensive (like $10,000), very specific computer. It is designed with one single purpose: to mine bitcoin. You can’t use it as a normal computer. Only to mine.
So far all ASICs have come from Chinese companies, which I find very ironic since China banned bitcoin mining.
However, Intel, an American company, that has an insane reputation in the chip-making business, has just announced that they want in the game.
This is great news in the bitcoin mining world!
Twitter Launches NFT Profile Picture Verification
I thought this was actually a really cool feature for Twitter to add.
So one of the complaints with NFTs is: “Why would I pay a bunch of money for a jpeg that I can just right-click and save?”
It has also become very common to make your profile picture on Twitter an NFT you own. It’s like the new way to flex your money. Instead of showing off your lamborghini, you show off your $400,000 image of a monkey drawing.
It’s a weird world, I know.
Well, the complaint is that anyone in the world can save the image of that $400,000 NFT monkey pic and make it their profile picture too. It’s nothing special.
Well, Twitter has heard the complaints.
You can now connect your crypto wallet to Twitter and officially verify your profile picture. This gives your picture a cool octagonal shape instead of a circle, officially proving you actually own the NFT whose profile picture you have.
You can’t just right-click and save anymore!
Coinbase and Mastercard partner to revolutionize NFT purchase experience
Last week I told you about a new Coinbase initiative, and this week I’m sharing one more!
So, along with cryptocurrencies, Coinbase is also getting ready to launch an NFT marketplace! They will sell NFTs from a lot of different chains, which I don’t think they’ve announced yet.
They definitely want to disrupt the current marketplaces like OpenSea, which mainly work with Ethereum NFTs, Solana has several popular NFT marketplaces, and Deso does too. We’ll see who makes it onto the Coinbase platform!
However, to give them a slight edge on the competition, Coinbase is teaming with Mastercard to do…something. They haven’t gone into details, but they want to make it easier for anyone to purchase an NFT.
The current process to purchasing an NFT is that you have to set up a crypto wallet (which not everyone is comfortable with doing yet), then you have to buy a cryptocurrency and send it to said wallet, and finally, you have to go to an NFT marketplace and purchase your NFT.
If Coinbase lets a user just purchase an NFT with a credit card, they will have a huge edge on the competition when it comes to gaining new users into the crypto space!
A language for Quantum computing
Ok, so quantum computing. I haven’t talked much about this technology before. Mainly because it’s still over my head. I’ve read numerous articles and even read a book about it, but I still have a hard time understanding it.
The way I understand it is that it’s all about advanced probability and physics. The idea behind a normal computer is the whole 0s and 1s thing. I’m sure you’ve heard of that, right?
0s and 1s represent a single bit or let's say a single wire. Either there is an electric current running through the single wire or there isn’t. That’s what the 0 and 1 mean, and that’s what powers your phone and laptop.
Well in a quantum computer, it’s not so simple. Instead of a 0 or a 1, we can write algorithms where there are infinite states instead of just 2. This opens up some crazy possibilities that I don’t understand; mainly because it involves infinity which is super vague.
All I do know is that these computers will help tremendously in running simulations. They will be able to run theoretically exponentially faster than a normal supercomputer in very specific cases. Things like running drug simulations on the effectiveness against certain diseases; hopefully helping to eradicate a lot of sickness in the world. That’s one use case I’ve heard of.
One place that has worried people is that in theory, a quantum computer could break classic cryptography, which powers our secure websites and also is the math that powers a lot of cryptos, like bitcoin.
However, it’s not yet known if they can actually do that, and all the major crypto projects have already designed quantum-proof cryptographic algorithms anyways. So bitcoin will still exist with quantum computers.
Anyways, so apparently, when you have this wonky system where a bit (they call them qubits) can be in an infinite state, it’s still only a 0 or a 1 when it’s finally read. However, apparently, it can be “entangled” with other qubits, so you may not know which piece of data you are actually reading.
This is called quantum entanglement.
All of this to say…
Some MIT people created a new programming language called Twist, which helps you write quantum programs. Specifically, they allow you to establish what pieces of data are important so that they don’t get entangled with non-important pieces of data. Something like that.
I still don’t fully understand it, but it’s a big breakthrough in the quantum computing field, and so it will be exciting to see what happens. The idea is that Twist is just one more building block to allow mainstream programming languages to build quantum programs.
Ok, I think that’s it for the week! Have a great weekend and I’ll talk to y’all next week!