ICOs? He held the first one. Stablecoins? He dreamed of them by accident. Vitalik Buterin tried to get him on board to help launch Ethereum, but he was too busy. He is J. R. Willett, one of the most fascinating men in the industry.Back in 2012, Willett, now 41, felt he could improve Bitcoin by making it possible for anyone to create interoperable tokens backed by the protocol. He released a white paper that described the new model and invented a way to fund the project with a token sale. He procrastinated for the next 18 months, hoping someone else would take the bait. Eventually, he gave in and announced the Mastercoin initial coin offering, which went on to inspire Ethereum and every subsequent ICO.“It felt like I was just putting into words what was obviously going to happen — people were already talking about it, and I thought, ‘Why hasn’t someone formalized this at least a little bit?’ I just got tired of waiting for someone else.”In the early days, he was worried that cryptocurrency would bring about a dystopia where either the late adopters became penniless or a one-world government would form to regulate everyone’s transactions. He’s still worried, but things are going better than he’d feared. [jnews_carousel_3 enable_autoplay=”true” autoplay_delay=”4500″ post_offset=”1″ include_category=”157″] In the sea of exceptional and charismatic people who rise to the top of the cryptocurrency world, Willett stands out. Not in his absolutist conviction to a set of principles, not in his journey from rags to riches, not in his “maniac drive“ to stick with a project, not in his outsized charitable pursuits, and not even in his artistic endeavors or grand visions for the future. No. Willett stands out because despite the incredible things he has set in motion, he remains a humble family man who never forgot what was most important.The first ICOWhen the world rang in the year 2012, Bitcoin was pretty much the only game in town. Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency were one and the same, save for the newly birthed Litecoin fork that was not yet three months old (LTC was created via mining, just like Bitcoin). It’s here that Willett arrived to stir the pot, publishing what he called “The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper.” the mastercoin prospectus is fascinating. it was the 1st ICO, and as far as white papers go, it is really good. it even has risk disclosures! it describes a lot of ideas that would be implemented years later – DEXes, stablecoins, tokenization, onchain govhttps://t.co/noFt1PKzUD— nic carter (@nic__carter) December 8, 2020 “We claim that the existing Bitcoin network can be used as a protocol layer, on top of which new currency layers with new rules can be built without changing the foundation,” he wrote. The idea was to make it possible to create new, functional tokens on top of Bitcoin in such a way that smart contracts could regulate their interactions. “Mastercoin supports creating property tokens to be used for titles, deeds, user- backed currencies and even shares in a company,” the white paper explained.This sounds much like Ethereum today, complete with interoperable ERC-20 tokens and smart contracts. That is no coincidence, considering that Ethereum was partly inspired by Willett’s ideas.“Vitalik came to us initially with his ideas, and we told him, ‘We’ve got some other things we want to do first.’ He didn’t want to wait, and it’s good for him that he didn’t. Ethereum was the result of that.”Willett even brought up the idea of stablecoins, writing that “If you think Bitcoin has a reputation problem for money laundering now, just wait until you can store ‘USDCoins’ in the block chain!” This was a new idea — he invented the concept.Mastercoin’s launch — and token sale — was announced in July 2013. It was the first-ever ICO, and coins could be purchased at an exchange rate of 100 MSC per 1 BTC. These first coins were received from the “Exodus Address,” which served as Mastercoin’s equivalent to the genesis block — while Bitcoin was the beginning, Mastercoin was imagined as the next era.When Willett announced Mastercoin on the Bitcointalk forum, he thought of it as a one-time shortcut to get around the “proper way” of raising money. “It didn’t feel like an innovation at the time,” he says.“I thought I had found a bit of a shortcut — I just didn’t have time to go flying to California, putting together a pitch deck and talking to venture capitalists, most of whom hadn’t heard of Bitcoin.”Eventually, Mastercoin evolved into the Mastercoin Foundation, itself evolving into the Omni Foundation, which Willett founded and where he still serves as chief architect. Willett says that transparency was very important to him while creating the nonprofit, and explains how he used a public spreadsheet to record all expenses.“The problem with that was that as we started running out of money, everybody knew we were running out of money, and that took some of the wind from our sails,” he recalls with a laugh. Today, Omni Layer is an “open source, fully decentralized asset platform” that allows for “creating and trading custom digital assets and currencies.” [jnews_carousel_3 enable_autoplay=”true” autoplay_delay=”4500″ post_offset=”1″ include_category=”157″] When asked if he harbors any regrets in not becoming a billionaire CEO, he lets out a hearty guffaw. “I’m sure there would have been things that were fun about it,” he says giddily, but goes on to explain that he is a minimalist who barely owns anything that his kids do not need. “What do you get from being super-wealthy, if you kind of have a minimalist state of mind? You just get a bunch of problems,” he contemplates. Is there perhaps a tinge of regret there?“Maybe the regret there is that I could have done a lot of good — but hopefully, those people that do become billionaires will do a lot of good.”  The inventorWillett led what he calls an idyllic childhood with a father who “always had a knack for money and investments” and began teaching him coding on the family’s Apple…

They were only two seemingly innocuous words: “investment alternatives.” But when applied to Bitcoin — the seminal cryptocurrency — by an official from the People’s Bank of China in a recent panel discussion, they reverberated like a firecracker.“A remarkable step for BTC,” Lennix Lai, director of financial markets at OKEx, calls the statement. Michael Peshkam, executive in residence at European business school INSEAD, describes the central banker’s remarks as “a significant shift in the country’s position” on crypto.To recap: On April 18 at a CNBC event at the Boao Forum for Asia, Li Bo, deputy governor of the PBoC — China’s central bank — said: “We regard Bitcoin and stablecoin as crypto assets. […] These are investment alternatives.” CNBC reporter Arjun Kharpal commented:“Industry insiders called the comments ‘progressive’ and are watching closely for any regulatory changes made by the People’s Bank of China.”“Yes, I do see a change in tone” in China, “a softened and more open approach to considering the role of Bitcoin,” Kevin Desouza — professor of business, technology and strategy at Queensland University of Technology Business School — tells Magazine. “I still do not see a full embrace of Bitcoin.”“This is a very important development,” Daniel Lacalle, chief economist at Tressis SV, tells Magazine — one that involves a “significant change of heart” on the part of China’s government as it “separates itself from its former monetary policy.” The government is saying, in effect, that it isn’t going to ban or put the brakes on the growth of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which have been an ever-present risk for both China and other governments, Lacalle suggests.If so, why now? China is close to rolling out one of the world’s first major central bank digital currencies at scale — sometimes referred to as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment, or digital yuan. “If it wants a digital yuan that works, it can’t ban crypto,” Lacalle says. Rather, it needs to show that its DC/EP is as attractive as a crypto alternative.Connecting the dots: BTC and DC/EPWhat exactly, though, is the connection between Bitcoin and China’s DC/EP? Aren’t they two different things — one an emerging global store of value, like gold, and the other a domestic payment system? The Chinese yuan, as currently constituted, is used in very few international transactions. “It is underutilized globally because China maintains capital controls,” Lacalle tells Magazine. China has long feared that if it were to drop these controls, its economy would quickly become “dollarized” — i.e., its citizens would send dollars away from China to the United States. As things stand today, the rollout of a digital yuan would be an international failure, though it might succeed domestically. Outsiders would assume that the Chinese government wants to control it like it does its traditional yuan. [jnews_carousel_3 enable_autoplay=”true” autoplay_delay=”4500″ post_offset=”1″ include_category=”157″] “But if they open the market for crypto in China, they are signalling that capital controls won’t apply to the digital market,” including a digital yuan, Lacalle explains. This is arguably an “intelligent move” on the part of the Chinese government, which like Russia before it now sees benefits in opening its economy to crypto. In fact, cryptocurrencies may eventually — albeit, in a “distant future” — hurt Western fiat currencies, authorities speculate. But in the meantime, a new tolerance with regard to Bitcoin can make its digital currency more viable beyond its borders. A potential currency?Peshkam tells Magazine that Li’s statement goes beyond recognizing BTC as just another investment asset, which is scarcely an earth-shaking revelation. China now sees crypto “as a future potential currency in global trade.”Using Google Trends data from 2014 to the present, Peshkam notes that interest in Bitcoin within China — i.e., among its domestic population — follows a similar pattern as in the U.S., as well as the world at large, as measured by the number of searches for the word “Bitcoin.” Ignoring this growing interest on the part of its populace “might not be economically and financially prudent for the country in the long run, thus the shift” in Chinese policy, opines Peshkam.  China’s DC/EP will probably become “the main means of daily trade from grocery shopping to payment of bills and larger ticket items” domestically, Peshkam says. But it is too early to gauge its international impact, including whether or not it will be a threat to the U.S. dollar as the world’s primary trading currency.Just in case, continues Peshkam, China would like to have BTC on hand to reduce its dependence on the dollar for global trade. A strong BTC could also similarly weaken the dollar’s hold on China’s regional neighbors, making them more open to using the new digital yuan. “The shift in China’s position seems to be a strategic move to safeguard its future economic dominance should Bitcoin move from ‘investment alternative’ to ‘trading currency alternative,’” says Peshkam.Who is Li?Perhaps one is reading too much into a single person’s statement? Li, after all, is just one of seven deputy governors of China’s central bank. Might these remarks on the matter of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies simply be one banker’s opinion?No, Lacalle tells Magazine. “That doesn’t happen in China.” Not in forums like these. “When they want to alert the world about some new [financial] policy, the first comment is often from an analyst in a state-owned bank.” Next, typically, is a statement by a central banker. And finally, at a later date, the policy is officially announced, explains Lacalle. This is what happened when China devalued the yuan in 2015, for instance. “It is subtle but efficient.”China’s central bank is not as independent as some of its Western counterparts, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, another source, who wished to remain anonymous, tells Magazine: “In his [Li’s] place, it would be natural to check whether his statement is in accord with the government view. Or, alternatively, he has been tipped that this is the government view.”  So, Li is simply acting as a government spokesperson? “It can be viewed this way,” says Molly Jane Zuckerman, head of content at CoinMarketCap,…

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.Top Stories This WeekAltcoins rally as bulls pile into large-cap tokens and layer-one projectsWe’re well and truly in the throes of “altseason” now, with Bitcoin’s dominance showing no signs of diminishing.Ether delivered a stunning surge that took its price above $3,000 for the very first time, breaking new records throughout the week. On Saturday, ETH remained in uncharted territory after racing to highs of $3,800.Among those celebrating ETH’s spike will be Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who has officially become a crypto billionaire. Excitement is continuing to build ahead of a long-awaited upgrade that will overhaul the network’s gas fee structure in July.ETH is in good company, too. EOS rallied by more than 100% this week following a recent protocol that increases the project’s inflation rate. Litecoin has hit a one-year high against Bitcoin, with many analysts predicting extended upside momentum. And Bitcoin Cash jumped 68% amid rumors that a looming hard fork could boost the network’s user base.Even Ethereum Classic, the hard fork sparked by disagreements after a devastating 2016 hack, has pumped 130% in the past week.Of course, there’s one altcoin in particular that continues to steal the show… May 8 “day to watch” for Dogecoin amid warning it can suffer an XRP-style crashDOGE has seemed unstoppable in recent weeks. It hit unprecedented highs of $0.7376 early on Saturday. To put into context how bonkers the joke cryptocurrency’s surge really is, $1 invested on Jan. 1 would now be worth $139 at current prices.Mania over the financial homage to Shiba Inus everywhere may be about to reach a climax when DOGE enthusiast and mega-billionaire Elon Musk hosts Saturday Night Live. It’s inevitable that his appearance will feature endless sketches about Dogecoin, and that could pump prices even further.But not everyone is finding DOGE’s surge to be a cause for celebration. Lowstrife, a popular account on Twitter, believes the end is nigh, with the crypto trader spotting eerie similarities between DOGE’s current charts and XRP in the heady days of 2018.Back then, XRP had hit all-time highs of $3.20 that remain true to this day, but then slowly faded to lows of $0.14 — a loss of 95.6%.Warning of an impending apocalypse for DOGE, Lowstrife wrote: “Each of DOGE’s major rallies this year has been smaller and less aggressive. What took 18 hours at first has been ongoing for 2 days now. I suspect this is the final push before it’s all over for good. May 8th is the day to watch.”Even Musk himself has been cooling the hype, reminding followers that crypto investments remain speculative. Square’s Bitcoin revenue up 1,000% in 12 monthsA flurry of earnings results this week powerfully illustrated the impact that Bitcoin’s sensational first quarter has had.Square blew analysts’ expectations by delivering earnings of $0.41 per share between January and March — far beyond the $0.16 forecast. Revenue came in at $5.06 billion, dwarfing predictions of $3.36 billion.Bitcoin alone drove $3.5 billion in revenue, an astonishing increase of 1,000% in just 12 months. Overall, the crypto-friendly company’s gross profit also surged 79% year on year to hit $964 million.Square’s also sitting on paper profits of $250 million after making two high-profile Bitcoin purchases — one in February and one in October.PayPal has also been heralding the “great results” it has been receiving from its crypto service. The platform’s earnings and revenue also exceeded predictions in Q1. Coinbase stock plunges to record low, further decoupling from cryptoThe celebratory atmosphere isn’t universal. Coinbase shares tumbled to fresh lows on Thursday as Wall Street investors continued to cycle out of high-flying tech stocks. COIN bottomed at $255.15, where it was in danger of breaching the $250 reference price set on the eve of its public listing in April. All of this comes despite the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies surging beyond $2.4 trillion.FBB Capital Partners’ director of research, Mike Bailey, told Bloomberg: “We saw a mini-bubble in SPACs, IPOs, crypto, clean-tech and hyper-growth in late 2020 and early 2021 and many of these asset classes are nursing bad hangovers.”(That said, his assertion that crypto is nursing a “bad hangover” is misplaced.)Coinbase’s woes may be linked to increasing competition among crypto exchanges, which has left retail investors spoiled for choice. There’s a danger that this could eat into the revenues it derives from transaction fees, which make up most of its income. Comedian Bill Maher excoriates environmental impact of cryptoElon Musk’s stint on the box this weekend serves as a powerful counterweight to comedian Bill Maher, who didn’t leave crypto enthusiasts in stitches during a recent segment.On Maher’s program, he compared the industry to a virtual game — and talked about mining in a derisive tone. Maher also implied that investing in tokens was a childish endeavor, and illustrated his point with quotes from Warren Buffett.He said: “There is something inherently not credible about creating hundreds of billions in virtual wealth with nothing ever actually being accomplished and no actual product made or service rendered. […] Unfortunately, what is real is the unfathomable amount of electricity those massive supercomputers suck up for their mining.”Maher even quipped that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by Bitcoin’s inventor, is the Japanese term for “Monopoly money.”Anthony Pompliano shared the clip along with this caption: “Never ask a comedian for investment advice.”Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao replied, writing: “Very sad to watch. Feel really hopeless for him. Joke’s going to be on him. Time will show.” Winners and Losers  At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $58,366.32, Ether at $3,811.20 and XRP at $1.56. The total market cap is at $2,433,633,423,933.Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Shiba Inu, Bitcoin Diamond and Telcoin. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Harmony, Huobi Token and Filecoin.For more info on crypto prices,…

The organizer of The Robin Hood Group — which once stole 10% of all circulating ETH from under a black hat hacker’s nose — wants to change the way we think about charity.A former chemical engineer, Griff Green, 36, traded in his savings for precious metals, which he used to travel the world for years before settling as a Bitcoin missionary in Ecuador. He led a white hat hacker war against the infamous black hat hacker of The DAO, and he organizes cryptocurrency camps at Burning Man to spread the word about crypto — while dressed as Santa and riding a massive metal Doge.His next big mission, with the blockchain-based charity initiatives Giveth and Commons Stack, is to transform the game of economics into one in which donations transform into investments… investments that can even wind up with the donor making a profit.DAO masterThe morning of June 17, 2016, was a pivotal day in cryptocurrency — it was the day The DAO was hacked. The DAO was arguably the first major decentralized autonomous organization, having raised 14% of all circulating Ether in existence at the time from over 11,000 investors in May 2016. It functioned as an investor-driven venture fund, with tokenholders able to vote on investment proposals.But a malicious actor found an exploit allowing funds to be progressively drained from The DAO’s accounts. Green quickly organized his white hat hacker collective, The Robin Hood Group, to launch a counteroffensive. White hat hacker and philanthropist Griff Green. (Pic: Supplied)One week later, Green would be among the first nine graduates from the University of Nicosia’s Master’s in Digital Currency program. He was hired by Slock.it, a company developing on Ethereum, as a community manager responsible for organizing and educating The DAO’s community.Green jumped onto a Slack channel for The DAO’s investors, imploring them not to panic as his team rushed to drain what was left of the project’s holdings before the attackers could. He encouraged users to spam the network as much as possible to slow it down and increase gas fees, making it harder for the real hacker:“The DAO is being attacked. It has been going on for 3-4 hours, it is draining Ethereum at a rapid rate. This is not a drill… We need to spam the Network so that we can mount a counter attack all the brightest minds in the Ethereum world are in on this.”At the same time, his team started replicating the hacker’s attacks for itself, draining The DAO’s wallets of ETH before the hacker could take it.“We had 10% of all Ether in existence.”“We were taking a huge risk,” Green acknowledges regarding the legality of preemptively stealing tens of millions in Ether so the hacker couldn’t. The Ethereum chain was controversially forked following the hack in order to “turn back time“ to before the hack, but Ethereum Classic emerged as a still-valuable token. This meant that Green and crew effectively held 10% of all ETC with the funds they had stolen. [jnews_carousel_3 enable_autoplay=”true” autoplay_delay=”4500″ post_offset=”1″ include_category=”157″] Legal threats started pouring in, telling the group that the ETC should be distributed, despite the fact that “We were just normal people, we didn’t have a company,” he says looking back. All the members of the group jumped on planes and “flew to Switzerland to figure out legal representation, and it was the first time we all met in person.” Eventually, the funds were returned through a DApp that Green’s team coded. If you haven’t ridden around Burning Man on a giant Disco Doge, you haven’t lived.About a year later in November 2017, the team had similar success rescuing $210 million from the Parity multisig wallet hack. “We wanted to tell everyone, ‘Hey, guess what? We stole all this money, but you can trust us because we already gave back all the money in The DAO,’” Green recalls. But he explains that this was risky for the now-public team because anyone could use Google to find out where they — and thus, the private keys — could be found. That night, Green “slept on a mattress with a baseball bat in front of the door,” fearing someone might come to take the keys by force.Hacking is not the only way in which Green has put himself at risk in the name of his principles. When the autonomous region of Catalonia attempted to vote for independence from Spain in 2017, Green went to a polling station to act as a human shield to protect the electoral process from “the police, who were beating people to steal the ballots.” This experience convinced Green that decentralized governance on the blockchain can only work efficiently if people are able to run their nodes without relying on centralized internet providers. The result was DAppNode, which helps people around the world set up peer-to-peer infrastructure. Green wearing his signature Santa suit while discussing charity initiatives with controversial philanthropist Brock Pierce at Burning Man 2018. (Pic: Elias Ahonen)From engineer to Ecuadorian evangelistGreen was born in Spokane, Washington, where he graduated from high school in the mid-2000s. He was interested in designing planes and rocketships but decided not to pursue mechanical engineering after he realized that much of the industry was oriented toward military applications. Instead, he went into chemical engineering at the University of Washington in 2003.At the end of his studies in 2006, he interned at biopharmaceutical firm Amgen, where he helped “genetically engineer Chinese hamster ovary cells to produce human proteins,” he recalls, describing a “creepy process” in a laboratory filled with vats of blood. Later, he worked as a research assistant at his alma mater, turning algae into carbon-neutral fuel.He soon found himself employed as an “organizer of a really weird political movement in Seattle” called “Save Our Sonics“ trying to lobby the local government to keep NBA basketball team the Seattle SuperSonics from relocating to Oklahoma. His efforts ended with disappointment when the mayor “sold the team away anyway with just the stroke of a pen,” just as a judge was about to rule…