8th December 2023 > > LINK & Bitkey.

tl;dr

LINK staking proved rather popular. Bitkey is an interesting innovation for self-custody.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Ordinal number 8 – the first of 10,000 in the Honey Badger collection – sold for 10.4 BTC two days ago, over $450k. Looks like the purists are going to lose another battle (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/6th-december-2023-usdt-ordis).

BTC’s strength is being reflected in some outsize gains for alts. This is a common feature of bull runs. Projects of real value – not just meme style speculation – may soon start attracting headlines quoting multiples of price gains. If so, those headlines could be one of those triggers that bear market buyers – who refused to be swayed from DCA – may decide to use as profit taking information.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – LINK (Chainlink) staking

As reported on 27th November 2023, V0.2 for staking LINK was opened yesterday to eligible participants who had not participated in V0.1 but with a limit of just 45mm LINK in total to be staked.

That allocation was filled just hours after the go-live time.

When the limit is raised, the CCC will pre-warn you to get ready to stake.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Bitkey

Block – the financial services firm which is Jack Dorsey’s current plaything – has announced the global rollout of Bitkey, an innovative self-custodial wallet:

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231207228680/en/Self-Custody-Bitcoin-Wallet-Bitkey-Built-by-Block-Inc.-Launches-Globally-Widening-Access-to-True-Financial-Ownership

Retailing at $150 Bitkey uses a 2-of-3 multi-sig to sign messages to be broadcast to the blockchain. What this means is that there are three keys of which two are required to spend coins above a daily preset limit. One key is on the hardware device itself, one in the mobile app, and one held by Block.

To use your cryptos you need both the device and your phone making Bitkey a touch more secure than a Ledger Nano. If you lose your Ledger Nano, a finder must guess either a 4-digit, 6-digit, or 8-digit PIN in three goes or less. On the scale of things likely to happen in life that you should worry about, this one ranks on the low side.

The key advantage of Bitkey is that you do not need to securely store your 24-word seed phrase. If you lose your phone, you can use the hardware device with your cloud account to download the mobile key to your new phone.

If you lose the hardware device, you can use your phone to set up a new device and a new wallet to which you can transfer your cryptos.

In contrast, if you lose your Ledger Nano you will need to retrieve your 24-word seed phrase and set up a new device. If you lose your Ledger Nano and your seed phrase, your coins are lost forever. If you lose just the seed phrase and someone else finds it (and knows what a seed phrase is), you will lose your coins but that is theft, and if the feral scumbag uses a centralised cryptocurrency exchange to cash out your property, you have a decent chance to retrieve your funds, so long as you act quickly.

Finally, if you lose both your phone and hardware device, you can recover the mobile key if you had set up trusted contacts initially who can then verify your identity.

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Initiatives like this are on the margins of those developments that will drive global adoption of cryptos. Committed holders who already self-custody are likely to be interested in these additional safety features.