Charlie bit Me

That Time Charles Hoskinson Said, “SHA-3 Is Better Than SHA-256”

March 1, 2014, Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) founder of IOHK, Cardano and cryptographer behind Ethereum offers up an easter egg on the Keiser Report (E569): “So there’s this idea of the blockchain where I put things in and they don’t come out, and it’s trusted and secure across all parties, so you need a hash algorithm and we [Ethereum] use the SHA-256, MAXCOIN uses the SHA-3 which is better, so MAXCOIN is better.” — Keiser perks up, “MAXCOIN is better? How so?”

— An open call from The National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST. The 64 submissions were a who’s-who of influencers in open symmetric crypto research. After a three-round process involving hundreds of people, NIST finally announced that Keccak was selected to become the SHA-3 standard. The SHA-3 developed by Team Keccak was the cream that rose to to top. — 

“SHA-3 is great,“ chuckles Hoskinson, “It’s a new cryptographic primitive, it uses sponge encryption, there’s all this magic behind it — I like SHA-3 more than SHA-256. There’s no debate, it’s better.”

Max Keiser, AKA Satoshi Nakamoto, has said from the beginning he wants MAXCOIN to be the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, the coveted title held by Charlie Lee’s LiteCoin and arguably Roger Ver’s BitcoinCash. Hoskinson’s Cardano and Vitalik’s Ethereum are there too. There’s a lot of value, a veritable coinstellation in the Bitcoin quadrant of the cryptoverse and MAXCOIN has a moonshot — it’s a big deal.

To me MAXCOIN is the Millennium Falcon: a rogue smugglers vessel, customized by rebels who outfitted her with a crazy fast hyperdrive. She can carry any precious cargo, anywhere in the Bitcoin quadrant, fastest ship in the cryptoverse, always badass, but not without her patina battle-scars, like badges of honor.

“Fast ship? You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon (MAXCOIN)? It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I’ve outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers mind you, I’m talking about the big Corellian ships now. She’s fast enough for you old man. What’s the cargo?” ~Han Solo

To understand why HODLRs are long on MAXCOIN is a lesson in what makes cryptocurrency great where intrinsic value always comes down to the math and those who love it.

January 14th, 2014, Luke Mitchell and Jordan Fish appear alongside Max and Stacy on Keiser Report (E555) and debut MAXCOIN, the first-ever crypto genesis event broadcast to the word. Luke Mitchell explains, “There’s a lot of coins that are clones of Bitcoin or LiteCoin, and they don’t really have any special features per se, they’re just clones where somebody’s either tinkered with the amount of coins in circulation often for maximum profit, or they haven’t really altered the technology in any way. So we set out to make one that was in some respects different and better. We have a new hashing algorithm called Keccak.”

These two ambitious cryptographers were attending Bristol University, a crypto-mecca and home to the Bristol Pound. As Stacy Herbert explains to me, “The SHA-3 was implemented even before NIST accepted it as standard! Professor Nigel Smart changed some of the original cryptographic standards that Luke and Jordan first used for MAXCOIN when they mined that genesis block on our show.”

The SHA-3 means so much to this community because math. Because these numbers don’t lie. MAXCOIN has the cache of maximum speed, maximum security, maximum protection because it was built on the strongest fundamentals: much faster than Bitcoin by orders of magnitude; distribution of mining profits fairer than Bitcoin; SHA-3 is a more efficient algorithm for mining than Bitcoin’s SHA-256. It was everything the community wanted from LiteCoin, but didn’t get.

The SHA-256, used by BitCoin and Ethereum was developed by the NSA and there’s always been a stigma. To the cyberpunk community SHA-3 meant freedom from NSA command line and while it’s easy to site Occam’s Razor, it doesn’t take much digging to see why cyberpunks feel their contemporaries at the NSA have a backdoor:

“The NSA has been doing some very bad things.” — Matthew Green, cryptography professor, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The [SHA-256] Ethereum pre-sale took place from July 22 to September 2, 2014 (42 days), after pushing back the launch for weeks on end. Ethereum was a major success and spawned the whole ERC20/ICO movement. What makes Ethereum great is the community who love it. But the ERC20 is a different story, it’s not all great and there are bad apples in the bunch.

Startups reportedly raised $5.6 billion through ICOs in 2017, 2/3 will fail. MAXCOIN is drama free.

With a 46% failure rate [and growing] for the current flock of ICOs MAXCOIN, the anti-ICO, stands out as a smart HODL. To understand why let’s take a look at some of the tragic flops in the cryptoverse:

SpaceBIT is one of the most ambitious cryptocurrency projects of 2014, but within a year we stopped hearing about SpaceBIT altogether. They went from WhitePaper to WhiteVaper.

PayCoin launched in fall 2014 by Josh Garza and GAW miners. PayCoin had a huge launch, becoming one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world, but rushed a worthless altcoin clone onto the market. GAW shut down in 2015 and federal authorities launched an investigation as Garza fled the US. — PayCoin disappeared.

Ethereum’s [ERC20] DAO is notably the largest failure in the cryptoverse. The buzz around a Decentralized Autonomous Organization hitting the market in 2016 made the DAO token sale the largest crowdfund in history to the tune of $168 million but an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the DAO smart contract fleecing $50 million from hopeful HODLRs. News spread quickly and traders dumped the DAO.

The DAO had much larger implications for Ethereum, the ERC20, and the whole ICO movement. On July 25, 2017 The Securities and Exchanges Commission declared that Blockchain companies must obey federal laws. The SEC drafted a report siting, “offers and sales of digital assets by “virtual” organizations are subject to the requirements of the federal securities laws. Such offers and sales, conducted by organizations using distributed ledger or Blockchain technology, have been referred to, among other things, as “Initial Coin Offerings” or “Token Sales.” It also concluded that the DAO tokens were, in fact, securities and therefore, “subject to federal law.”

The SEC subpoena means scores of ICOs will go bust/post bail, as the good actors draw a line in the sand, forcing a deeper understanding of “Security” vs. “Utility” and a new precedent will be set — it’s a good thing. Mike Lempres, chief legal and risk officer at Coinbase, issued a statement that reflects the tone of regulatory uncertainty, “In order to fully enable ICO’s, investors must know they have the same kinds of protections when investing in ICOs as they have when investing in more traditional securities.”

The strata of value in the market is now directly proportional to the regulatory requirements of each token and if exchanges will support. There’s a lot of noise in the market and MAXCOIN stands out with the math that makes sense, NO-PRE-MINE, so it’s an immutable store of value that the SEC can’t touch. And the market is a lot more savvy to the math/community formula. MAXCOIN being light years ahead in that respect.

I started chatting with Dave (@GetMAXCOIN) on the @maxcoinproject Telegram page. He picked up the project back in ’17.

What about MAXCOIN caused you to pick up the project?

Dave: “MAXCOIN is much more like Satoshi’s vision, community based, and I think that’s the point.”

You mentioned it was way ahead of it’s time and above the ICO drama, explain.

Dave: “I find it funny that they are NOW talking about Schnorr for Bitcoin fork, and a few more coins are considering Keccak, but MAXCOIN has survived all that, been around, it’s old school .. now we’ve got a cool team, .. no stress, no pressure .. none of that ICO promise to deliver BS .. then just steal your money .. I want a real crypto-community .. not just speculators .. pump and dumpers ..sure.. they will love to do that to MAXCOIN .. let them .. I just HODL…”

Okay, you dig the math, why not fork, rebrand, and do your own thing?

Dave: “Because I love MAXCOIN it’s special, the SHA-3 is special, you know? It really is a GREAT coin -always has been. Luke and Jordan did something great, we are here to make it better.“

So, you’re [MAX] essentially the anti ICO, going back to pure community based p2p exchange of value?

Dave: “Fiat money isn’t worth the material it’s printed on. Banks create it out of thin air, backed by debt, which I find stupid. If they can create money out of thin air, why can’t we? Thats the power of crypto and of course when you see bankers talking shit about crypto, you know it’s working — ICOs aren’t scams by themselves, but they are a good tool if you want to scam ppl.”

And Dave is right. This is MAXCOIN today:

“No ICO, No Advertising, No Donations, No Fund Raising, No Bounties, No Airdrops. We do not want your money.”

When you visit the MAXCOIN webpage you’ll read: “Maxcoin is an open source, old school (no pre-mine), community-driven cryptocurrency featuring next-generation encryption SHA-3/Keccak with Schnorr Signatures. With close to zero fees, fast, block time ~ <1minute, and difficulty retargeted every block with Kimoto Gravity Well, it’s both fast and secure.” And while some of these features are new, MAXCOIN was always great.

And the new kids on the blockchain, command line cyberpunks in the MaxCoinProject Telegram like Oliver @ollieblockchain, Mario @mxjmpbean, Jonathan Plews @pl3w5y, and others are a community who love the SHA-3 and care about the math more than your profit. They are poised to have an explosive 2018 for all the right reasons, at the perfect time. There’s a paradigm shift in play and HODLRs are looking for real value after being burned by vanity coins, pump and dump manipulators, and frozen out of many ICO tokens as their regulatory status is up for debate.

There are over 1658 cryptocurrencies, many of these will fail. In a climate of Beanie Baby Tokens and ICO chill, where even Ethereum’s “Security” status is being reviewed by the SEC, Max Keiser wants SEC-proof [no pre-mine] MAXCOIN to be the silver to Bitcoin’s gold — I see it making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. If you’re not in a MAXCOIN HODL yet, you should be. Get ready for the moonshot.