Getting Started with Chia Blockchain in Just Minutes, and Get Free Chia

Let’s get you started with Chia Blockchain in just a few minutes. Follow these steps and you’ll get some free Chia, do your first transaction, and even play with Chialisp, a new smart contract language.

Chia’s blockchain network is secured primarily by computer storage rather than energy, so it’s much more energy efficient than Bitcoin. And it also leads to a more decentralized node network. Its smart contract language is designed to be more auditable and have a much lower risk profile than Solidity.

Let’s go!

  1. Create your first wallet. Install the chia client which’ll guide you into creating first wallet at https://www.chia.net/download/
  2. Write down the Receive Address of your wallet, because we’re going to send it a
    transaction soon. To view it, click on the “Wallets” vertical tab on the left, and look
    for the Receive Address. Write it down somewhere.
  3. Create a second Chia wallet. Close the GUI client, and then start it again. When it starts, click on “Create a new private key” to create a second wallet.
  4. Get some free Chia. Head to faucet.chia.net, and use the address you wrote down in step 2 to get it sent some Chia. Then do the same thing with your new second Chia wallet, using its Receive Address. You may need to reload or restart your browser if the faucet website gives you errors.
  5. Check your address balances on https://www.chiaexplorer.com/ This will give you some experience using the explorer and using it to poke around the blockchain records. This is also helpful because your GUI client is probably still syncing up to the blockchain, so it probably doesn’t show the amounts that you received from the faucet.

Now that we’ve made progress with simple Chia wallets and gotten some free Chia, we’ll start setting up some development tools to play around with Chialisp, Chia’s smart contract language.

  1. Install clvm_tools, by heading to https://github.com/Chia-Network/clvm_tools
  2. Try running your first Chialisp code by adding two numbers together. Try typing in this:
    brun ‘(+ 1 (q . 3))’ ’39’
  3. Now install Atom to use as a code editor if you don’t have it already, at www.atom.io . Chialisp uses parentheses…, lots of parentheses. Using a code editor like Atom will help you avoid bugs from unclosed parentheses.
  4. Once your Chia client has sync’d up to the network, you can do your first Chia transaction. Note that it may take a long, long time to sync up, and the GUI client currently won’t let you send a transaction til it sync’s up. To send chia from your second wallet to your first wallet, go to the “Wallets” vertical tab in the Chia GUI client, and go to the “Create Transaction” section. In the Address / Puzzle hash section, pop in the address you wrote down in step 2. For Amount, type in 0.000000000002, and you’ll see that it says ‘2 mojos’ underneath. Mojos are the smallest unit of Chia, just like Satoshis are for Bitcoin. For “Fee”, try typing in 0, or else you could type in 0.000000000002 there if 0 doesn’t work for you. As I write this, you can get a transaction processed by the network without having to pay a transaction fee.

I hope this has helped you get started with Chia very quickly. Follow me on Twitter and sign
up for my email alerts here for when I post new content.

Frequently-Asked Question: How many transactions per block are there in chia? Here are a couple of examples with 47 and 48 transactions in one block: https://www.reddit.com/r/chia/comments/okk0fb/couple_of_lucky_blocks_with_40_transactions_for_a/h591oju/

Morning Pages Tips, Writing Exercise

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard about writing Morning Pages, as developed by Julia Cameron of The Artist’s Way. Many other artistic/creative folks use this daily practice also.

Here are a few tips I’ve found helpful for doing Morning Pages, that you might play with:

  • Don’t take your pen off of the page, especially if you feel like it’s taking for ever
  • Have a bunch of different pens that you use, including pens of different colors, calligraphy pens, brush pens, …
  • You don’t have to always write actual words, you can write gibberish
  • You can even make micro-drawings along the way.
  • You can use plenty of naughty words and complain about people in a way you might not to their face or to others
  • You don’t have to write along the lines of your page, you can change the orientation of the page and have different parts of the page written in different directions or even shapes
  • I like to use lined paper, otherwise I sometimes end up writing too small and take forever
  • It can be fun to write in a light, barely visible color like light orange or light pink, as that’ll make sure you don’t focus on what you already wrote since you won’t be able to see it.
  • Why not try writing with invisible ink also
  • Put a date at the top of the page, then /page# at the top also after first page.
  • When you feel like you’re running low on words to write, write “How am I feeling right now? I feel…”
  • I sometimes have a second notebook to double-write important notes I come up with while writing the morning pages, so I can record them, forget them and don’t get tempted to look back at the morning pages.
  • If you’re dealing with a chronic pain issue such as back pain, RSI, etc., check out John Sarno, MD and David Schechter’s books with references to journaling and incorporate that with this practice.
  • You can also try an alternative version of morning pages by recording yourself speaking. This actually be very positively impactful for people who are looking to do emotional journaling (I think I saw a research ref to this in Schechter’s latest book, can’t recall exactly).
    • If you know how long it normally takes to do your morning pages, try just recording your verbalized stream of consciousness thoughts for the same amount of time.
    • I use a Zoom H5 audio recorder, which is probably overly fancy, but I do like the idea of having a separate recorder from your cell phone.
    • You can also do half and half… half the pages written and half the time audio recording.

I haven’t seen many folks mention how long it takes them, something I’ve been curious about. I currently do about half an hour and write 2 pages only. Hope these thoughts help.

For those of you who do Morning Pages, what has your experience been like and what tips do you have?

The Next 10 Years… Live Videocall on Tuesday, July 7th

My next Live is this Tuesday, I hope you can join me… Space is limited, Free registration, link below… We’ll be doing it in a group Zoom call, not webinar mode.

Naturally this will include some discussion of investing, risk management, and how we can make personal decisions.

It’s at 5:30pm Pacific / 8:30pm Eastern U.S. time. Registration link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0td-ygrT4pHtXq2ZTAArFNXh_zLpF0OUFI

New Resource Page on Herd Immunity

I’ve created a new page on Herd Immunity. The goal is to have a one-stop spot where you can look at assumptions about the Herd Immunity theory, and have them explained in pretty simple language. It’s now on its second version, and I have more upgrades I’m looking to add to it.

It’s really important to look at assumptions when we get excited about different theories, and so I hope this helps with that.

Here it is, Herd Immunity

I also relate it to the current pandemic, COVID-19. I plan to continue developing the page over time, so feel free to post it as a link when people are in a conversation evaluating the concept. I hope this helps, and welcome your feedback.

Pandemic Multiplicative Viruses, Conditional Probabilities and Occam’s Razor

I’m just logging these notes here to point back to it later. Here are some thoughts I’ve had for quite a while regarding the current pandemic.

In probability, a very useful concept is called conditional probability. It means what is the probability of something given that we know something else exists or has happened. It can be really useful as a thinking tool when we want to consider the probabilities of whether something is true or not. In many circumstances we don’t need perfect information or so-called ‘data’ in order to make decisions, especially decisions to be cautious. Some insight into probabilities can be enough. “Biodefense” — being able to protect humans against ‘enemy’ biology or chemistry, especially of the multiplicative and non-natural kind, has been on my mind for several years. I even discussed the idea of a startup to work on biodefense briefly with some friends at a major venture capital fund when we had dinner together in Panama many years ago. My main issue was that such a startup might actually increase the risk of biodefense situations and especially downside risk for those working there (me! if I did it), so I didn’t take the idea further.

Now we have the COVID-19 virus from Wuhan, China. It’s worth using the conditional probability concept to consider where the virus came from, in conjunction with another thinking tool, “Occam’s Razor”. We usually think of Occam’s Razor as meaning that “the simplest solution is most likely the right one”. Rather interestingly the actual principle is: “entities should not be multiplied without necessity”. Perhaps we can think of a virus entity that need not be multiplied.

We can consider the conditional probability that given that a pandemic comes out of China, what is the probability that it would come out of Wuhan, home of China’s only known biosafety level 4 facility. There are several other givens we can mix into our analyses of probabilities to later do an analysis
of what is the probability that this virus was human-engineered or human-bred. Additional sample givens could include proximity of the Wuhan lab to the live animal market (if that market really was any factor) and known instances of lab workers selling lab animals to such markets instead of destroying them, reaction and behavior patterns of authority figures and government process to the proceedings of the awareness of the initial viral spread, etc. More items can be to compare the important unknown but gradually comparable parameters of the virus to other viruses in the past and consider why it is so different than them. Sample parameters can include the period of non-symptomatic contagion (how long people can be infecting others before they realize they might have it), contagiousness, length of delay til death, reinfection rate, etc.

My goal in this write-up is not to come to a conclusion nor to enumerate all of the possible givens to which we apply conditional probability and Occam’s Razor. It is more to present this form of analysis to the reader, so that they may employ it in their own analysis of this and other questions. In a simplified, brief analysis of this current pandemic without deep research, it does indicate to me a very significant baseline probability that the virus is human-engineered/enhanced or bred.

by Adrian Scott, Ph.D., of SomaCapital.com, profiting from market ups and downs. Please subscribe to this blog to get notifications of new posts, plus follow me on Twitter and Instagram.

Building a startup is like: “Going around a corner that never ends”

The Fintech panel at the KinnerLat conference 2019 in Panama featured Carlos Vega from Tesorio, Felipe Echandi from Cuanto, Raymond Katz from Adelantos, Luis Ruben from Yotepresto and Raquel Garcia from Credicorp.

Roberto Saint-Malo, Carlos Vega, Felipe Echandi, Raymond Katz, Luis Ruben, Raquel Garcia and BIDLab

A few choice quotes from Tesorio CEO Carlos Vega: building a startup early on and trying to find product-market fit is like “going around a corner that never ends”… It’s all about “speed of iterations and experiments”… After you hit product-market fit, “scaling outside of Silicon Valley is so much more cost-effective.”

Don’t forget to try out our amazing new mobile app Zooch! , plus subscribe to this blog to get notifications of new posts, plus follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and get trading on BitMEX, check out crypto and fintech news at Fresherblock, and even schedule a call with me for some advice, etc.

How to moderate the Best Crypto Panel ever; Tips for a highly engaging panel that your audience will love

by Adrian Scott, Ph.D., Founder/CEO of Freedom Stack

Originally posted in Crypto Daily at https://cryptodaily.co.uk/2019/11/moderates-crypto-paneltips-engaging

Hi folks, I am Adrian Scott, founder of Freedom Stack. If you want to become a profitable investor or already are one and want to have a handy mobile app to make trades while managing risk, please take a moment and check out our new app, Zooch, at www.zooch.com.

On Friday at the America’s Blockchain Summit, we had a really great panel on the Future of Blockchain and got a lot of feedback from the audience about how they particularly appreciated the dynamics and liveliness of our panel.

I thought I’d share a few details on things that went well, plus some additional ideas I had afterwards, and I hope that this may help other panel moderators and conference organizers.

When a panel goes well, the audience really benefits from the expertise and contrasting perspectives of the different panelists. They also appreciate the energy of the interplay between the panelists, the moderator and the audience, which can make the sessions a lot more interesting than regular conference talks by just one person.

Here are a few tips that worked for us:

– Tip 1: Let the panelists do most of their personal intro’s rather than the moderator and start with that. Have them keep the intro’s brief but with enough content so that the audience understands why the panelists might have great advice and perspective to share.

Photo: Rowan Stone, Horizen, courtesy of America’s Blockchain Summit

– Tip 2: Here’s an idea: for each panel you moderate, try out 2 ways to engage the audience… One thing I did was ask for a show of hands of which people are entrepreneurs or helping build a business or hope to create a business in the future… Hint: that’s almost everybody in many countries… and then I also asked for a show of hands for which people were thinking about or trying to figure out how they might use blockchain in their current or future business… again, that’s going to be a high percentage at a blockchain conference… The neat thing there is not just that people get to do a little physical exercise by raising their hands — they also get to see that they have something in common with the people around them. Now, a question to avoid: “How many people own bitcoin?”, because that’s like asking who’s carrying around $500 today?… A better option could be asking how many people have created a bitcoin wallet or crypto exchange account.

– Tip 3: If you think the audience might not understand what your panelist is talking about, don’t hesitate, jump in, interrupt your panelist and explain what’s going on. For example I jumped in a couple of times during the panel. One time it was to mention what a particular blockchain project was that a panelist was talking about, because I knew that many folks in the audience did not know it. Your panelists are experts and they may forget that not all of the audience will understand the references that they make.

– Tip 4: In preparing the panel, I came up with 4 main topics and shared those with the panelists beforehand, and I think that worked out well.

Photo: Mark Jeffrey, Guardian Circle, courtesy of America’s Blockchain Summit

– Tip 5: Preserve time for audience questions, and also try to set the audience up to actually have some questions — it’s an important metric on the success of the panel, and it’s also a sign that they have been engaged in the experience. The conference organization may have a monitor screen to show you how much time is left in the session. You could clarify with them whether that number includes the time left for audience questions or not.

– Tip 6: During the panel, you can call on particular panelists to answer a question or address a particular topic first, to make sure there is a good balance between time and content amongst the different panelists. Some may speak longer to explain a concept, and different panelists can have different levels of expertise in the points you’re addressing.

Adrian Scott, Freedom Stack / Zooch!, courtesy of America’s Blockchain Summit

– Tip 7: A couple of extra bonus points: How about having a slide that’s on during the panel that includes the social media handles and/or web sites for your panelists and moderator. That gives the audience a way to continue the experience beyond the conference, and also gives the panelists some marketing value. And here’s another thought: You could also prepare an extra slide or two mentioning a chart or trend that could be displayed during the panel for your panelists to address. That will provide some extra visual variety for the audience, adding another dimension to the experience.

I’d like to thank the panelists who joined me on Friday in making the panel a success, Rowan Stone from Horizen, Mark Jeffrey from Guardian Circle and Randy Hilarski from Aesop Social, and thank you to the organizer, David Proenza, his team and the audience at the Americas Blockchain Summit in Panama.

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NN Taleb is talking about Bitcoin for Lebanon as Central Bank replacement

The Bitcoin force is strong in Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He calls Bitcoin the only solution for freedom from rule by central bankers, and said it on national TV in Lebanon.

Don’t forget to try out our amazing new mobile app Zooch! , plus subscribe to this blog to get notifications of new posts, plus follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and get trading on BitMEX, or even schedule a call with me for some advice, etc.

Want to poop in China? Facial recognition if you want toilet paper – I sh*t you not

You may have heard that China has gone gaga over facial recognition technology. It appears in government areas — China now fingerprints and photographs all foreigners entering the country. And it appears in private locations — such as entering business buildings (hello, Alibaba).

But this latest one may take the cake.

In the Hangzhou train station bathroom, visitors need to stand in front of the camera for 3 seconds to get their face scanned in order to receive toilet paper.

I shit you not.

Cameras in bathrooms, not creepy a.f. Visit China, they said…

Glad I spent a lot of time in China in the ’90s…

Don’t forget to try out our amazing new mobile app Zooch! , plus subscribe to this blog to get notifications of new posts, plus follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and get trading on BitMEX, or even schedule a call with me for some advice, etc.

Improv for Business People… Why? The Hat Game

I regularly do “improv” — improvisation. Sometimes we rehearse and practice in a small group, sometimes I perform in public.

What is improv? Well, first of all, it’s not stand-up comedy. In fact, improv doesn’t even need to be comedy or make you laugh, even though a lot of improv scenes are quite funny. You can create an improvised work in any genre, including drama, musical, film noir, opera, etc.

Improv is a group of people creating and simultaneously acting out a story together without a script or plan. That group could just have one person in it also.

There are many great business benefits to it. It’s even said that unicorn Palantir gives out copies of Keith Johnstone’s book Impro to all new employees.

Here are key benefits for business people:

  • Improve your listening skills, something key to sales and teamwork. You need to keep track of the name of the other characters in the scene, references to other characters, what is going on and what is being said. It really helps you up your listening skills.
  • Improve your creativity and ability to shift course quickly — As you improvise a scene you may think it’s going in one direction, and then a teammate adds something new to the story that takes it in a whole new direction, and you have to be able discard your preconceived notions.
  • Improve ability to jump into any situation without fear — you quickly learn that it’s ok to fail or be imperfect, but you also learn techniques on how to succeed and create something from nothing. This can eliminate your fears and embarassment when you have to do something in public, because you can always rely on patterns and learnings from improv.

Here’s a Hat Game sketch we recorded last night, in Spanish. Each player is trying to take the hat off of the other person while still improvising a real scene. The first one to remove the hat ‘wins’ and at that time the scene ends. But what is winning and who really wins… and what happens when you’re improvising a scene while you are scheming to achieve that goal?

Don’t forget to try out our new app Zooch! which will also help you feel flow, plus subscribe to this blog to get notifications of new posts, plus follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and get trading on BitMEX, or even schedule a call with me for some advice, etc. Oh, and where did I learn improv? I learned it from instructors at BATS Improv in San Francisco, California, including in courses they taught that I took at American Conservatory Theatre.

Hat Game Improv
Hat Game Improv