In plaats van hype, moeten we het weer hebben over de grootste én meest universele toepassing van crypto: snel, eerlijk en toegankelijk geld voor iedereen.

In de wereld van crypto draait tegenwoordig alles om NFT’s, memecoins en complexe DeFi-constructies. Er wordt gespeculeerd, gegokt, gehoopt. Maar te weinig wordt nog gesproken over waar crypto ooit voor bedoeld was: een alternatief financieel systeem. En het belangrijkste onderdeel daarvan? Betalingen.

Betalingen zijn geen niche. Ze zijn overal.

Elke dag worden er miljarden betalingen gedaan. Door mensen uit alle lagen van de bevolking, in elk land ter wereld. Of het nu gaat om boodschappen doen, huur betalen, geld sturen naar familie in het buitenland, of een biertje halen op het terras. Iedereen doet het, vaak meerdere keren per dag.

Volgens het European Central Bank Annual Report 2024 blijft het gebruik van digitale betalingen sterk groeien, met meer dan 114 miljard elektronische betalingen in de eurozone alleen al. Wereldwijd werden er volgens Capgemini’s World Payments Report 2025 in 2024 ongeveer 1.6 biljoen non-cash transacties geregistreerd, met een verwachte jaarlijkse groei van meer dan 15%. De verschuiving naar digitale betalingen wordt versneld door technologische innovatie, bredere internettoegang en veranderend consumentengedrag. Dat zijn miljarden transacties per dag. Dit toont aan dat digitale betalingen niet alleen overal plaatsvinden, maar ook essentieel voor het functioneren van onze economie.

Toch is de focus binnen crypto volledig verschoven naar zeldzame JPEGs, tokens met hondennamen en stakingmechanismes die bijna niemand echt begrijpt. Dat zijn misschien leuke experimenten, maar ze lossen geen fundamentele problemen op.

De échte uitdaging is nog steeds niet opgelost

Terwijl de aandacht uitgaat naar de volgende hype, blijven 1,4 miljard volwassenen wereldwijd zonder toegang tot een bank. Tegelijkertijd groeit het aantal mensen met toegang tot internet en een smartphone.

Crypto zou deze mensen moeten helpen. Het zou hen een manier moeten bieden om mee te doen in de digitale economie. Zonder bank, zonder toestemming van een derde partij. Gewoon: geld dat werkt.

Betalingen zijn méér dan alleen “geld versturen”

De term ‘betalingen’ klinkt misschien saai, maar raakt talloze sectoren:

• Remittances — Geld overmaken naar familie in het buitenland, vaak tegen hoge kosten
• Micropayments — Kleine betalingen voor online content, podcasts of artikelen die met traditionele systemen niet rendabel zijn
• Gaming — Snelle, goedkope transacties voor in-game aankopen of beloningen
• E-commerce & B2B — Snel afrekenen zonder tussenpartijen of wachttijden
• In-persoon P2P — In cash-georiënteerde economieën waar mobiele crypto betalingen gebruikt kunnen worden voor directe transacties tussen mensen, zonder tussenpartijen

Deze toepassingen zijn niet speculatief. Ze zijn praktisch. En miljoenen mensen hebben er dagelijks mee te maken.

Zelfs Bitcoin begon als digitaal geld

Het idee waarmee Bitcoin ooit werd gelanceerd is eenvoudig en krachtig:

“Een peer-to-peer versie van elektronisch contant geld.”

Een vorm van geld die je direct van de een naar de ander kunt sturen, zonder bank of tussenpartij.

Toch heeft ook de Bitcoin-gemeenschap deze missie grotendeels losgelaten. Bitcoin wordt nu vooral gezien als ‘digitaal goud’, een waardeopslag, geen betaalmiddel. Hoewel Bitcoin de eerste en de grootste cryptocurrency is, bleek het toch als betaalmiddel minder geschikt. Het netwerk kost veel geld om te onderhouden, en dat geld moet ergens vandaan komen. Dit gebeurt via inflatie (er komt steeds meer Bitcoin in omloop) en transactiekosten. Naarmate meer mensen Bitcoin gebruiken, stijgen transactiekosten en wachttijden. Hierdoor is het niet schaalbaar voor dagelijks gebruik. Vandaar dat men Bitcoin tegenwoordig meer als digitaal goud ziet.

Prima, maar daarmee laat het de oorspronkelijke belofte liggen: dagelijks digitaal geld, voor iedereen.

En veel andere crypto’s volgen dezelfde weg: staking, yield farming, of complexe DeFi-producten die weinig met geld en betalingen te maken hebben.

Maar wat is er wél gebouwd voor betalingen?

Een handvol crypto-projecten richt zich nog steeds op de oorspronkelijke missie. Een kleine vergelijking:

Bitcoin

• Voordeel: Eerste op de markt, meest bekend
• Nadeel: Trage settlement, hoge fees, niet schaalbaar

Bitcoin Cash

• Voordeel: Lagere fees, zelfde ethos als BTC, meer schaalbaar
• Nadeel: Minder veilig, centralisatie-risico

Dash

• Voordeel: Gericht op snelheid, privacy
• Nadeel: Centralisatie-risico, afnemend momentum

Nano

• Voordeel: Instant, geen transactiekosten, energiezuinig, schaalbaar
• Nadeel: Weinig marketing, nog onbekend bij het grote publiek

Nano is een voorbeeld van een netwerk dat zich volledig richt op betalingen. Het is snel, kosteloos in gebruik en energiezuinig — eigenschappen die juist bij digitale betalingen van groot belang zijn. Geen transactiekosten betekent dat ook micropayments of remittances met lage bedragen wél rendabel worden. En door de hoge efficiëntie van het netwerk is het eenvoudig te gebruiken, ook zonder zware infrastructuur.

De bekendheid is nog beperkt, maar dat neemt niet weg dat het vandaag al laat zien dat crypto-betalingen zonder frictie technisch én praktisch mogelijk zijn. De vraag is niet of het kan, maar wanneer we dit soort oplossingen serieuzer gaan nemen.

Waarom het verhaal rond betalingen is verdwenen

In de beginjaren ging crypto over vrijheid. Over toegang. Over het bouwen van een alternatief financieel systeem. Maar gaandeweg kwamen er grote belangen bij kijken zoals externe investeerders, speculatie en marketing.

En dus verschoof de aandacht. Van “bank the unbanked” naar “wat is de floor price?”

Toch blijft de behoefte bestaan. Vooral nu de wereld steeds meer digitaal wordt, de toegang tot internet en smartphones blijft stijgen, globalisering toeneemt en traditionele betalingssystemen verouderen.

Crypto als geld maakt een comeback

De hype komt en gaat. Maar de behoefte aan betere betalingen blijft. Daar zit de echte waarde. De currency in cryptocurrency zal terugkomen in de spotlight.

We hebben geld nodig dat:

• Snel is
• Eerlijk is
• Wereldwijd werkt
• Gedecentraliseerd is
• Voor iedereen toegankelijk is

Dat is nog steeds de grootste, meest urgente en meest impactvolle use case die crypto te bieden heeft. Als we willen dat crypto écht relevant wordt voor de wereld, dan moeten we terug naar de kern: hoe maken we geld beter?

Misschien is het tijd dat we stoppen met wachten op de volgende hype, en ons richten op wat nu al nodig is: eerlijk, snel en universeel digitaal geld.

Welke rol speelt crypto daarin volgens jou?

Gaming Needs a Better Currency – Here’s Why It’s Nano

Gaming has evolved from a niche pastime into a dominant force in the entertainment industry. In 2024, the global gaming market was valued at approximately $187.7 billion, with projections indicating growth to $213.3 billion by 2027. Mobile gaming plays a significant role, accounting for nearly half of the industry’s revenue.

In-game purchases, such as cosmetic items, constitute a substantial portion of this revenue. For instance, mobile games like Honor of Kings generated $2.6 billion in 2024 alone.

Games can go viral in days, sometimes even hours, thanks to streaming platforms and social sharing, with titles like Among Us and Wordle becoming global phenomena virtually overnight.

A Glimpse into Gaming’s Financial Powerhouse

To understand the immense financial scale of the gaming industry, consider Fortnite, a free-to-play game that has revolutionized the market. In 2023, Fortnite generated approximately $3.5 billion in revenue, accounting for about 80% of Epic Games’ total revenue. This staggering figure underscores the lucrative nature of in-game purchases and the economic potential within the gaming sector.

The Need for a Better In-Game Currency

Despite the industry’s growth, the financial infrastructure within games remains outdated:

• High Fees: Traditional payment processors and app stores often take significant cuts.
• Centralization: In-game currencies are typically confined to individual games and can’t be transferred or withdrawn.
• Legal Complexities: Holding user funds introduces regulatory challenges for developers.

Traditional finance infrastructure is made for a different time, when digital wasn’t the standard and the need for global payments by consumers was not as high. But times have changed, and so has money.

Nano offers a solution that fits perfectly with the gaming ecosystem:

• Fee-Free Transactions: Enables microtransactions without additional costs.
• Instant Transfers: Ensures seamless in-game purchases and rewards.
• Global Accessibility: Allows players worldwide to participate without currency conversion issues.
• Self-custody: Removes the need for developers to manage user funds, reducing legal risks.
• Easy Integration: Lightweight APIs facilitate straightforward implementation into games.

These benefits are absolutely necessary, not only to improve user experience, but also to make payments in the gaming industry thrive and create new and creative opportunities for game developers. Nano makes payments in gaming frictionless for everyone, everywhere.

Bridging the Gap: Nano’s Role in Gaming

Think about Fortnite’s $3.5 billion revenue. In contrast, as of early 2025, Nano’s market capitalization stands at around $130 million. This comparison highlights a significant disparity: a single game’s annual revenue vastly exceeds the total market value of a cryptocurrency designed for fast, feeless transactions.

This disparity isn’t a limitation but an opportunity. The gaming industry’s vast revenue streams, primarily from microtransactions, are hindered by traditional payment systems that impose fees and delays. Nano’s unique features, instantaneous transactions, zero fees, and scalability, make it an ideal candidate to streamline in-game economies.

By integrating Nano, game developers can:

• Reduce Transaction Costs: Eliminate fees associated with traditional payment processors.
• Enhance User Experience: Provide players with instant transaction confirmations.
• Expand Global Reach: Facilitate seamless cross-border transactions without currency conversion hassles.
• Incentivise engagement: Reward users for participating in the game and performing certain actions.

Empowering Players Through Real Rewards

Nano doesn’t just address existing problems. It opens entirely new possibilities. Developers can reward players with real, transferable value for in-game achievements, enhancing engagement and loyalty. Unlike traditional in-game currencies, Nano provides tangible benefits that extend beyond the game itself.

Case Study: Nanogotchi’s Innovative Approach

At Nanogotchi, we’re pioneering the integration of Nano into gaming:

• Players earn Nano through gameplay, from leveling up to participating in weekly raffles that reward engagement.
• The game features real-time Nano transactions, allowing for instant gifting, donations and purchases.
• By utilizing Nano, we eliminate the need for a proprietary in-game currency, simplifying the economic model and enhancing transparency.
• Players can instantly purchase in-game items, from anywhere in the world, without needing to buy credits, and without us requiring to be custodians.
• Direct donations to charities can be implemented in-game. We have done this with Wolfdog Rescue Charity. Each donation lets players plant virtual trees or flowers in the Nanogotchi charity garden, symbolizing their real-world impact. More on charities and donations with nano in gaming will be discussed in a future article.

Do Yourself a Favor. Try nano.

Gaming is not just entertainment. It’s a cultural and economic powerhouse. By adopting Nano, the industry can overcome existing financial limitations, offering players and developers a more efficient, inclusive, and rewarding experience. By removing barriers and borders in payments, it can also remove barriers and borders in gaming.

It’s time for gaming to embrace a currency that matches its innovation and reach.

I encourage all innovative developers, builders, and creators to explore integrating Nano into their games.

It offers a frictionless experience for both you and your players – no fees, no middlemen, and instant transactions.

You can easily try out nano yourself by installing a wallet and getting some free nano from a nano faucet such as nanodrop.io.

If you’re curious about how to get started with Nano, want to see how we’ve done it with Nanogotchi, or just have questions, feel free to reach out. I’m happy to help.

I have a study debt of around €40,000…

Should I welcome and embrace inflation?

That might sounds silly, but let’s be fair. As long as the interest I have to pay on my study loan stays under the current inflation rate, what’s really the incentive to start paying it off?

It’s a question that I ask myself, and I’m sure many other former-students do too. Of course there are some incentives — maybe I want to get a mortgage. Or maybe I just don’t like that feeling of having a study debt of which the interest can be increased so suddenly.

Either way, it’s quite unpredictable for me. I don’t decide the inflation rate. It can go up or down at any time.

Why a government in debt loves inflation

But let’s change the perspective a bit. What if I had the ability to decide the inflation rate? If I had the power to half the value of my debt in 10 years just by increasing inflation?

Of course inflation is horrible if you have a lot of money in your bank account. But when you have a debt, inflation actually comes in handy. The bigger your debt, the more inflation serves you.

I started thinking about this recently after a tweet by Madelon Vos ✔️ , who quote tweeted Tuur Demeester. In this snippet of the film ‘Finding the Money’, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors in the US, Jared Bernstein, was not able to answer a very simple question.

Tuur Demeester on Twitter: ""I think it's very important in replies to [economist central planners] that we don't get involved in technical details but ask them questions almost like a child." - Hans-Hermann Hoppe, 2012 pic.twitter.com/EYTD1EclVO / Twitter"

"I think it's very important in replies to [economist central planners] that we don't get involved in technical details but ask them questions almost like a child." - Hans-Hermann Hoppe, 2012 pic.twitter.com/EYTD1EclVO

The question: Why does the US government borrow money if they can just print more money?

Well — they cleverly do both!

As said, the bigger the debt, the more inflation serves you. My student debt in dollars is around $43,000. But now imagine if the debt is $34,000,000,000,000. 34 trillion dollars, this is around the size of the US governments debt. That’s quite a bit more than my student loan!

Of course interest needs to be paid on that debt. Now imagine I can just print more money, increase inflation and thereby easily lower the value of my debt over the years? As long as I push inflation higher than the interest on my $34T loan, I’m effectively benefiting from inflation! No need to pay it off anytime soon.

Money printing is a quick and easy way to lower debt that can be executed in the short term. So effective!

You can now see how the a government with a large debt is incentivised to print more money and increase inflation. Of course, this is directly opposed to the interests of average citizens.

The Impact of Inflation on Average Citizens

High inflation can cause significant problems for the average person.

• The disparity between wages and prices for goods and services. Because money printing devalues a currency, it causes goods and services to skyrocket in prices. Meanwhile, wages are often left behind. This is something many of us have started to notice in recent years.
• As the currency devalues, so do your savings. Fiat (money) savings get devalued over time. Where $3000 might have been someone’s life savings back in the 1940’s, it barely covers 1 month of living for people nowadays. Had your great grandfather saved up for years and hid all the money for you to find decades later, it wouldn’t be of that much help now.
• All this inflation causes increasing speculation. It makes people guess, speculate on investments as their fiat savings devalue over time. This causes certain goods or services that are more speculative overpriced, thereby pricing many average people out of scarce necessities. One perfect example, real estate. Buying real estate has become unattainable for many of those that actually need it.

Historical Examples of Inflation and Currency Collapse

No. In fact, increasing debt, paying the interest and devaluing the debt (and thereby the currency as a whole) through money printing is a common practice in almost every country. It has caused the collapse of world powers throughout history.

It could be argued that the country that has the power over the world reserve currency is one of the most powerful countries on Earth. Inflation through high debt and excessive money printing has played a major roll in the dropping value of these world reserve currencies, and the fall of these empires, in the past. For instance the Spanish dollar in the 16th and 17th century, the French Franc, and the British pound in the 20th century. Even the German Mark after the first World War suffered extreme hyperinflation through money printing.

Even the Dutch Guilder, once a world reserve currency, partially collapsed due to high debts of the Dutch Empire and excessive money printing.

This type of hyperinflation still happens today. Zimbabwe and Venezuela are some recent examples of this.

Of course, these increasing debts and the money printing that comes along with it go hand in hand with certain issues, such as political unrest and economic instability. Money printing is a problem, disguised as a solution.

Ray Dalio has written a great book diving deeper into this topic. Definitely worth a read! Or, if you’re more of a visual learning person, this is a great video summarising this repeating pattern of inflation.

How can we prevent excessive money printing to get out of debts? A whole different approach is needed.

Potential Solutions: Decentralized Digital Assets

One effective way to remove the problem of money printing, and change the approach when it comes to government debt and spending, is by taking away the ability to print money all together. It’s clear that money printing requires a level of responsibility that governments, or people in general, do not possess. This is because money printing is in their own interests, but not in the interest of others.

Given the historical examples of currency collapse and the current global trend of increasing government debt, it’s clear that a new approach is needed to ensure long-term economic stability. One potential solution that has emerged in recent years is the concept of decentralized digital assets.

How does this solve the problem?

In short, by taking away the ability to print more money.

Without going into too much detail, decentralised digital assets can have a limited supply. Using a transparent and immutable record of transactions, and decentralisation with consensus mechanims preventing any one party to change the record, no one party can increase the money supply. It removes the ability to print new money. Multiple participants in the network need to agree on the validity of transactions and the creation of new units of the currency. By removing the ability for any one party to unilaterally increase the money supply, decentralized digital assets can help prevent the excessive money printing that often leads to inflation and economic instability.

A limited supply side of the currency predictable and stable. Because this is desirable, it also increases the demand for a currency like this. Another side effect is that removing the ability to print more money allows us to force a different approach at solving problems. The easy way out is no longer an option.

Ensuring Economic Growth without Money Printing

How can growth continue without borrowing money and immediately devaluing the debt by money printing?

Perhaps limiting the governments borrowing of money and removing the option to print a larger money supply could slow down growth. But it’s important to remember that using borrowing and printing as a way to ensure economic growth requires an exponentially increasing money supply — and also exponential inflation.

The solution is less simple, longer term, but much more effective and positive for the average person — investing in solutions that are efficient, increase productivity and output, and that ensure long term economic sustainability. We now have the technology to end repeat the cycle of economic collapse. Let’s start using it.

Conclusion

We’ve looked at how governments benefit from high inflation as it can reduce the value of their debts and help pay off the interest. We’ve also looked at the problems this high inflation poses for the average citizen, increasing speculation and the prices of many goods and services. As we’ve seen throughout history and even in the present, the money printer is a tool too powerful to wield, even for our governments/central banks.

Luckily, we now have new tools that allow us to break this never ending cycle of economic collapse due to supply increase. Adopting this new technology, decentralised digital assets (cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin), can usher in a new time where economies do not collapse due to hyperinflation from excessive money printing. It is up to us to start adopting and using this new technology, as it has the potential to create a more stable and equitable economic future for everyone.

I’ve been involved in the cryptocurrency industry since 2017. Almost 7 whole years now!

In those 7 years, many things have happened in this industry. A lot of them ruined its reputation. The first things you think of when you hear ‘cryptocurrency’ is probably something along the lines of: scams, hacks, bad actors, and exchanges collapsing…

You might think: Why stick around for more than just making a quick buck, day trading a bit, or investing in Bitcoin and ignoring the rest? Why even be interested in the crypto industry? What does it have to offer? Isn’t it all just a big scam, or a get-rich-quick scheme?

Why are you still so actively engaged in the cryptocurrency space after 7 years, why in the hell would you want to make a career in the cryptocurrency space?!

Each person involved in the crypto space probably has their own reasons for sticking around. With a majority of them, the reason might simply be ‘money’.

This also shows a clear reality in this industry, showing the two different people in the space:

• Those that are here to make money (profit)
• Those that are here to actually MAKE money (CREATE a new currency).

What happened to change my perspective on crypto from looking to make a quick buck, to diving deeper into the societal impact it can have?

Why am I still involved in the crypto space after all these years, and why am I steering my career in this direction?

To make you understand better, I will tell you exactly why. Read on and I promise, by the end of the article your entire perspective on cryptocurrency will be changed, as it has for me.

The purpose of cryptocurrency

First of all — the purpose of cryptocurrency is not to make you money. I do not actively trade in crypto, and I would say I do not invest in crypto (although a majority of my savings is in crypto). This is however the view that people currently have of crypto — gambling on memecoins, buying a random coin to sell it after making 10x gains, while the majority will hold on too long or step in too late and lose 90% of their ‘investment’.

The (original) purpose of cryptocurrency is NOT to make you money — it is to BE money. But not just any kind of money. The original goal of cryptocurrency is to solve some of the problems with traditional money as we know it. Depending on who you are, where you are, and how you use money, you will have encountered some or all of these issues:

• International transfers can be costly and take a long time.
• Money loses its value over time due to central banks printing more money over time.
• It’s not possible to hold your money digitally, or transact digitally, without needing a third party (a bank).
• These third parties can block your transactions or freeze your bank account.
• Depending on where you are and who you are, access to digital money (bank account) can just be completely denied.

Especially that last point is something I find compelling. Did you know that there are around 1.4 BILLION people around the globe that do not have access to banking? That’s 1.4 billion people excluded from participating in the digital economy.

A frictionless, digital currency that lowers barriers and removes borders can provide many of these ‘unbanked’ people with access to the global economy.

How does cryptocurrency solve this?

Cryptocurrency aims to solve these problems. Some characteristics of cryptocurrency, and how it solves these issues are:

• The supply can’t be increased by 1 party such as a central bank or government
• Everyone can use it, you do not need to register anywhere and there is no (or very little) barrier to using it
• There are no borders, it can be used worldwide
• Transactions can’t be blocked or reversed
• You own and control your money, digitally. Just like physical cash in your pocket, no need for a bank.

With those characteristics, some amazing possibilities open up. If done right, it allows for frictionless global donations from one part of the world to the other. For instance, imagine handing someone a 5 euro bill digitally. From one hand to the other, without a bank or charity needed in-between.

It allows people to pay, or get paid, from anywhere in the world easily. It makes it so much easier to provide digital goods or services to anyone in the world without borders or barriers.

How crypto has lost its way

One of the challenges that the cryptocurrency space has faced in recent years, and is still facing today, comes down to human greed.

This is not too much of a surprise. Where money is involved, greed enters the stage. The speculative side of crypto has soured its initial goal. Now, most of the space is not focused anymore on unbanking the unbanked, decentralisation, fighting monetary inflation, censorship resistance or self custody. Instead, it has become a simple game of ‘number go up’.

I’ll dive into the biggest challenges of Bitcoin, and why I think it is not future proof in a future article. But in short, as the biggest player in the crypto space, Bitcoin has shown how challenging it is to solve the issues laid out above. With a network that has transaction fees surging up to $30 dollars (around 20% of the average monthly wage in Venezuela), centralising over time, censorship by mining pools and most likely an infinite and exponentially increasing supply in the future, Bitcoin is clearly not the solution we are looking for.

Enter nano

Ideally, we are looking for a currency that has all of the above mentioned characteristics. That’s why I am personally most interested in nano as it is so far, in the past 7 years, the only currency I have encountered that has all of these characteristics!

Obviously, the ability to transfer value instantly, for free, to anyone in the world cross-border, opens up some amazing new possibilities and can provide a lot of opportunity to people that do not have easy access to the banking system.

Additionally, in countries where hyperinflation is threatening people’s livelihoods and savings, a currency that has a limited, fully-circulating supply can prevent devaluation through money printing.

With that said, I want to dive into some amazing examples of ways cryptocurrency has been able to help people around the globe in various ways.

Crypto for good

Let’s take a look at what has already been achieved with global and frictionless money.

There have been numerous amazing fundraising initiatives through cryptocurrency that have helped many people. The Giving Block, for example, helps charities accept crypto donations from anywhere in the world, making it a lot easier to donate to charitable organisations than traditional payments. You can check out some great case studies of how crypto has helped these organisations here.

There are plenty more examples to list, also from cryptocurrency communities. Crypto even played a major role in fundraising for Ukraine at the start of the war for instance.

For this article, however, I want to shine a light on the fundraising initiatives that have been done using nano. I will outline a handful of them here that inspire me, but there are many, many more. I think they show what is possible on a small scale already. Imagine what could be done on an even larger scale!

Feeding 300 people on the streets if Ibadan through nano donations

Last year, the nano movement in Nigeria really started to take off. As a country with a large population, a high internet and mobile presence, and unfortunately high inflation, nano has the potential to reach and help many people here.

Due to the borderless and frictionless nature of nano, and several smaller businesses in Nigeria already accepting nano for payments, one merchant in Nigeria made a generous and bold move. Fundraising nano donations on Twitter, the owner of Diva’s Kitchen (Abiola) was able to feed 300 homeless people on the streets of Ibadan turkey and jollof rice!

Helping Abiola set up this initiative and fundraising nano to feed the people on the streets of Ibadan delicious food was not only a wholesome experience, but it showed how generous and giving the community behind the nano cryptocurrency genuinely is.

Additionally, the ingredients were bought from another business (Yelam Foods) using nano as well, creating a small nano economy!

‘My next project is for school children, it’s called Back To School project. I do it every August, it entails the provision of school bags, books and other educational materials to indigent children to encourage them in their educational pursuit. I do all this every year, I also hold a Christmas party for children as well as street feeding.”

Directly donating to areas using WeNano

Donating to one person is great. So how about donating to a whole area filled with people?

This is exactly what WeNano allows you to do. Using these apps, people can create spots and fill it with the cryptocurrency called nano. Other users that have the app installed can go to this area and claim a small bit of this WeNano donation spot.

This app has already seen lots of success, even being used in the recent Free Money Day, organised by the Post Growth Institute, to give money to people around the globe!

On that day alone, 95 spots were created and 2273 payouts were done, sharing a total of 349 nano.

For a broader picture, using some info from May of last year, 2.464 nano community members voluntarily hosted spots. Their spots have totalled:

* 398.662 transactions

* Ӿ24.327 in payouts

* 10.004 spots are active right now

For that same Free Money Day, a giveaway was hosted on Reddit by community members, all funds raised by the nano community, giving away 300 nano (~$250) to anyone commenting on the thread.

3D printing a house through nano donations and New Story Charity

New Story Charity is an organisation that 3D prints homes for people in areas where they have lost their previous homes due to climate change and environmental disasters. Their amazing work has helped many people in Latin America and strives to impact 1 million people before 2030!

In 2021, New Story decided to use WeNano to fundraise enough nano to 3D print a home in Mexico for a family that have lost their home because of climate change.

That was not the only successful fundraiser with nano and WeNano. A year later, SOS Children Villages was able to raise enough funds for a dairy cow for a family in Georgia and vegetable seeds for 25 families in Uganda!

And yes, also this charitable cause was fully funded!
https://wenano.medium.com/community-update-18-june-2021-aebac0597aab

Orphanage outreach in Lagos

With community ambassadors all over the world, some amazing initiatives can be achieved. Such as the Nigerian ambassador Olapade Samuel, who reached out to support orphanages in Lagos! We wrote an entire article diving into his efforts here:

https://nano.org/en/blog/how-samuel-uses-nano-to-support-orphanages-in-lagos--4adc7f4c

Crowdfunding a laptop for someone in Nigeria

As a more recent example of cryptocurrency crowdfunding, the nano, monero and litecoin communities came together to sponsor a laptop for this Nigerian person, helping him start his journey as an aspiring web developer! Thanks to Vikrant Sharma and the amazing Cake Wallet by Cake Labs for facilitating this fundraising!

Reddit nano giveaways

Reddit users have hosted multiple nano giveaways on social media platform Reddit. Here, anyone on the social media platform that left a comment received a small bit of nano. One of those giveaways ended up sending out more than 5000 nano transactions, with more than 500 nano given away in total. All community funded!

You can find the original giveaway thread here.

Another nano giveaway threads can be found here.

New business models and use cases

Another exciting part of (a good) cryptocurrency is the amazing new things it enables. Let’s take a look at some of the previously mentioned characteristics and what these could enable. Mainly:

A global and uncensorable money without fees and with instant transactions.

If you’ve ever used Bitcoin, this might seem conflicting. This is because Bitcoin transactions not only have high fees (sometimes up to $30 per transaction) but also can take hours to be confirmed.

I’m talking about nano here. Without transaction fees, with instant irreversible transactions and no borders, there’s some amazing new business models and use cases that can be achieved. Things that aren’t possible with traditional payment methods.

FynCom & KarmaCall

One such amazing business models that wasn’t previously possible is that of FynCom, and one of its services called KarmaCall.

FynCom uses nano microtransactions to incentivise customer engagement. Imagine filling in a survey, or responding to an email, and getting paid for doing so!

This concept also works the other way around. Using nano, KarmaCall is able to deter spam callers and emailers!

At the start of FynCom’s journey, Adrian outlined exactly what he wanted from a payment platform:

“It needed to be feeless, sustainable, decentralised and scalable. Lightweight to implement, with real-time settlements and no fees to open new wallets.”

For Adrian and FynCom, there was only one choice:

“The only payment platform that met our needs was nano. Even to this day, that continues to be true.”

You can read more about FynCom and KarmaCall in the article here:

How FynCom uses nano to revolutionise customer engagement - Nano Blog

Nano-GPT

A great example of how nano microtransactions can be used to replace subscription models is Nano-GPT. Nano-GPT is a version of ChatGPT that uses a ‘pay-per-prompt’ system. Instead of paying for a full subscription of ChatGPT for $20 per month, users that use the service less frequently now have access to the pro version without a subscription. Simply pay a little bit of nano for every prompt to the service. It can even be used to generate AI images!

You can try it for yourself here: https://nano-gpt.com/

Perseeve

One of the projects I’m working on myself is Perseeve. Perseeve allows video streaming with real-time micropayments. This way, streamers can get paid for their content by viewers, for each second of content. Viewers only pay for the seconds they watch. That way, the moment you decide the content is not worth your time, you stop paying.

Additionally, Perseeve allows streamers to pay their viewers in micropayments as well. This way, nano can be spread around the world easily to anyone for free, just by watching content.

Give Perseeve a try here: https://web.perseeve.app/

Continued reading

Have I been able to change your mind about cryptocurrency? Or have I even just slightly peaked your interest?

I hope I have! For those that want to learn more about how crypto works, we’ve written a Beginners’ Guide to Cryptocurrency and Nano at the Nano Foundation. Additionally, there’s tons of articles written by the Nano Foundation and people in the nano community on our Nano Blog, that dive deeper into the various topics mentioned in this article too.

Would you like to try out nano for yourself? You can try out nano for free with a small amount here. If you can’t get enough of it, you can always get more at various trading platforms and exchanges. You can even buy nano at Bitvavo if you’re in Europe!

In today’s saturated digital world, the relationship between content creators and viewers has been a delicate dance of value proposition. At Perseeve, we’ve always prioritized bridging this gap, ensuring that quality content finds its deserving audience, and both streamer and viewer get the reward they deserve.

The problem we’re addressing

Why Streamers Struggle

With countless streaming platforms and an abundance of content available, many talented streamers find it challenging to garner the viewership they deserve. Even if the content is exceptional, there’s no guarantee that potential viewers will discover it.

The Viewer’s Hesitation

On the flip side, many viewers are hesitant to commit to a new streamer or to pay for content without a taste of its quality. This dynamic has hindered the organic growth of up-and-coming streamers.

The Solution: Faucet Streaming

Faucet Streaming isn’t just a feature; it’s a revolutionary concept. Instead of waiting for viewers to find and reward them, streamers can now take the initiative. By compensating viewers for their time, streamers create an attractive incentive for potential fans to give their content a chance.

How It Works

Streamers Set Their Faucet: Decide how much they’re willing to pay in total per second and enable the ‘Faucet Stream’ option.

Viewers Browse & Engage: Viewers can explore a unique section of streams where they’re rewarded for watching.

Receiving rewards: Rewards are split between all the viewers. This means that depending on the amount of people watching the stream at any given moment, the nano rewards per viewer changes. Rewards are in nano because this cryptocurrency allows micro-transactions (can be divided up to 30 decimals!), does not have any transaction fees, is instant, and global.

Feedback Loop: To further enhance the experience, viewers can provide feedback, helping streamers refine their content.

We are planning to continue building out this reward feature to allow viewers to increase their rewards depending on the amount of engagement with the content and the streamer.

The Game-Changing Benefits:

For Streamers

Enhanced Visibility: Stand out in a crowded market and reach an audience that’s incentivized to engage.

Feedback & Growth: Benefit from direct viewer feedback to continuously improve.

Build a Loyal Fanbase: Convert incentivized viewers into long-term fans.

For Viewers

Discover New Content: Find new streamers without any initial commitment.

Get Rewarded with Nano: Feel valued for the time and feedback provided.

A Curated Experience: With streamers putting their best foot forward, expect high-quality content!

Conclusion

With Faucet Streaming, Perseeve is redefining the streaming landscape. We’re not just adding a feature; we’re shifting paradigms, creating a win-win for content creators and viewers alike.

We invite both streamers and viewers to experience this innovation firsthand. Let’s build a more connected, rewarding, and engaging content ecosystem together!

Introduction

Donations are a powerful way for a non-profit organization to raise funds. But borders are an issue when it comes to digital payments, and therefore, donations. Especially for non-profit organizations looking to accept donations from people worldwide. The process to donate should be as frictionless as possible. Making it easier for people to donate and reducing the transaction cost of donations should be a focus.

In this article, we will be taking a look at nano- one of the most powerful free tools you can use to accept donations from anywhere in the world, by anyone, globally, without any fees. On top of that, it has a negligible carbon footprint, adding to your green credentials as an organization! Something every non-profit organization should know about and use in my opinion. Let’s dive in.

The problem

There are fees associated with international transfers, they can take a lot of time and it can be difficult for some non-profits to implement worldwide donations. Having to exchange between currencies can make this even more difficult. The traditional systems have too much friction. It can also be highly difficult or even impossible for some people to donate using traditional banking. There should be no friction at all. Making it as easy as possible for anyone in the world, wherever they are from, to donate to any cause they support is crucial. Making the donating experience easier, cheaper and global would result in saving costs and more donations as a whole.

Global currencies

Currencies that can be used globally might offer a solution. Cryptocurrency, for example, allows people to transact globally without even needing a bank account to send and receive funds. However, some cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin come with high fees and, maybe even worse, a lot of concern about the sustainability and carbon footprint associated with those transactions. Associating yourself with an inefficient currency like Bitcoin is media suicide nowadays for non-profit organizations. Accepting Bitcoin is effectively saying bye to any green credentials you have as an organization.

What we need is a way to donate to any cause, from anywhere in the world, with very little to no friction and that contributes to the green credentials of an organization.

Introducing nano

Nano is a global digital currency designed to be as efficient as possible. It allows anyone in the world to transact globally, without any fees and with instant settlements. It is effectively a free tool created by a non-profit organization that allows anyone to transact anywhere, at no cost. Creating a nano account requires no personal information and is completely free, making it accessible to anyone in the world. Even to those without a registered address, passport or identity card.

“The world is dying for, and in need of, a bit of love and a bit of sharing and a bit of humanity and not looking for oneself consistently.” — George Coxon, Director of the Nano Foundation

It is also sustainable. Nano is often cited as the greenest, most eco-friendly currency, only using 0.000112KWH of energy per transaction (compared to Bitcoin’s 1500KWH per transaction!) because it does not use mining to secure the network. It uses a different method, called Open Representative Voting, which is very efficient and actually decentralizes over time.

Using nano actually adds to your green credentials, instead of taking them away. It allows people to easily donate to your cause, from anywhere in the world, at 0 cost!

The Nano Foundation is a not-for-profit organization and alongside other institutions, businesses and advocates, encourages the growth and usability of a secure and decentralized payment network. This has attracted a lot of goodhearted people to create a large and giving community. A community that knows nano is about inclusivity, equality and sharing with more than 150k followers on Twitter and 120k followers on Reddit.

The use of nano is free. It is an open source currency that can be used by anyone.

WeNano

A great example to see the power of nano for donations is an app called WeNano. WeNano allows anyone to make spots on a world map and fill this spot with nano. By using geolocation, other users can then physically go to this spot and claim a small amount of the nano in this spot. This is a great way to donate to people in a specific region, and all they need is a phone with internet connection!

The creator of a spot can set the radius so it’s easier or more difficult for people to claim a payout. A spot can be as small as 10 meters in radius, or cover a whole city!

Other users can then also donate to this spot, or create a spot of their own. Definitely worth a try!

Charity spots

Additionally, WeNano allows non-profit organizations to create a charity spot, making it easy for any users of WeNano to donate to a charity. A great example of a charity using this feature is New Story charity. New Story 3D prints houses for people all around the world that have been struck by environmental disaster. Using WeNano, New Story raised 952 nano, enough to 3D print an entire house in Mexico!

Another great example is SOS Children Villages that used WeNano to raise funds. They were able to raise more than 250 nano to buy cows for families in Georgia and vegetable seeds for 25 families in Uganda!

As a non-profit organization, the ability to raise funds using nano and WeNano is definitely worth exploring if you’re having difficulty accepting worldwide donations or want to find a way to lower the cost of accepting donations.

Microdonations

Nano also allows for smaller amounts to be donated. Just like microtransactions, there’s a powerful potential in microdonations. As a non-profit, the ability to reward users for very small donations is an interesting option to explore. For instance, making certain content available for a small amount of nano can actually add up to a substantial amount if you have enough following as an organization.

Off-ramping

Getting donations in nano is a powerful way to receive donations worldwide. However, as an organization you might want to exchange nano for a fiat currency at some point. There are many different options available all around the world to exchange nano to fiat currencies like the Euro, United States Dollar, Naira or Colombian Pesos. To find out which exchange can convert nano to your currency, you can take a look at the Nano Hub.

Another great way to implement nano donations on your website is NOWPayments. NOWPayments allows you to receive donations in nano and instantly have them converted to a fiat currency. This method does carry some minor fees, however, it is a lot easier.

Conclusion

Nano is a decentralized currency that allows organizations to accept donations from anywhere in the world at no cost. There are several ways to accept nano and you can exchange nano for other currencies using exchanges or a service like NOWPayments.

You can contact the Nano Foundation or the WeNano team for more information or if any help is needed integrating nano donations in your organization. Feel free to contact me as well at forest@nano.org for any questions, help or advice!

Visit nano.org for more information.
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Accept Worldwide Donations For Free With Nano | The Donation Tool EVERY Non-Profit Organization… was originally published in Nano on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Introduction

Since our last Digest at the start of April, a lot has happened in a short space of time and so we felt it prevalent to share a digestible summary of all the goings on, whether that is the brand new Nigeria Growth blog, nano transactions in UK Parliament or indeed the DDoS attacks that have unfortunately been actioned against nano nodes over the last 5 weeks.

As with any attack on a company, network or in our case, nodes within our network, teams are pushed to their maximum in regards to triage, solutions and communication. Our small team is no different, and while this attack has pressured our team to change course on our development plan, we wanted to highlight how incredible grateful we are to those that have helped and supported the Nano Foundation during these trying times, whether that is through community-development helping analyse, triage and test solutions or those in the community that have curtailed social media smear campaigns, power plays and fielded questions from the wider community — we thank you all, we couldn’t do this without you.

Development

What has happened?
Starting in mid April, a sequence of DDoS attacks exploiting node behaviour were executed on the live nano network. Operators could see high disk usage, high disk IO, crashes from out of memory, and stalled transaction confirmation

There are 5 different attack vectors currently being used:

• A leak in message handling which can cause out of memory errors.
• Unchecked table filling which is causing high usage and IO in the unchecked table
• Vote request stalling where under high vote load a node won’t request transaction confirmation
• A database corruption in the RocksDB backend
• A man-in-the-middle attack between nodes due to an exploit in the handshake process

As with last year’s similarly executed attack directly before a full release, we have V24 in the pre-production stage which was aimed to address flow-control among other issues. Due to this recent attack, patches (V23.1/V23.2) in the interim have been created to address the listed attack vectors above and help get Principal Representatives back contributing effectively toward consensus again. Full statement from the Nano Foundation can be found here >

The largest of the attacks was designed to fill disk and CPU resources with garbage data and was effective at stalling the network intermittently causing transactions to be delayed by hours or days. The attack also caused a support load as services needed assistance with how to remedy their node setup.

What are the solutions in play?
Having released the emergency patch of V23.1 on May 19th that mitigated the following attack vectors:

• A check was added when inserting into the unchecked table which limits several low-cost paths used to fill the table.
• Functionality was added which allows operators to use a consistent node id. With a consistent node id, telemetry aggregators can filter forged telemetry data.
• The node will disconnect and properly clean up some sequences of messages that can cause out of memory conditions.
• An unneeded flush was removed in the vote request process which can block for a potentially long period of time under heavy vote load.
• The node’s vote cache has been disabled by default as the current implementation is causing excessive vote traffic

Currently the Nano Foundation team is in the process of building a V23.3 release having had an internal V23.2 patch which we felt could be further improved upon. This V23.3 release will be shared with all nano node operators, exchanges and services in the next day or so. This patch contains the following improvements over the previous public V23.1 and V23.2 hotpatches:

• Adding an in-memory implementation of the unchecked table. The attacks over the last month have largely been a DDoS attack that targeted disk writes in this section of the node. This release contains a memory-only implementation of this table which will alleviate a major bottleneck in this area.
• Re-enabling of vote hinting. This was disabled in v23.1 as the attacker was exploiting behaviour which caused vote message amplification and early cancellation of transaction confirmation. The vote hinting parameters have been re-tuned

What are the network effects upon upgrade:

• This upgrade does not require any manual intervention aside from the node update.
• No APIs have changed in this release
• Users should see a decrease in disk writes from the node due to the in-memory unchecked table.
• The vote request thread should no longer pause for long periods of time during operation.

Upcoming V24 Full Release
With V24 having been in pre-production before the attacks began, we now look forward to implementing some of the flow-control measures we have been designing and implementing over the last year. We also look forward to a new approach to node bootstrapping with the design goals being reliability, simplicity, reduced resource usage, speed.

It is worth reminding everyone that committing a DDoS attack with extortion are multiple criminal offences and hiding behind VPNs is not fool-proof when the authorities are involved. We take this type of activity on the nano network incredibly seriously and are obligated to report attacks to relevant law enforcement.

NF Growing and Internal Restructuring

We have had a lot of team changes over the last few months, we also say goodbye to some long-standing team members and concurrently welcome some that are new, bringing fresh energy and perspectives to the team!

We said goodbye to the part-time Russel Waters back in April as his full-time work began to take priority. Russel led our Dev-Ops having joined the team back in January 2018 as one of our first members! Thank you Russel for your long-standing contributions to nano and we wish you the best moving forward.

In addition to Russel, we have unfortunately also had to say a goodbye to Kate, our Comms Lead, due to the imposed sanctions against Russia and the on-going war. We are pleased to say that Kate has started a new job within the cryptocurrency space that has re-location capabilities which we are so happy to hear and hope to re-engage in the near future.

And last but not least, we now say a very fond farewell to Zach Hyatt who has been with the team for over 3.5 yrs as our Dev Project Manager and now moves on to his exciting next chapter outside of the cryptocurrency space. Zach has been an incredible part of the maturing of nano over the last few years, driving forward new documentation, release processes, infrastructure and so much more. Please join us in wishing Zach a wonderful new beginning outside of crypto and thank you for everything over the years.

However, it is not all goodbyes here, we have some exciting announcements to make!

We welcome Piotr Wójcik to the team as a full time developer having been instrumental in our working through of the aforementioned attacks and in particular vote traffic. Piotr joins us until October and hopefully subsequent university term breaks gaining experience within a team and fast-paced development team.

Dimitrios has taken onboard a summer intern, Patryk Prejs, here in London who is going into his 3rd year studying Computer science and AI at Sussex University and is keen to learn the ropes of development. Patryk also interned last summer when he started xnolib, a collection of python scripts for exploring and debugging the Nano network. This year he is working on improving and developing xnolib further.

We welcomed Ben Baldieri to the team last month taking the role of Media & PR however due to an unexpected conflict of interest restricting Ben’s planned role within the Nano Foundation, Ben will be pivoting to Podcast Host! Still within the early planning stages, Ben will be showcasing real-world nano use cases through team member interviews, speaking with prominent community members, project owners within the nano ecosystem and so much more, all within 20–30 min bitesize pieces. ‘Podcast with a Purpose’ is the working title however please comment your naming ideas below!

Piotr is not our only new addition, we are overjoyed to announce that Forest Horsman has joined NF as Social Media Lead having shone as our Dutch Ambassador over the past year. Forest, since joining NF a month ago, has been working on a new social media structure and strategy hoping to invigorate growth on our platforms while bridging the gap between the community and the Nano Foundation with the aim of furthering communication and collaboration. Please give Forest a big welcome to the team!

It is not just the internal team that is growing, we met a wonderful new potential low-level C++ developer earlier this week whom we are engaging and keep reading to hear all about the new Nano Global Student Society and brand new cohort of Ambassadors to the community!

Growth Blog Series

Last month we published Introducing our growth blog series & Focus market Nigeria. This blog series will bring you along in our efforts to drive awareness and adoption for nano. In the months to come we will continue to update on our progress in Nigeria, deep-dive into a handful of other countries and elaborate about how we would like to drive awareness and adoption through Nano.org, blog and social channels. We are also working on identifying where we need help. Knowing that our community is full of enthusiastic and talented people, we will appeal for a helping hand when necessary. Community contribution is one of the most powerful aspects of nano and we want to use that as much as possible.

Media & Events

UEL Paper Wallet Re-design Competition

On the 25th of April, George and Colin spent an afternoon with MBA students of the Royal Docks School of Business and Law at the University of East London! They gave a presentation about nano, had the students install Natrium wallet and try out WeNano, after which the talented students re-designed a paper wallet for the UEL Centre of Fintech Launch at the UK Houses of Parliament. The winning design was used for paper wallets given out in gift bags to attendees during the Centre of Fintech launch in front of Ron Kalifa!

UEL Centre Of FinTech Launch Party / First crypto transaction in parliament

On the 28th of April, nano was used for the first-ever crypto transactions to take place at an official event inside the Houses of Parliament. This took place at the launch of The Centre of FinTech at the University of East London, an educational institution with which the Nano Foundation has deep ties.

George Coxon and Colin LeMahieu, directors of the Nano Foundation, attended the official launch of The Centre of FinTech at the Houses of Parliament where George above is seen with her fellow Advisory Board members for this new Centre of FinTech.

George Coxon as moderator in Women In Payments EMEA 2022 Symposium

On April 26th, Director of the Nano Foundation George Coxon moderated the Women in Payments EMEA 2022 Symposium. The session, titled One Coin to Rule Them All, discussed the developments of CBDC’s with a focus on the UK and EU. Furthermore, the session went into regulatory frameworks regarding crypto assets and the impact and effects on merchants, industry and consumers.

Cynam22.2 Keynote Speech

Directors of the Nano Foundation, George Coxon and Colin Lemahieu, gave the opening keynote speech at CyNam22.2 in partnership with Cheltenham Science Festival on the 7th of June. They spoke on the topic of ‘Be The Change’, a perfect topic for the Nano Foundation!

Cynam22.2 dives into Web3, blockchain and cryptocurrency- topics where nano can truly shine out as a currency that goes against the status quo.

George and Colin thoroughly enjoyed the CyNam22.2 event, and look forward to returning to Cheltenham for further collaborative talks with the local cyber community. You can read more about it in this debrief.

Reset Connect London Event, London Climate Action week

The Nano Foundation are speakers along with having a booth showcasing nano at the Reset-Connect London Event for the London Climate Action Week on the 28th and 29th of June. Reset Connect London is the UK’s largest sustainability ecosystem and green investment event. Not only will there be a booth set up where various nano apps (and nano itself) will be presented, but there will also be a nano arcade machine present for people to try out nano and gaming!
Colin Lemahieu and George Coxon will be presenting about cryptocurrency’s place in a sustainable future on the 29th of June.

Nano.org

https://assets.nano.org/ is now live, a place to find assets and resources to make infographics, posters, videos and other content in the true nano style! The assets page also allows people to generate ‘Nano Accepted Here’ stickers in many languages and will continuously be improved and expanded to include more helpful resources and assets. Keep an eye out for changes and additions!

Partners

UEL’s Centre Of Fintech Alliance

The Nano Foundation has formed an alliance with the UEL’s Royal Docks School for Business and Law (RDSBL)’s new Centre of FinTech! The Centre has been created with the aim of building a pipeline of FinTech talent that ultimately facilitates the global digital economy and will work in collaboration with a number of industry partners who are part of the Strategic Development Board of the Centre.

FynCom

Nano based startup FynCom made it into the UC Berkeley’s startup accelerator program! Fyncom is a FinTech think tank using nano to create financial interactions in the digital space. You might know them from their KarmaCall- a mobile app that solves the problem of spam calls! Read more about FynCom and KarmaCall in this blog article.

Crypto.com Ticker Change

Crypto.com has changed the nano ticker and symbol! Nano is now listed as XNO on Crypto.com with deposits and withdrawals are enabled.

NOWPayments Mass Payments Function Launches

NOWPayments is one of the most popular crypto payment gateways and is used by many services to accept nano payments and donations. Services are now able to perform mass nano payments to many different accounts at the same time using the NOWPayments mass payments function.

“Get your crypto payments to the masses. Send rebates, freelance commissions, affiliate rewards, employee payrolls, or any other type of mass payment in a single API call — easy as pie.”

Metal Pay in Europe!

Getting your hands on nano in Europe is even easier now that Metal Pay is available in the European Union! Their mission? “Making cryptocurrency easy and accessible to more people than ever before” Well, it certainly is now! Especially combined with nano!

OKX Ticker Update

OKX has now updated the ticker from NANO to XNO! Deposits, withdraws and spot trading are enabled again as of today.

Listings

On June 1st, Bitpanda listed nano for buying, selling and swaps! Bitpanda also allows users to set recurring buy orders, making it a good option for those that like to have their savings in nano.

Bitpanda on Twitter: "We're happy to list $XNO, the native token of @nano; a lightweight cryptocurrency designed to facilitate secure, practically instant payments. Aren't you glad it's #CryptoWednesday? pic.twitter.com/ivjjzS9VSn / Twitter"

We're happy to list $XNO, the native token of @nano; a lightweight cryptocurrency designed to facilitate secure, practically instant payments. Aren't you glad it's #CryptoWednesday? pic.twitter.com/ivjjzS9VSn

For those looking to easily trade nano for monero, you can now swap between nano and Monero on Kuyumcu.

You can now take out a loan against your nano using CoinRabbit’s nano integration!

CoinRabbit on Twitter: "We've just added $NANO $XNO we know you been waiting for this one pic.twitter.com/bT1FbVy0wv / Twitter"

We've just added $NANO $XNO we know you been waiting for this one pic.twitter.com/bT1FbVy0wv

Nano and gaming go hand in hand. That’s why it is awesome to see that Wodo.io Gaming has integrated nano! They offer SDKs and client libraries to other game developers so that they can integrate their reward mechanisms with Nano. Read the docs!

G’day mate! Have some bills to pay? Rent, school fees, electricity bills, any of them can now easily be paid with nano in Australia using Living Room of Satoshi’s nano integration.

The UK, Blockchain and the Spectre of Regulation

Ben Baldieri released his first nano blog on the crypto- and blockchain regulation in the UK, and nano’s place in all of this. The article goes more in depth on the UK government’s vision to turn the UK into a ‘global cryptoasset technology hub’ and how the Nano Foundation is perfectly positioned as a UK-based organisation. Give it a read here!

Community Section

The nano community has been hard at work and never sleeps! The Nano Community Program is also developing and maturing as more people join in and initiatives start taking shape. We especially see a lot of activity in Nigeria, one of our focus markets. Let’s dive into some awesome initiatives, meetups, content and projects from our amazing and talented community members!

Nano in r/place on Reddit

The Nano Community showed their coordination and team work by creating 2 artworks in Reddit’s r/place! Here, every user got to place one pixel on a canvas every 5 minutes. Another artwork can be seen in this video by Zerg Toshi. Great work!

Video Contest

The nano community on Reddit organized their own independent marketing competition where anyone could participate by creating a short video about nano. This is where the talents in video editing can really shine and they sure did! Check out the winning entry by LilDumpling133!

RaiblocksMC New Website

Raiblocks MC, the Minecraft server with nano integration, now has a fresh new website! The website now has a clear overview for statistics about the server, a complete wiki, a frequently asked questions page and a dynamic map of the server.
The Raiblocks MC server allows users to earn nano, buy and sell items with nano, go on nano treasure hunts and more.

Developer gr0vity has created a project that allows developers to spin up their own local nano network for testing, with RPC control enabled! The network is fully configurable and allows you to change

• the genesis account key
• the amount of burnt coins
• the POW needed for one transactions
• the number of nodes in your network
• the node version for each node in your network
• config for each node

You can read more about the project here.

Nautilus Updates

The Nautilus wallet, a fork from the well-known Natrium wallet, has been updated to include lots of new features! Besides having implemented the change log itself, the wallet now also allows you to

• Search by nearly anything in the top bar (transaction type, user name, address, transaction amount, memo)
• No longer need a username to send payment requests
• No longer need to send a payment to send an E2EE message, added a message reply button in the message drawer
• Added handlebars to list items that are slidable since it’s not obvious there are actions there
• Total re-work of favorites and blocking of users and addresses to handle when multiple aliases route to the same nano address
• Support for sending to unstoppable domain addresses Support for ENS addresses -> once you type in an UD or ENS or address it’ll cache and remember to use it in place of the address wherever applicable

Redeemfor.me

Want to buy gift cards, mobile top-ups or vouchers? Redeemfor.me has got you covered! Launched by u/emul0rd, creator of luckynano.com, redeemfor.me allows you to buygift cards, mobile top-ups or vouchers from dozens of different brands including Amazon, Netflix, Steam, iTunes, Spotify, Walmart and more!

Tiptoo

For those that are feeling generous, try out Tiptoo! Tiptoo is an awesome new wallet that allows you to easily tip those around you, or receive tips from others! Soon available on the App Store and Google Play Store.

Nano Global Student Society

As the Nano Community Program keeps evolving, the Nano Global Student Society has been formed to bring together the next generation of developers and students. The Society aims to provide a platform where students can engage with their peers to educate, co-create, and network on a global scale to promote the adoption of nano and to grow the student developer community. The Students Ambassadors can volunteer, take up initiatives, organize events/meetups and presentations in their universities and bring new enthusiasts into the community!

Please give a warm Nano welcome to our campus ambassadors Toluwaleke Olujide from the University of Ibadan Nigeria, Enaanapu Gabriel from the River State University Nigeria ,Ogbonnia Christian from the University of Benin Nigeria.

Nigeria Meetup

The Nano Global Student Society and Nano Nigeria community organised a virtual meetup on the 5th of June to discuss the basics of cryptocurrencies and a deep dive into nano and WeNano. The event was presented by our amazing Nigerian ambassador Samuel Olapade and a recording can be viewed here.

The event was a good learning experience, read some of Samuel’s insights in this article.

Nano Community Initiatives — 3 Stories

A great way to explore the nano ecosystem, and the people behind different projects and initiatives in the nano ecosystem, is via the awesome Nano Community Initiatives — 3 Stories Twitter spaces! 2 new episodes have dropped since the last Nano Digest. On the 6th of June, Nano Community Initiatives — 3 Stories Episode 4 was hosted by our Colombian ambassador Carlos Murgas! This episode, Carlos spoke with Kakele MMORPG, WeNano and Kuyumcu. You can listen back to the recording here.

Also check out episode 3 from the 6th of May where Carlos interviewed ApolloNano, ViNo, and NanoBrowserQuest!

WeNano Stickers In Paris

A community member from Paris experimented with WeNano stickers in Paris! The stickers have been placed in the city of Paris near tourist spots such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, The reddit user, u/boolazed, noted that it is far more effective to create spots with a large radius. Great to see initiatives like this in the real world! Want to mark your WeNano spots as well? You can find an updated version of the stickers here.

Nano Blog Articles

Current DDoS nano network attack and V23.1 fixes

Meet Ben Baldieri: PR & Media Lead of the Nano Foundation

Introducing our growth blog series & Focus market Nigeria

The UK, blockchain, and the spectre of regulation

Nano in the news

Crypto.news — Around the Block With Jefferson Nunn — Interview With Adrian E. Garcia at FynCom.

Nebeus — 7 Greener Cryptocurrencies You Should Know About

Finbold — How to Buy NANO (XNO) | Step-by-Step Crypto Guide

AnalyticsInsight — Top 10 cryptocurrencies to buy after selling Shiba Inu in the bear market

Oobit — Cheapest Crypto Coins To Transfer In 2022

Newsbit — Nano: een digitale coin voor iedereen, zonder kosten.

BlazeTrends — Nano: a digital coin for everyone, at no cost.

Nasdaq — 15 Environmentally Sustainable Cryptocurrencies To Invest In Right Now

Dailyhodl — Digital Assets Exchange Crypto.com Rolls Out Support for Two Little-Known Altcoins

ItsNewsAfrica — Is It Profitable to Swap ETH to XNO?

YahooFinance — Coin Cloud Plants Digital Currency Machines (DCMs) in the Palmetto State Through Partnership with Pops Mart Fuels

The New Political — OPINION: Bitcoin will not fix Ohio’s economy

FundView.de — Frank Thelen zu Krypto-Regulierung in Deutschland: „Es ist die Hölle“

Changelly — Which Cryptocurrencies Have the Lowest Transaction Fees?

Good With Money — Top 5 green cryptocurrencies

Fintech Global — Nano facilitates crypto transaction in Houses of Parliament

CNBC TV18 — Explained | How to invest in ecofriendly cryptos

Motley Fool — Which cryptocurrencies are the most environmentally friendly?

The Fintech Times — This Week in Fintech: TFT Bi-Weekly News Roundup 03/05

Nano Foundation does not endorse or approve products and/or services used or developed by third parties. Any links to third party software or sites are for informational purposes only. Nano Foundation bears no responsibility for the operability, accuracy, legality or content of third party products and/or services. Any questions regarding third party material should be directed to that party.

Nano Digest — V23.1 release, NF continues growing, Nigeria Growth Blog, and more was originally published in Nano on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

(For the lazy readers among us- I’ve included a short summary in bold and italic under each paragraph to make your life slightly easier)

What is wrong with our current systems (fiat currencies)?

From consumers to businesses to private banks, our current form of money and financial systems pose certain problems that we’ve had a hard time solving in the past. Money where the value is dependent on the supply issued by the government and central banks is called ‘Fiat currency’. Fiat currencies, like the euro, the united states dollar and the renminbi (yuan), are centralized currencies.

The value of fiat currencies is controlled by the government.

Centralized control
One entity, the government, can decide the value of the currency by controlling the money supply through government regulations. As mentioned in Encyclopedia Britannica, “According to the quantity theory of inflation, excessive issuance of fiat money can lead to its depreciation in value.”

At least transacting with physical cash allows you some control over who you give your money to. But there’s clear downsides to physical cash that makes it clear this is not the future. Besides the fact that physical cash is only directly spendable within your physical reach, it is getting accepted less and less and might even be eliminated entirely in some regions. People and businesses holding physical cash also makes them more susceptible to robbery or losing your money some other way, like a fire or a natural disaster.

As the world moves towards digitalization, it is clear that digital transactions are the future.

When we look at digital fiat transactions, this one entity has control over who can transact, the ability to block transactions and even freeze funds of anyone using the currency. These issues stemming from control over the monetary system by a single entity are often cited as issues for both consumers and businesses.

Governments and banks are centralized entities that can change the value of your money, censor who you transact with and can freeze your funds.

Exclusion
To use fiat currencies digitally, it is required to sign up to a middleman, a bank. Not everyone has the ability to create a bank account. This is an issue for both consumers and businesses. Government regulations especially have a large role in deciding which industries have proper access to the banking system, even when they’re legal. Take for instance the cannabis industry in the United States- getting a bank account as a dispensary can be a cumbersome process and eventually end up even worse. According to Flowhub, “Currently no major banking system will service the marijuana industry… …Compared to traditional banking, you can expect more strict compliance controls, longer timeframes, and significantly more paperwork…”

For consumers, getting a bank account can also be difficult. The requirements for opening a bank account are similar in most countries, but can have far larger consequences depending on the region. In western Europe, for example, most people will meet the requirements to open a bank account. However, in other regions of the world, a far larger percentage of the population does not meet these requirements. Let’s take a look for example at the requirements to open a bank account in Nigeria. From UBAgroup website:

In addition to filling a relatively short form by providing personal information like your full address and contact information, you will be required to provide the following:

Utility Bill: A recent proof of your residential address, such as water or electricity bill, is required to open a bank account.

Government-issued Identity Card: A government-issued identity card, such as national identity card, permanent voters card, driver’s license or international passport, is required to open a bank account.

Passport Photograph: The bank requires the passport photograph of the applicant for identification purposes.

Nigeria has approximately 108 million homeless people. Do those without a residential address, or without identification, not deserve to participate in the global digital economy? They arguably need it more.

Certain consumers, and businesses in specific industries, are being excluded from participating in the digital economy.

Local, not global
Fiat currencies, with centralized control, also prevent a currency from being adopted globally as a payment method. Country A does not want to adopt a currency as legal tender if country B can print it freely as much as they want. Governments don’t want to be dependent on the decisions of another government. It is therefore in best interest of a government to have a currency within its borders that no other government has control over. This has lead to countries all over the world having their own national currencies. But with different currencies come many problems. Trading currencies between countries is a hassle, it requires banks to continuously send money to each other and convert it to other currencies. For large international businesses, the fluctuation in purchasing power between different currencies in different countries is an issue as well. Even central banks trade between foreign currencies to control their economies. That’s why the FX industry has a daily volume of $6.6 trillion. But trading between national currencies can be costly. Not just the cost of trading itself, but time. Transactions between banks with different national currencies takes several days.

Centralized currencies can not be globally adopted, which leads to high friction in the forms of time and cost for banks, businesses and consumers.

A global currency, where no government, or other single entity, has control, would solve a lot of issues for consumers, businesses and banks. And that’s how we arrived at the point where we are now. With new technology and innovations, we’ve arrived at decentralized currencies.

Decentralized currencies

Now that we have established what the main problems of fiat currencies and our current banking systems are (mainly centralization), we can take a look at the most prominent solutions proposed that try to solve these problems through technology and innovation. Seeing as this whole movement started with Bitcoin, let’s start there.

Bitcoin (XBT) and its Lightning Network
It is not even a debate if the Bitcoin network on its own can be a world currency- it simply is not built for it. Transactions take at least 10 minutes (but generally multiple hours, since Bitcoin uses probabilistic finality which means multiple blocks have to be added after your transaction has been included to decrease the chance of the transaction being reversed), have high fees depending on congestion, and is not built to scale. Even at a national scale, Bitcoin would not be able to do enough transactions per second. The system is built to only allow for ~7 transactions per second and is bound to this amount because of the block size and block times. The inefficiencies in transaction times, transaction fees (that go from a few dollars up to more than $60 per transaction) and the inability to scale make Bitcoin a bad candidate as a global digital currency.

Bitcoin’s network is not equipped to handle more than 7 transactions per second, and therefore less than ideal as a global currency (or even a national currency for that matter).

However, one proposed solution for Bitcoin’s scalability problem is the controversial ‘Lightning Network’. A second layer, on top of the main Bitcoin network, that would allow for more transactions per second, make payments close to instant, with a very low transaction time. Some Bitcoin maximalists might hail this as the solution to Bitcoin scaling and being used as cash, but even developers working on the Lightning Network, or that have worked on it, admit there’s a lot of issues when it comes to the security of the network.

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network also runs into exclusion of people from participating. A minimum account balance is required for the fees of opening and closing a LN channel in order to transact. This means that, even with lower fees per transaction, people that don’t have the money to open and close their LN channel can unfortunately not participate in the network. The Lightning Network also still has fees, which are set by node operators. They can decide to raise their fees if they like, and this is expected to happen as the network does not seem economically viable for the long term with its current fee structure. Besides that, there is a lot of criticism on the user experience of the Lightning Network. It is difficult to understand how it works and how to start sending and receiving transactions via non-custodial wallets, leaving people with less technical skills excluded from participating.

There are many concerns about the security issues with Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and fees to use it remain- excluding people from participation. Besides that, the technical difficulty of using it excludes those with less technical knowledge.

Besides the Lightning Network’s security issues and exclusion of certain people, there’s a bigger, underlying problem at play with Bitcoin in general- it is not made for long term operation. The energy and hardware consumption of the Proof of Work security model of the Bitcoin network, and the accompanying carbon footprint and electronic waste, gets a lot of backlash for being harmful to the environment. Even to the extent that governments are discussing the idea of banning Proof of Work currencies like Bitcoin. There is already a lot of critique on the environmental sustainability of Bitcoin. What I’d like to shine a light on here is also the economic unsustainability in Bitcoin’s security model. The operational costs for the bitcoin network is billions per year. Those billions of dollars are being paid by users and holders of Bitcoin, through inflation and fees. As block rewards go down, fees will eventually have to go up to insane highs to pay for mining costs. With more transactions on Lightning Network, and less on-chain, fees need to go up even more for on-chain transactions- to the point where no one will ever open or close channels anymore, leaving no revenue for miners. This might result in them shutting down their mining operations or mining other currencies, and eventually a collapse of the hashrate protecting the Bitcoin network. Leaving the network insecure and susceptible to 51% attacks.

From a Princeton University study:

Without a block reward, immediately after a block is found there is zero expected reward for mining but nonzero electricity cost, making it unprofitable for any miner to mine.

The study goes more in depth on how solely funding the Proof of Work security of the network through transaction fees can lead to very irregular hashrate over time and perhaps malicious forks being more profitable for miners than securing the network.

Bitcoin’s security model is not economically viable in the long term. As block rewards for miners go down, fees on transactions will have to rise exponentially to the point where less people will use the network. This leaves miners unable to continue their mining operations and lead to a significant reduction in the security of the Bitcoin network.

Let’s look further at other currencies that tried to innovate on Bitcoin’s example. How do they compare? Is there a decentralized currency that is more inclusive, allowing anyone to participate in the network (a barrier of entry that is as low as possible) while being long-term sustainable both economically and ecologically?

Bitcoin Cash & Litecoin (BCH & LTC)
After some issues with Bitcoin’s scalability appeared, mainly due to network congestion leading to higher fees and longer transaction times, different solutions were proposed to increase the throughput of the network and thereby decrease transaction fees. One was to have a larger block size with Bitcoin Cash. Another solution, implemented by Litecoin, was to lower the difficulty of mining blocks so that more blocks can be mined in a shorter time period. Even though these solutions do increase scalability somewhat, they lead to similar issues do to Proof of Work consensus mechanism (mining). Furthermore, increasing the block size can lead to less decentralization and a decrease in block time can be less secure and increase the chance of forks in the network. Because these solutions are very similar to Bitcoin, only with slight differences, the same long term problems remain.

Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin both offer slightly cheaper and faster transactions than Bitcoin, but with the drawback of less security/decentralization, and have the same long-term issues as Bitcoin.

XRP
XRP has fast transactions (3–5 seconds) and relatively low fees. However, it requires the user to hold a minimum account balance to send transactions. It is also arguably centralized since Ripple Labs decides which protocols validators must follow and owns about 60% of the supply. Furthermore, Ripple, the original issuer of XRP and holder of the majority of the coins, has been sued by the SEC for unregistered securities offering.

XRP has lower fees but is centralized and sued by the SEC for unregistered securities offering.

Stellar Lumens (XLM)
Stellar Lumens, a project that was created as a separate version of XRP, has decently fast transactions (3–5 seconds) but excludes certain participants since it has a minimum account balance. Less than half of the total supply is in circulation meaning it is still highly inflationary. Even though the consensus mechanism seems to be a pretty good method for decentralization, the Stellar Development Foundation holds more than half of the total supply. Furthermore, Stellar Lumens still has fees, even though these are very small.

A large percentage of the XLM supply is in the hands of the Stellar Development Foundation, and both fees and minimum account balance exclude people from participating.

Enter nano (XNO)

Bitcoin was one example of what a decentralized currency could look like. However, as we have seen there are many issues preventing Bitcoin and other currencies that sprang off from this innovation from becoming global currencies that allow anyone, anywhere, to participate. Perhaps a radically different approach is the answer.

That’s why nano was created. With a blocklattice instead of a single blockchain, Open Representative Voting instead of Proof of Work or Proof of Stake, unique spam mitigation and no rewards for nodes or validators, nano solves several problems that other decentralized currencies face. Nano has an average transaction time of less than a second, does not suffer from centralization over time like other decentralized currencies and has confirmed more than 150 million transaction with 0 fees paid! It’s a decentralized, permissionless global network, running 24/7. Allowing anyone, anywhere to transact in less than a second at no cost. Unlike currencies such as XLM and XRP, nano was given away freely via captcha faucets, allowing anyone putting in the time and effort to obtain some.

Furthermore, unlike other decentralized networks, nano is able to scale as nodes get better hardware and bandwidth and therefore does not have a specified limit to the amount of transactions per second the network can handle. It also has no inflation at all, making it a solid store of value.
For these reasons, nano would be a good solution for decentralized, global digital money.

Nano uses unique innovations that allow for instant transactions to anyone in the world, globally, without fees, while being decentralized and decentralizing more over time. The network is extremely efficient, can scale with demand, and does not exclude anyone from participating, making it a viable candidate for the future of money.

To learn more about nano in general, the incentives for running a node, the history behind nano and what makes it better suited as a medium of exchange and store of value than other currencies, I recommend reading some of Senatus’ articles. They are full of valuable information!

A small note on stablecoins/CBDC’s

Perhaps Stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies should be separated here but they are similar in a few ways. A criticism of many crypto projects, including nano, is that price volatility prevents widespread adoption. It’s definitely one of the reasons many businesses are not adopting decentralized currencies yet. However, what a lot of people don’t realize is that stablecoins fluctuate in ‘price’- or rather, purchasing power- as well. We see this currently with inflation rates rising and goods and services becoming more expensive. Stablecoins aren’t as stable as many people think. Where nano has a stable supply but varying demand, fiat currencies (and stablecoins that are tied to fiat currencies) have a more stable demand but the supply varies. Increasing money supply through money printing by central banks is the whole reason Bitcoin was created and the cryptocurrency movement started. What’s the point in stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies? They do not solve the initial problem of removing control over value and transacting by central middlemen. In fact, when it comes to CBDC’s, they give central banks even more control. Centralized currencies lead to exclusion of certain people/groups, censoring/blocking transactions, and are very susceptible to hyper inflation- something that seems to eventually happen to every centralized currency we’ve seen so far. Because governments/central banks have the ability to print fiat currencies freely, the currency devalues over time. This also prevents global adoption of centralized currencies, since country A would rather not adopt a currency that country B can print freely at their will.

Stablecoins and CBDC’s are not decentralized and therefore suffer from the same issues as traditional fiat currency. Because of the centralized control over value of the currency (money printing) by a single government, it is unlikely to be globally adopted by other governments.

Conclusion

Centralized currencies have issues with control. Bitcoin made the case that money can be decentralized to solve this problem with centralized control, but isn’t itself made for long term existence. Other currencies improved on it more and more but continue with issues that exclude people from participating in the global economy through fees or minimum balances, have longer transaction times, probabilistic finality instead of deterministic finality, unsustainable economical and ecological security models and often centralize over time due to economies of scale.

Nano is the most logical solution for a decentralized currency that is able to scale while allowing any person or business to participate in the digital economy. It has no fees, runs anywhere 24/7 and is a likely candidate to become a globally adopted currency. The network is made for long term scalability and offers all the right incentive for nodes and validators without monetary reward and fees. No money lost on fees for using it, and no money lost from inflation by holding it. That’s what value should be.

I hope this gives a better insight into the problems with the current financial system, the attempts at solving some of these problems and how nano fits the ‘money of the future’ title best. Thanks for reading this article! Feel free to contact me on twitter @Forestnanoo

Do you know why so much R&D is put into finger scanning in phones, and facial recognition to unlock your device? Millions of dollars in research and development just to shave 1 motion and half a second off of this particular action of opening your phone. Why? It’s to make opening your phone as frictionless as possible. Making the road from ‘your phone in your pocket’ to ‘you seeing content’ as smooth as possible. To make that step from the physical into the digital world a seamless experience.

(Photo by Vladimir Mun on Unsplash)

The same can be seen when it comes to payments. It started with physical money, which you had to count by hand, physically hand over to the cashier, who then had to count it as well, put it into the register, count the change, then hand you the change which you have to quickly count as well and finalize the transaction. That’s a lot of friction! Not a very smooth, seamless experience. But then we got cards. At least here in the Netherlands, you had to swipe your card, type your PIN number, and voila! Payment done! That’s a lot smoother already! From there it went on to NFC, simply holding your card against the device and that’s it. So smooth. Now you can even just simply tap your phone against the device.

(Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash)

For phones, and connecting to the digital world, there’s a lot of motivation behind making the process frictionless. You could argue that the process needs to be as frictionless as possible so that digital content and advertisements have an easier time influencing you and your spending habits, your thought patterns, biases and political opinions, etc. These things are difficult to influence in the physical world, but digitally we consume information so fast that we are easily influenced.

Frictionless payments

Why then, is it so important for payments to have a smooth user experience?

To explain it simply, payments have been made so easy and frictionless in order to incentivize spending. Humans are very lazy. We don’t like putting in effort to do simple things. If buying something takes 10 minutes, we might postpone it, procrastinate. If it takes 10 seconds, however, we’re more likely to make a purchase. If it’s easier to do, it will be done more. Besides that, removing friction when paying makes it a more enjoyable experience, leading consumers to purchase more. This is especially true nowadays for online payments. In the Netherlands, we have an online payment method called ‘iDeal’, used by dutch banks. I remember, just a few years ago, we needed to use our card and an e-dentifier to buy something online. If I remember correctly, the process went something like this:

Step 1. Get your debit card.
Step 2. Search your house for your e-dentifier (a small device necessary to make online payments).
Step 3. Insert your debit card into the e-dentifier.
Step 4. Insert your PIN code into the device.
Step 5. Choose ‘Send payment’ on the device.
Step 6. Insert the payment number, provided in the payment terminal on the website, into the device. Press ok.
Step 7. The e-dentifier will give a response code. Type this response code into the website.
Step 8. Finalize payment.

This whole process could take 5–10 minutes, depending on how organized you are (I had to search for my e-dentifier quite often…)

(Photo of e.dentifiers, dutch payment devices)

The time and effort it took to make a purchase online was definitely a turn-off. It’s interesting how just those few minutes and extra steps can influence purchases and spending habits so much. Nowadays, you can easily make an online payment with your phone by scanning a QR code and typing in your pin number. Takes less than a minute to make a purchase. The actual payment process might take 20 seconds or so nowadays.

Remember, this easier online payment experience is just for iDeal payments within the Netherlands. When I want to make payments internationally, the friction is immediately back.

(Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash)

You can see how creating smooth and seamless user experiences are integral to the success of a product. This goes for really anything, the easier it is to integrate and use, the higher chance of success and speed of adoption. This is a large part of the selling point for nano. Payments, both physically and digitally, are a smooth, seamless and frictionless experience. Same for integrating it for point of sale. Accepting nano can be done in less than 2 minutes simply by creating an account on nault.cc for example.

(Nault.cc, a popular wallet for nano)

The off-ramping hurdle

The biggest hurdle we face currently is off-ramping for nano. This is partially what still holds back merchant adoption. I’m sure most merchants wouldn’t mind accepting nano in their business if it doesn’t carry a cost, opens them up to a rather large community of enthusiasts that would like to pay with that currency, and is easy to integrate. The problem is that most merchants don’t want to carry the risk involved with fluctuations in purchasing power. That’s understandable. So to solve this, while keeping nano adoption easy, there needs to be a way to off-ramp the nano they receive to fiat that is as frictionless as possible. Does that exist currently? Maybe in some places. But generally, KYC regulations (Know Your Customer, requiring identification by sending a copy of your passport or drivers license) create a hurdle that leads to friction for merchants. It requires time, effort, and trust in the service used for conversion to set up. Signing up for an exchange to off-ramp fiat can take days in some cases. This kind of friction is less than ideal and slows down the adoption of nano. So… now what? How could we solve an issue like this?

(Photo by Interactive Sports on Unsplash)

Solutions

A micro-economy using nano

One way is for business owners to simply not off-ramp nano. Instead, they can use the nano they receive to pay for goods and services at other businesses. This would create a micro-economy using nano. Even though this would be the most frictionless and ideal solution, it also means that business owners carry the risk in the change of purchasing power of nano. Furthermore, this would require more businesses, for instance the businesses they buy their supplies at, to accept nano. It is a slow start, with only a small percentage of business owners that are comfortable taking on some risk to push this idea forward. However, this is also how Bitcoin grew from a small niche internet currency to being accepted by hundreds of businesses worldwide. Both online, and in brick and mortar stores, even without any easy off-ramp. It did take Bitcoin about a decade to achieve this, and eventually this adoption started to slow down due to the friction associated with the currency itself and setting it up. For nano, this might happen a lot quicker though, due to the ease of use and seamless process to start accepting it and transacting with it. Furthermore, Bitcoin already laid some groundwork. People have started understanding, trusting and using digital money more in the last few years. This micro-economy phenomena might be a way to kickstart nano adoption without easy off-ramp possibilities, or it might end up being a result of nano adoption with off-ramping.

Off-ramping within existing solutions

Another solution that does involve off-ramping would be off-ramping without business owners needing to go through a KYC process, keeping it frictionless. But how, if identification is required by regulations? One way would be to integrate nano on- and off-ramping in existing solutions like banks. They already know their customers. Having a service like a bank act as an exchange for nano and fiat would make it easy for business owners to start accepting nano in their business and have it automatically converted to fiat currency. In the end, this solution would probably require more stability in the fiat value of nano, might require a certain level of adoption beforehand, and an increased trust in the network from an institutional side. For a bank to implement something like this would bring risk and cost, both for development and legal. But it might pay off as well. Who knows?

Peer to peer off-ramping

What if business owners sell their nano back to their local community? Someone pays with nano at a business, the business owner then sells that nano back to other people in the community with a small profit margin. This makes it easy for people to buy nano anywhere with cash, generates extra profit for business owners and doesn’t require the business owner to perform any KYC. Personally, I like the idea of this. Unfortunately the business owner would in this case be a small exchange. And exchanges are, in most countries, required to comply with KYC regulations. The legality of such a system would therefore be questionable in most cases.

Closing thoughts

In the short term, there will probably be some merchants that do want to go through the effort of KYC processes to accept nano and other digital currencies, while some others will accept nano and hold it as an investment. Some might already have trading accounts set up, having already gone through the KYC process and therefore not needing to go through this effort to start accepting nano and off-ramping. I think we will see more and more businesses start accepting nano as faith in digital money is growing and faith in fiat currencies is steadily declining. Over time, as nano becomes more popular and adoption increases, solutions will appear that will make it easier for business owners to off-ramp nano to fiat. I’m planning to put my effort into creating a small micro-economy with nano in my area. Even though this is a difficult task and many merchants might decline, I see it as the eventual goal to have people transact in nano without feeling the need to convert back to fiat currencies. It’s difficult to set up, but would be the path that leads to the least friction. And that is what we aim for with nano. Frictionless payments, anywhere.

For more information about the future of payments with nano, visit https://nano.org/

The strength of the Netherlands lies in efficiency

Efficiency is therefore one of the elements in which we as the Netherlands are strong. For example, as the Dutch, we are the most efficient in the world when it comes to agricultural food production, we have the most efficient railways in all of Europe when it comes to transport, and we have the most competitive economy in all of Europe. This all stems from our ability to find efficient solutions for processes. So what does efficiency actually mean?

Efficiency is achieving a goal, with as little waste as possible. That can be a waste of energy, time, money… basically everything that is not reflected in the ultimate goal. Consider, for example, the difference in efficiency between an incandescent lamp and an LED lamp. To provide the same amount of light, an incandescent lamp needs much more energy than an LED lamp. This is because an incandescent lamp converts much of its energy into heat, which is not the purpose of a lamp. With an incandescent lamp, there is therefore a significant waste of energy.

Let’s look at an example where digitization has brought us more efficiency. Consider, for example, the transition from letter post to email. Both letter post and email serve the same purpose: to transmit information over distance.

But one does this a lot more efficiently than the other. With letter post, there is a lot of waste to achieve the same goal. First, the waste of material. With letter mail, paper is needed to transfer information to another person. Depending on the amount of information, more or less is wasted. In addition, there is a waste of time. Depending on the distance, it may take longer for the information to reach the other party. There is also energy wastage in various forms. A postman has to deliver the letter, the letter has to be driven via a bus to the post office or shipped to another location and delivered to the destination etc. This also costs energy, fuel, manpower, money and more.

Is this really a waste? All this is necessary to transfer the information on paper over distance. Now that we have email, a more efficient way of achieving the same goal with less waste, we can say that letter mail is not efficient for transferring information. Email does not cost more or less energy, money, time and other resources depending on distance or amount of information. It’s virtually free, can be done virtually infinitely and arrives directly at its destination without wasting time, energy or money.

This kind of efficiency is what we need to look for in order to achieve our goals with as little waste as possible. That is what we as the Netherlands do to stay ahead. I argue that the same should be done with money, and that we as the Netherlands should be frontrunners in this. Just like email when sending information, sending value, within the Netherlands and around the world, should also be free of charge in all forms. Doesn’t matter over what distance or the amount. Just like email, this should be possible immediately, without costing money and without wasting energy.

The inefficiency and problems of the current system

The first step in making money more efficient is digitization. We have seen this with the digitization of letter post to email, and should therefore also be possible with money. Because in principle there are no borders via the internet, everything can be sent all over the world without much loss of time and without extra costs.

“Isn’t money easy, fast and cheap right now? Isn’t this already digital just like email and therefore very efficient? What is the waste if I pay via iDeal, with a debit card or a simple bank transfer?”

These are questions that might come to mind when you think about sending money digitally. This already seems easy, fast and cheap, so efficient. But this is a much more complicated story behind the scenes.

Suppose you had a nice evening drink with your friends and the next day you get a payment request for 10 euros.

As with sending information via letter post or e-mail, there is one end goal that we can keep in mind:

• Send value from you to your friend.

You pay the payment request to your friend via your online banking app. This seems direct, from you to the other. As if only 2 people are involved, just like an email. But you do this through the bank. That’s because with the traditional system, with the euro, digital transactions can only be done through a bank. The banks are intermediaries here. It’s like telling the bank that you want to send an email to your friend, and what should be in that email. The bank then writes that email for you and sends it to your friend’s bank. His bank then receives the email and reads it to your friend. Why does it have to be this way with money? Why can’t this be done directly, like with email for information, between the two people, without the need for banks between them? That’s because with the traditional system, through banks and with the euro, this is not trusted to people like you and me and can’t be done safely. Intermediaries and companies must therefore be used, just as with the letter post. And that leads to waste, and therefore, inefficiency.

In addition, sending money through the bank reveals much more inefficiency. In addition to wasting energy by intermediaries and companies, this also involves wasting money and time. Securing the infrastructure between and of banks, the people who work here, the buildings that are built for this and much more.

Payments via pin in a store are even more inefficient. From the outside, as a customer, you may notice this less. But if you have your own business you will see this anyway. For example, the Chamber of Commerce calculates from research that an average debit card payment costs about 16 cents and an average cash payment about 29 cents. The store owner pays fees for the device that accepts payments, and the bank charges fees for accepting payments. You as a customer do not see the costs for these payments, but they are all settled in the products you buy.

In addition to costs, there is other waste in the payment process between you and the business owner. One more person is placed in this.

Your bank naturally comes into play here, but also a transaction processor. It keeps track of who has transferred money from which bank account to the bank account of the business owner. Sounds unnecessary, but this is necessary for the legacy infrastructure of banks because it involves a lot of transactions between many different banks, which are all private institutions. For a simple payment between you and the business owner, 2 people, 3 intermediaries are used here. Your bank, the transaction processor, and the business owner’s bank. So 5 different entities are needed to send value from you to the business owner.

In addition, payments are not sent directly from your bank account to the business owner. It looks like the money has been sent immediately as it disappears from your account, but that doesn’t mean the money is directly in the business owner’s account. The money is often deposited into the business owner’s account the next business day. And even that only on working days. This often takes longer on weekends and holidays.

You could argue that there is inefficiency here in the same areas as letter post. There is waste in the form of costs, time, and energy.

Worldwide payments

We have just looked at payments with the euro, and especially within the Netherlands. But the Netherlands is a cosmopolitan country. A country that, although so small, still has a large economy and a major impact on the world. This is deep in our history. From the first company with shares, the VOC, which traded all over the world and spread our culture and people worldwide, the Dutch guilder that was used as a reserve currency in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and laid the foundations for the modern financial world, to companies such as Heineken with which the Netherlands is putting itself on the map. The success of the Netherlands is largely due to our strength to play with the world and to be ahead of the rest. Global trade, playing a part in the global economy and not being limited to borders.

When it comes to money, we also have to look beyond our borders. Global trade also means global value transfer. When a country on the other side of the world trades with the Netherlands, we also want as much of the value as possible to end up with us. And vice versa. The Netherlands is a country full of different cultures and many people with family abroad send money around the world. So, also when it comes to money, let’s zoom out a bit.

Money is already inefficient within borders, but it becomes even more inefficient on a global scale. Although the digital world of the internet seems limitless, this is not the case with money. Transferring a euro to someone in the Philippines or vice versa is virtually impossible. The costs associated with this make this difficult, more intermediaries are needed and this results in even more waste. For example, when converting the currency. This often involves quite high costs, and it can sometimes take days before the money arrives at the recipient. It costs more money, takes more time and takes more effort. Even more waste, even less efficiency.

Let’s also not forget that a large part of the world’s population, more than 2 billion people, which adds up to around 30% of the world’s population, do not have access to the financial system because they do not have access to a bank account. A large proportion of those people cite cost as one of the reasons they cannot have a bank account. They therefore have no direct access to the digital financial system.

Safety and trust

When it comes to the security, speed and cost of money via the bank and with the euro, we have to trust that banks have everything right. And that sometimes turns out to be quite disappointing. The infrastructure of banks and payments through the bank are built on an old system. A too old system. A system that predates the time of payments via the Internet. We are constantly building on top of this to keep up with the modern, digital world. But the problem is in the foundation. Like a building with a weak foundation that is about to collapse, the banking system continues to prop up support posts against the building. Until this goes wrong at some point. And that has happened several times, such as at ING in 2013.

Read more in this article about the problems with the current banking system and why it often goes wrong.

We must trust that banks are wise and responsible with our money. But banks don’t actually have the amount of money in their vaults that we gave them. If everyone decides to have their money in cash anyway, that is not possible. This has already been seen several times in countries around the world, such as Greece for example.

When it comes to inflation, we must also trust that our governments, in the case of the Netherlands the EU, will handle our economy and our money wisely. And that also proves difficult. For example, annual inflation is currently higher than it was during the financial crisis in 2008, namely around 4.9%. In the United States, annual inflation has already risen to 6.2%, the highest since 1990.

Ever-rising annual inflation can eventually lead to hyperinflation, meaning your savings might as well be fake monopoly money.

The system that we have now means that we have to rely on banks, on our government, the European Union and also governments of other countries. Many people, not only in the Netherlands but throughout the European Union, are starting to lose more and more confidence in their own government.

So we are stuck with an outdated money system, built on an outdated infrastructure where we have to trust that companies and governments are responsible for securing and preserving the system on which our money runs. This outdated and trust-based system is inefficient and limited by boundaries. Innovation is needed to waste less and to maintain our Dutch identity as frontrunners in technology and the economy.

What we need is money without borders, without waste and without having to rely on governments and companies.

The solution

So how can we lead the way when it comes to money? How can we make sending value as efficient as email and more secure than what we have now, without relying on governments and businesses? How do we as the Dutch become the frontrunner in innovation in the field of technology and economy, and how do we ensure that this also has a positive effect on the environment?

In recent years, various solutions have come into the public eye. The Dutch are generally quick to adopt this kind of new technology, but we have seen many solutions that ultimately disappoint. They centralize over time (and so trust comes into play again), they still cost money, energy and transactions take a long time, so we end up back to square one. Trying to build on this technology is just postponing the problems. We are looking for a money network without having to trust and with as little waste as possible. Decentralization and efficiency built in from the foundation.

Nano

This is where I introduce the technology that in my opinion fits this description best, nano. Nano is a payment system with the nano currency. It is a modern network to send digital money without borders, without intermediaries, without costs and without having to trust. Let’s dive a little deeper into this.

Efficient. The nano network is made to waste as little as possible. Efficiency is the essence of nano. Money on the nano network is sent directly from the sender to the receiver, without the need for a bank or transaction processor. Similar to sending an email, you can do this yourself and the recipient can receive it directly, without the need for a bank. Transactions literally cost nothing, no matter how big or small. Transactions are complete and irreversible in less than a second and use only 0.000112kWh of energy per transaction. This means no wasted money, no wasted time and no wasted energy. In addition, no intermediaries are needed.

Due to the low energy consumption of nano, the entire network can handle thousands of transactions per second with the energy supply of just 1 wind turbine. This is even less power consumption than large centralized transaction processors such as VISA. In comparison, nano uses about 0.000112kWh per transaction, and Visa uses 0.003kWh.

So when it comes to efficiency, we look at this almost instantaneously. Transactions take an average of about 0.5 seconds. Waste of time is therefore not an issue and since transactions are free of charge, any value can be sent, over any distance, without wasting money. This efficiency is the key to a more effective and better economy.

Nano is limitless

Borders are no problem for nano either. The network knows and sees no boundaries. Nano can be used anywhere in the world and a transaction between you and your neighbor works just as well as a transaction between you and someone on the other side of the world. It’s just as fast and just as free of charge. You don’t even need an internet connection to receive a payment. The transaction just comes in, even if you’re not online. However, to see your nano ledger live and to send nano you will need to connect to the internet.

The fact that nano can be used anywhere, with no minimum balance and no fees to open a nano account means that anyone in the world can open a nano account. Everyone has the opportunity to participate in the digital financial world and everyone can receive digital transactions from people all over the world. A great way to see this concept in action is WeNano. With WeNano, people can create ‘spots’. These are locations containing a certain amount of nano. It’s a donation from whoever made the spot. Then other users can go to these locations and receive some of the nano in these spots. For example, you can walk through the city and receive a portion of nano during a walk at various spots. Try it out and walk through Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Groningen! I’ve filled these cities with nano spots for everyone to try. It’s completely free, and with a tour of the city you’ll have enough nano to buy a beer.

This WeNano app is of course fun for us Dutch, but it is also great for worldwide donations. So you can also make these kinds of spots in countries such as Nigeria, Venezuela, India, etc. All over the world. This allows you to donate money effectively and almost instantaneously, where necessary, without paying any transaction costs. No limits, no friction!

Charities are also starting to use the WeNano app. For example, SOS Children Villages has several WeNano donation spots and also New Story Charity, a charity that builds houses for people without shelter, accepts donations in nano through WeNano.

Trust (or lack of it)

“How do I know that the nano network is secure?”

Everything runs on code that can be viewed and verified by anyone, and cannot be changed unless the majority agrees. The network runs on hundreds of different computers around the world. These computers process the transactions for free, within a second. For example, the network does not belong to a company or a government, but to everyone. If someone tries to change the code, it is immediately considered wrong and cannot join the network unless the code on that transaction processing computer has been corrected again.

So there is no need to rely on the government or on the banks. Also, the amount of nano is fixed and cannot be changed. So there is no inflation like with the euro or dollar, and no hyperinflation is possible that, for example, recently caused the economy in Venezuela to collapse.

If you think that governments in Europe are much more sensible and that that would never happen here, it is perhaps startling to think that this happened in Europe less than 100 years ago. See, for example, Germany in the last century.

This worldwide network of computers, based on code, makes it virtually impossible to shut down the network. If one of the computers goes down, that’s no problem, all the other computers continue to work. Also, because these computers are scattered all over the world, it’s impossible to break the network if the Internet goes down, if the power goes out, or if a government tries to ban it. This is in contrast to a bank, which you could see as 1 large computer that 1 company has control over. And if that one company has a problem, the entire network is immediately down.

“But where’s the money then?”

In a sense, nano can be compared to cash, but digitally. Just like you have cash in your wallet, or in a piggy bank, you have nano in a digital wallet. This is often referred to as a ‘wallet’. If you can’t wait to try it out, you can quickly follow these steps (you’ll have nano in 1 minute!).

1. Go to nault.cc (https://nault.cc/)

2. Click on ‘configure wallet’, click on ‘new wallet’ and set a password

3. Write the list of 24 words, called the secret recovery mnemonic, somewhere only you can find it. (This will allow you to access your nano anytime. It’s like your bank account+pin so make sure it’s only you and no one else!)

Now you have a nano wallet! To receive your first nano you can click on receive, select your account and copy the address. It looks something like this:

nano_3rkpjzy9np7t4zb3t4w6ohecykcrs6dydhxejzs3c9k8u7nuyxidkfaukwi7

Paste this address into nano-faucet.org, solve the captcha and you have your first nano! In subsequent articles I will explain more about accepting and sending nano payments.

Price fluctuation

One reason why some business owners are less willing to accept a currency other than the euro is because the price of a new currency can fluctuate a lot. This is a very logical concern, but fortunately also an easily combatable problem. Nano can be converted directly into euros in various ways when it is accepted. There is often a small percentage of costs associated with this, but it is nonetheless cheaper than accepting debit card payments. So cheaper transactions without the downside of price fluctuations.

However, the direct exchange from nano to euro will nullify a lot of other advantages of the nano. Because when you exchange for euro, you will encounter the problems with trust and inflation again.

Fortunately, the price swings will resolve themselves over time as more companies adopt nano. The more accepted and used the currency is, the less the price will fluctuate.

The future

In the coming years, more and more companies will accept nano as a means of payment, and the euro and nano will live side by side.

The Netherlands runs on efficiency, it is part of our national identity and is one of the reasons why we are still strong players on the world stage. Like nano, the Netherlands is small but strong because of its efficiency. And that’s why nano can lead us to an economically healthy and growing future.

Do you want to know more about nano? See https://nano.org/ for more information. You can also find more places to spend, use or obtain nano at https://hub.nano.org/. Do you accept nano in your company yourself? Feel free to contact me by sending an email to forest.horsman@hotmail.com.