I’m talking about the likes of “with the added benefits” of “Aloe Vera”, Turmeric”, “Herbal Actives”, “Invigorating Extracts”, “…Bark Extract” or “…Root Extract or “…Leaf Extract”? Are there real benefits to these ingredients or is this just marketing ammunition attempting to drive sales?

It is a fact that an ingredient can be added at 0.01% (that’s about 0.01 grams for a 100 ml product) in order to put a big leaf on the front to convince a consumer into thinking it actually does have a beneficial or “natural” effect. However not all products may be trying to mislead consumers this way.

Although simple referrals to an ingredient on the front part of the product are very commonly marketing gimmicks, there are ingredients that do have genuine dermal benefits. However these benefits are very commonly lost altogether when added at considerably low levels.

Want to quickly find out yourself if you are being tricked into a purchase? You can pick up a face wash, shower gel, shampoo or skin cream and look at the ingredients list.

What to look for?

Where is the emotive (or its Latin name) listed on ingredient list? Is the ingredient after many other ingredients? The law (Regulation 1223/2009 in the EU; & a similar FDA requirement in the US) states that all ingredients above 1% must be listed in descending order.

Therefore if this emotive ingredient is present close to the end of the list, or very close to the colour (CI number), preservative (example: phenoxyethanol, methyl-/propyl-paraben, etc) then it is very likely only present for marketing purposes.

I’m sure it doesn’t come as a major shock that there’s a major difference between marketing a claim (commonly justified by a consumer study) and marketing an ingredient that’s present at 0.01%.

This marketing strategy may have come about as a result of consumers’ strong desire for “natural ingredients”.

By displaying in bold and large fonts that a product contains, say, “turmeric extracts” rather than “sodium laureth sulfate (SLES)”, even though the former may be added at a thousandth (1/1000th) of the volume of the latter, what benefit does the company derive?

To avoid misunderstanding, please note that many natural plant products do indeed have strong health benefits when consumed the right way (often ingestion). For example turmeric is one of the strongest plant-based anti-oxidant products that we know of and its therapeutic potential as a result of its anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties is immense. However a lot of these properties are a result of curcumin, the yellow pigment in turmeric. And the mere presence of “turmeric extract” does not imply the presence of curcumin (which at meaningful levels would probably render the product yellow and undesirable).

Similarly, the mere presence of an extract of a beneficial plant does not correspond with direct benefits of that ingredient. It is possible that extract is composed entirely of completely non-beneficial or even harmful chemicals.

There are indeed health benefits from the use of 100% turmeric, or 100% Aloe Vera or 100% almond oil, but those benefits are diluted into homeopathic nothingness when used at 0.01% — 3% levels.

To close, forcing a consumer to think of a beautiful green natural aromatic plant when they try to decide what face wash to buy in 5 seconds at the supermarket aisle leads to significantly greater sales. There is nothing new in triggering emotions to promote a product or service. Read more on emotional branding.

So the next time you go to buy a cosmetic product always check that the ingredient that is influencing your decision is at least present at a beneficial level and that claim has been justified by a study.

Which emotive ingredient have you come by?

Please let us know by leaving a comment below.

Please share this article if you found it valuable. Subscribe for regular ingredient and product reviews!

If you or your child have a skin condition that gets aggravated every time you apply a cosmetic product, or just simply keep getting allergies or irritation to certain products, perhaps you should consider shifting over to a fragrance-free (scent-free) product before you stop using cosmetics all together.

What are your feelings on fragranced cosmetic products?

A couple of years ago I was working on a start-up for male cosmetics — my business partner and I would go around a University campus asking male students which cosmetic products they preferred.

A staggering number explained that they had decided to stay off cosmetic products all-together because they believed it contributed to their eczema, pimples or other skin conditions.

It may not be a surprise that many people do not have positive feelings towards the cosmetics industry — this may mainly be due to the lack of transparency in the ingredients added and the harmful effects they can have on certain individuals.

Specific adverse effects can be tracked down to be associated with specific components of cosmetic formulations, whether it be fragrances, colours, preservatives or emotive ingredients.

Fragrances as ingredients

Fragrances are one of these ingredients that demand attention due to the unnecessary risk they often present to consumers using the products, especially where they are not intended to last during a rinse-off.

As a toxicologist I have safety assessed many fragranced cosmetic products — a job that involves going through each and every added (intentionally and even unintentionally) ingredient in a given cosmetic product. I have covered deodorants, skin creams, face washes, shampoos, hair removal waxes, and more.

Guess which of the ingredients was one of the worst and most common offenders when it came to the overall safety profile of almost any given cosmetic product?

Yes, fragrances.

Why?

Well before I explain, I’d like to note for those who are not aware that there are more than the labelled ingredients in any given cosmetic products — there are also impurities from production, very low level ingredients that are unintentionally produced but may still have an adverse risk on the end-user.

A fragrance is composed of many more ingredients than just those that are listed on the product label. Companies do not have to list components that are present at 0.0001%, however they can still have undesirable effects.

Allergens (sensitisers)

There are over 26 fragrance ingredients that are known to cause reactions in susceptible people. All of them are key components in the fragrance part of a cosmetic formulation, and must be indicated separately in the ingredients label.

So why are fragrances there in products in the first place?

Most likely a result of an underlying assumption that fragrances, like emotive ingredients (an article for another day) drive greater sales by augmenting the “desirability” of products.

But are these really necessary to make sales in an ever connected and transparent world?

I say no.

But what about new market players that are “killing it” selling colourful fragranced products, viz. Lush and the like or celebrity-driven products like Kylie Cosmetics?

Of course, in a world where one person is followed by 125 million people we will have all sorts of niches and beauty boxes.

Rising consumer awareness is obviously being capitalised by means of fragrance-free brands such as Neutral and Simple (both owned by the same company), and other market players moving their feet into fragrance-free products (Bull Dog, Aveeno and more).

If you suffer from a skin condition like a recurring allergy, the next time you apply a highly fragranced face wash that you’re just going to wash off, ask yourself if you should consider moving onto a fragrance-free product.

For more information on some of the common skin-conditions that fragranced products can cause check out this link (warning, some scientific words are used).

To get direct recommendations on specific products or to discuss a concern you may have with common ingredients, please leave a comment or contact me.

Thanks for joining me!

My purpose in my new blog, Scientists Review (ScientistsReview.com) will be to convey thoughts that I have gathered from working in the cosmetics safety industry as a toxicologist for several years.

My aim is to inform both sides of the fence:

a. Consumers — about choosing safer products from supermarket shelves;

and

b. Product developers — regarding progressive means of delivering safer cosmetic products.

I am a safety scientist, tech enthusiast and avid reader of many things. With a strong interest in business, I couldn’t help but notice that the cosmetic (as well as other industries) product landscape is shifting rapidly in this ever-connected and transparent world.

It is a world where companies must evolve and adapt to market demands, or become irrelevant.

I continue to operate as a product safety scientist working at my own consultancy, http://www.ToxSafety.com which you should totally check out now!

Executive Summary

1. Bitcoin Cash has an opportunity to capture a large market share of the cryptocurrency market; it is extremely unlikely to overthrow Bitcoin as the number one storage cryptocurrency.
2. Bitcoin Cash is targetting itself as a peer-to-peer electronic cash transfer blockchain — not a value-storage blockchain.
3. Expect high variability in mining profitability and block times in BTC and BCH in the following weeks, with changes in algorithms and hardforks bringing further uncertainty on this matter.

Introduction

In my last article I made predictions regarding the Bitcoin (BTC) SegWit2X fork based on the facts that were available to me at the time. You may all know by now that the principal players behind the New York Agreement (NYA) called off the fork — this was a surprise to many, causing immediate volatility in the market price of Bitcoin and subsequently in other crypcocurrency prices. To top this off, an unknown number of other members of the NYA decided to honour the Agreement. This article will not delve into the details of the SegWit2X fork.

Here are a few of the facts that I believe are relevant to understand if BCH is really a threat to BTC.

This is not investment advice so please make your own decisions about your portfolios.

Mining Profitability

As of 12 November 13:57 GMT, BCH is 69.6% more profitable to mine than BTC. Moreover, the BCH blockchain is currently operating at 10% of the BTC chain’s difficulty. Assuming a miner does not take future price movements into account, there is a clear and significant incentive for a BTC miner to switch to mining BCH. However, many miners most likely take future profitability into account too when mining any coin.

The Fork Factor

Miners, and of course traders/speculators will most likely take the upcoming Bitcoin Cash hardfork into account when considering switching chains. Why is a fork needed? Over 45 blocks were mined on the BCH chain in the last hour (as of Nov 12; 14:35 GMT) — for a blockchain that aims to mine only one block every 10 min, the number of blocks being created is over 650% greater than it should be.

The addition of a relatively sophisticated Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) appears to be the key feature of the upcoming hardfork. Here is what the website indicates.

“The new DAA algorithm seeks to accomplish the following objectives:

1. Adjust difficulty to hash rate to target a mean block interval of 600 seconds.

2. Avoid sudden changes in difficulty when hash rate is fairly stable.

3. Adjust difficulty rapidly when hash rate changes rapidly.

4. Avoid oscillations from feedback between hash rate and difficulty.

5. Be resilient to attacks such as timestamp manipulation.”

I could not identify any evidence of prior testing of this DAA; therefore I find it difficult to form an opinion on the robustness of the code behind this upgrade. It is clear, however, that this is a long awaited upgrade to many BCH miners and of course investors. Is this enough to incentivise a “flippening” is anybody’s guess at the moment.

The BTC Hardfork(s)

If a SegWit2X fork does in fact happen it will likely lead to further reduction in hashpower on the BTC chain. While this may lead to a short-term adaptive period where difficulty adjusts, fees will inevitably rise once again and the average block times will increase. I recommend keeping an eye out on the blockchain for such signs before making large transactions.

Also for information, there is also a Bitcoin Gold hardfork upcoming, planned to occur around 19:00 GMT (Nov 12). Since ASIC miners will not theoretically be able to mine this new coin, this hardfork is not expected to amplify the shift in hash power away from BTC.

Feature Comparison

As indicated in my previous articles:

Bitcoin has a 1MB block and SegWit

Bitcoin Cash currently has an 8 MB block with NO SegWit

Bitcoin Cash will most likely continue to lack SegWit as the coin community intends to increase transaction capacity purely by creating larger blocks; this contrasts with the Bitcoin Core community that intends to create additional levels on top of BTC with features such as the Lightning Network, Atomic Swaps, etc. to expand the transactional capacity to handle considerably greater transactions per second.

Exchange Acceptance

A potentially key factor determining the popularity of a value-storage coin is the widespread existence of trading pairs with Fiat currency and altcoins for trading.

Many exchanges were previously part of the NYA and have already warmed up to the Big Blocker community — therefore it would not be surprising to see them setting up new BCH trading pairs in the coming weeks.

Future Roadmap and Developer Community

Bitcoin Core continues to have several influential developers supporting it; therefore expect continued updates on the original chain in the coming weeks. It has however been of considerable concern to many as to how slow this group has been on introducing updates to the Bitcoin Core software.

It is clear that most developers are part of the Core / BTC chain. However some key developer figures have been moving over to the Big Blocker chains — examples include Jeff Garzik and Gavin Andersen, previously influential BTC Core developers who are known to have moved on to the Big Blocker community. The main concern from the community is that the Big Blockers have not been transparent on features of their code and upcoming updates — this has strongly affected community trust in BCH and the SegWit2X fork. This does not seem likely to change as of now.

Fees

Since this is a well known issue currently with the BTC chain, I will not delve into this. However, we can clearly see a considerable difference in the fees between BTC and BCH.

Transaction Volume and More

• Bitcoin (BTC) statistics - Price, Blocks Count, Difficulty, Hashrate, Value
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH) statistics - Price, Blocks Count, Difficulty, Hashrate, Value

There have been previous indications of transactional volume attacks on BTC, which would be of obvious benefit to BCH. However these rumours do not seem to have been confirmed and I will not comment on them.

Trading in the last few days

The last few days have seen a massive influx of fiat currency into BCH, particularly on Korean exchanges that have rallied ahead of other exchanges in price. Korean cryptocurrency investors are known for heavy speculation, leading to Korean regulators recently banning ICOs. The Korean market alone can therefore not be used to infer that there is considerable international demand for BCH. Other exchanges, especially Western exchanges must form part of the overall picture.

That being said, CoinMarketCap.com on Nov 12 decided to exclude the price of BCH on Bithumb and some other Korean exchanges from the average BCH price; an immediate apparent sell-off may have potential resulted from this delisting as Western traders continued to sell the coin, while the buyers were taken out of the picture. Such selling may continue into the coming days or weeks, even with Korean markets resuming trade.

Closing Comments

The BCH or Big Blocker community are in an ideal position to capitalise on the volatility of the current market and capture a significant share of the cryptocurrency market cap.

While this may be the biggest push from the Big Blockers that we have witnessed, it will most likely not be sufficient to overthrow BTC as a leading value-storage cryptocurrency; however if other factors such as a dropping BTC hashrate with high fees, a SegWit2X hardfork at an undesirable time for BTC, and the listing of new BCH trading pairs on exchanges all fall into place for BCH we will witness considerable drama lined up in the following weeks.

Do not let volatility surprise you, this is still the early days of cryptocurrencies. Exponential growth can quickly make or break portfolios, so be sure to stay diversified.

UPDATE: THE NOVEMBER SEGWIT2X FORK HAS NOW BEEN CANCELLED…

UPDATE 2: …OR HAS IT?

There is an obvious lack of clarity over what will happen to each chain, 1X and 2X, after the November Segwit2X hardfork. I have been collecting information on what has been happening on this front and have read opinions from both sides of the battleground — essentially the Core community (developers and supporters) vs. the “big businesses” that signed the New York Agreement, aka the Big Blockers. Please refer to my previous article if you’re interested in only reading the facts and forming your own opinions on the matter. This is a continuation from that article.

What will happen to the 1X (1MB) chain

1X is currently trading at around 86% of the price of 1 BTC; however only around 18.7% of hash power is currently not supporting SegWit2X. This has lead some to believe that the 1X chain will simply not survive post-fork, as it will be subject to double-spending, high fees and potentially 51% attacks. I explored this situation closer and realised that while it probably true that fees are bound to rise with a sudden drop in hash power as supply of transactions drops with a similar demand, it is not necessarily true that double-spending and 51% attacks would permanently damage confidence in the 1X chain.

In order for a mining pool to conduct a 51% attack, they must temporarily halt a considerable proportion of their profit taking only to damage the other chain. While this could lead to a whole bunch of issues as described in this Investopedia article, it is highly debatable if there is enough of a financial incentive for a pool to forego profit taking purely to sabotage another chain, especially when they cannot alter the blockchain’s historical transactions. There just might not be enough of a financial incentive to spend resources conducting a 51% attack in today’s environment where many major exchanges would detect such illicit activity and automatically halt transactions.

On the matter of fees, can the transaction fees on the 1X chain increase so much that people are put off holding and are willing to actively pay the fees just to sell their coin? It is very unlikely that long-term holders, libertarians and especially the Core community would dump their Bitcoin just because the fees rose, again. Besides, the BTC blockchain now has significantly more capacity for transactions than it used to thanks to SegWit. This somewhat helps the blockchain face drops in hash power while maintaining a decent amount of transactions.

To summarise, a consistent and perpetuated 51% attack would likely cause a degree of unfavourable volatility and price/demand reduction but certainly would not be able to create new coins or alter old blocks, so it would not destroy the 1X chain.

Bitcoin Cash vs SegWit2X — The real clash

As we categorise Big Blockers into one group, we forget that this community is formed from many different entities, each having varying agenda that are likely to separate down the road. The mining community does not necessarily agree with the exchanges, businesses or the bankers (MasterCard and the like).

While the Core community have generally remained mostly consistent about their desire to see Bitcoin remain decentralised if not gain more decentralised properties, the same consistency will likely not be observed amongst the Big Blockers who will most likely very quickly diverge on different roads — most likely taking sides in a future BCH vs SegWit2X debate. Note that although both chains will be formed of higher block sizes, 8MB for Bitcoin Cash and 2MB for the SegWit2X chain, only the latter will have SegWit support.

We have already seen support for Bitcoin Cash from the Big Blocker community including key public figures such as Roger Ver and Jihan Wu. On the other side of the fence, we have seen 58 companies including the likes of Coinbase, Bitwala and Bitfury sign up to creating a SegWit2X chain. While many of these companies have remained indecisive about their decisions — Jaxx and Vinny Lingham are a few examples — the Big Blocker community have surely set themselves up for future clashes. Such differences with strong proponents on both sides will likely lead to competition, if not direct threats to the existence of the other chain. Expect volatility on both chains — Bitcoin Cash and SegWit2X.

Closing Comments

I believe the same enthusiasm for decentralisation and “freedom from banks” that has kept Bitcoin alive for most of the last 9 years starting from the financial crisis of 2008 will continue to live, albeit potentially in the form of a smaller market share than that of the current Bitcoin. The Core developers may decide to further implement several updates in the form of an Emergency Difficulty Adjuster (EDA) or Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA), replay protection, etc. — expect updates from Core developers in the coming months.

The Core and Big Blocker communities quite obviously have their own agendas. The Core community seem to strongly believe in decentralisation and the promotion and sustenance of Bitcoin’s ideology above all else, whereas the community of businesses and mining pools strongly believe in capturing greater transaction volumes and blockchain users, to help generate greater profits. I am in no position to critique either side’s intentions; however I am quite clear on my agenda — not to lose money.

While many of us may wish that there were a middle ground where both parties could meet, this is an inevitable clash that the community saw coming for several years now. While not all proponents of both parties may be motivated by the greater good of the Bitcoin community as a whole, conflict/competition/opposition have often made way to greater things. I am personally confident that there has not been decent discussions between the two opposing parties of Bitcoin.

Conclusion

I expect the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies to thrive in the coming years, in spite of the side-taking and name calling. I believe expectations of chains dying have been greatly exaggerated for various reasons. I believe diversification will be a great weapon against the volatility that is certain to follow the November fork. I do not believe the 1X chain will die, but I do expect price corrections before we see eventual growth resulting from improvements to the protocol. And last but not the least, I expect several more “bitcoin factions” than the few we have today.

All in all, what a great time to be alive.

UPDATE: THE NOVEMBER SEGWIT2X FORK HAS NOW BEEN CANCELLED…

UPDATE 2: …OR HAS IT?

With less than a dozen days left before the SegWit2X fork, I thought I’d start gathering some facts before I start forming personal opinions and speculative conclusions. I refer to the SegWit1X chain as 1X and the SegWit2X chain as 2X for simplicity, and I have looked for very simple facts and safe assumptions. Here are the dots that I gathered:

• Fork at Block 494,784. Approximate time = 16th of November — see Reference 6 for exact time.

• The New York Agreement: The NYA involved parties representing about 83% of the then hashing power who all agreed to both hardforks — one for SegWit and another for an increased block size of 2MB (2X) within 6 months of the former. Further details in reference 1.

• It is safe to assume that miners will only mine the most profitable chain (possibly several chains in differing proportions).

• If whales pump a single chain it will gain more value. If this happens, miners will be more inclined to mine that particular chain only. This will result in the other chain(s)potentially losing overall mining attractiveness.

• 1X will continue to have a 1MB block and SegWit;

• 2X will have a 2MB block and SegWit;

• Bitcoin Cash (Just for information right now) currently has an 8 MB block with NO SegWit;

• Current Price Status (Futures) on BitFinex: 2X/BTC = 0.17; 1X/BTC = 0.83

• Current Mining Status: 2X = Around 85% of blocks are signalling for 2X.

It seems only a few mining pools including Slush Pool, F2Pool and Kano CKPool are not signalling Segwit2X. All Antpool (Jihan Wu) owned pools are signalling for Segwit2X and will likely continue to do so up to the fork. It is not clear if any other pools from the Segwit2X signalling group will change their minds in the meantime.

• Lower mining power chain: Likely to be 1X. Fees likely to be extremely high as not many miners. Difficulty adjustment could take a few weeks, if not months. Until then it will be very difficult to transfer funds. [It may be better to keep BTC on an exchange before fork, to ease liquidity cost/time if you want to sell either of the coins immediately]

• Double-spending: Miners (from 2X) will have an ability and incentive to double-spend on the minority chain (lower mining power chain). If you have huge mining power, you can allocate some of it to just double-spend on the minority chain. Some people will possibly lose confidence in the minority chain as a result.

• Replay-Protection: Neither 1X nor 2X currently have replay protection.

• Exchanges:

1. Bitfinex: original chain is “BTC”, SegWit2x chain is “B2X”
2. BitMEX: Original chain is BTC
3. Bitstamp: Unknown
4. GDAX & Coinbase: hash power and market cap decides which chain is “BTC”
5. Kraken: Unknown
6. HitBTC: original chain is “BTC”, SegWit2x chain is “B2X”
7. CoinsBank: Original chain is BTC
8. CEX.IO: original chain is “BTC”, SegWit2x chain is “B2X”
9. Gemini: hash power decides which chain is “BTC”
10. Coinfloor: Unknown
11. BTCC (Updated on Twitter): BTCC will consider which of 1MB and 2MB to name as #bitcoin based on market feedback and adoption.

Further details in reference 4.

The Opinion Section

• Vinny Lingham’s opinion: 2X will outcompete 1X.

• Enter Bitcoin Cash: A review by Ryan X. Charles who has incorporated some of Vinny Lingham’s quotes, states the following:

a. BCH is a fork of BTC with same PoW, but with improved Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA). BCH cannot die, but 1X and 2X could both die. If whales shift most of their holdings to BCH (or another coin), that would incentivise the miners to mine BCH (or another coin) instead of 1X and 2X. Both 1X and 2X would lose their mining power; however Core would release an emergency update to software adding DAA like BCH (or another coin). Thus, 1X would survive, and 2X (which might not get DAA) would die.

b. If 2X continues to be the dominantly mined chain, 1X will be forced to launch an emergency update to their PoW with DAA. There could be fighting between the two chains, and as a result a struggle to become dominant → potentially causing altcoins to flourish.

My observations

• BCH is upgrading their EDA (Emergency Difficulty Adjuster) on Nov 13. See website. This will lead to reduced volatility in BCH — likely making it more attractive to more long-term miners.

• Mining profitability: It is currently almost equally profitable to mine either BTC or BCH.

What to keep and eye on before the fork to judge yourself where the fate of BTC is heading.

1. Mining signalling distribution
2. DAA: 1X or 2X software updates to implement Difficulty Adjustment Algorithms
3. Futures price before fork
4. Significant whale movement

References:

1. New York Agreement
2. Hashing Distribution
3. Ryan X. Charles’s opinions
4. Exchange listings for both chains
5. Interview with Vinny Lingham
6. 2X Split Countdown