In my formative years,
I remember being nervous and having butterflies in my tummy before my first day of school.
I'd ask myself,
"Who's my teacher going to be?"
"Will I have any friends in my class?"
"How much homework am I going to have to do?"
These questions always seem to work themselves out in due time,
but the uncertainty is what bothered me the most.
This is what Cardano must be feeling at the moment
while smart contracts are rolling out.
It's a formative time for the third largest crypto out there.
Many traders expected the rollout of smart contracts to be a catalyst to immediately take Cardano
to new higher all-time highs.
But not so fast.
There's still a lot of work yet to be done.
Let's get it!
Welcome to BitBoy Crypto!
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My name is Ben.
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In this video, we'll discuss recent Cardano news
including the rollout of the final stage of the Alonzo hardfork,
new Cardano NFTs,
staking,
and how the introduction of smart contracts to the vast Cardano ecosystem
will ultimately propel ADA into uncharted territory.
200 years after British mathematician Ada Lovelace was born,
Cardano was founded in 2015 by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood,
a product of the IOHK research and development company.
It was later launched two years later in 2017.
Rather than having a whitepaper,
Cardano is the first blockchain platform to evolve out of a scientific philosophy
and research first approach.
This peer review system implements design principles
to overcome issues such as scalability, interoperability and regulatory compliance.
This progress did not happen overnight.
Learning from the mistakes of its competitors,
ADA started off using proof-of-stake consensus rather than the energy-intensive proof-of-work.
Charles Hoskinson claims Cardano uses just 6 gigawatt-hours of energy annually,
not even 0.01% of the 115.85 terawatt-hours Bitcoin is estimated to use.
The groundwork leading up to the Alonzo hardfork started with the Byron reboot in March of 2020.
This reboot laid the foundations for the network by providing a robust and scalable codebase to build on.
Few months later, in July of 2020,
the Shelley update shifted Cardano from a federated model toward a decentralized one.
On January 1, 2021, Cardano was valued at about 18¢.
$1,000 investment on that day would be worth $13,450 today.
Since the end of March 2021,
a decentralized network from a community of 2,868 staking pools has produced every Cardano block.
According to statistics from the Cardano data aggregation tool pooltool.io,
there are currently 831,000 wallets currently staking ADA.
That's a 35% increases since June.
Over 71% of the entire ADA supply is currently being staked valued at about $60 billion.
Now, if you want to stake your ADA with the only BitBoy-approved staking pool,
click the link in the description to find instructions on how to put your ADA in the BitPool.
Following the Shelley update came the Mary hardfork,
part of the Goguen rollout.
This brought new features and functionality
through the availability of native tokens and the multi-asset ledger.
This also allowed NFTs to be minted without smart contracts.
All these previous updates laid the groundwork for the Alonzo hardfork.
This most recent update was also named after a mathematician and American pioneer
Alonzo Church.
Over the past few months, Alonzo rolled out in several phases,
Blue, White, Purple, Red, Black staging,
and finally the mainnet just rolled out on September 12.
This marks the completion of the Alonzo hardfork and signifies the end of the Goguen era.
This enables smart contracts to be written for Cardano using Plutus scripts.
Plutus is built on the functional programming language Haskell
and introduces the extended portion of Cardano's extended unspent transaction output
or eUTXO framework.
These smart contracts allow developers to build DeFi apps
that enable the lending, borrowing and trading of assets
without the help of centralized intermediaries such as banks.
Now, using the Plutus script token factory,
developers can now create NFTs.
These first non-fungible tokens made with this new feature named "Kevin", "Charles" and "Tim"
were created immediately after activating the functionality of these smart contracts.
Other notable NFTs released on Cardano include Zombit, Cypherkicks, SpaceBudz and Clay Mates.
For a list of more Cardano NFTs, check out cardania.com.
And also if you guys want to check out a cool project where you can mint your own NFTs
that's currently in beta,
make sure to check out adatokenizer.io.
You guys can check out Crypto Crow's channel on YouTube for an explanation of how to use it.
But my favorite of the new batch of Cardano NFTs
has to be Clay Mates.
Reminiscent of MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch,
this set of 10,000 handmade algorithmically assembled characters
are the first stop-motion NFTs on Cardano.
Clay Mates also donated $6,000 to EndoFound,
a foundation that provides support to those living with endometriosis
who've done vital research into the illness while raising awareness.
But here's a pop quiz.
How many dApps are available on Cardano?
If you can't think of any,
then you may want to just be working for Decrypt
who put out an article the other day asking if Cardano had any dApps
ready to use smart contracts.
Charles was incredulous,
and the Cardanians on Twitter quickly put together this detailed report card
of the entire Cardano ecosystem.
This list is impressive and shows that Cardano isn't just an NFT platform.
It's a full suite of blockchain technology that's ready to disrupt many industries.
But Charles and IOHK know that while this is a big step for Cardano,
all crypto is still niche.
It's that weird kid in the computer science lab who swears he can hack the CIA.
Crypto needs its Wi-Fi moment,
the thing that made the internet usable for the masses and sped up adoption.
Charles sees a future where cryptos are seen less like brands and more like a Wi-Fi router.
In an interview with Business Insider,
Charles looked into the future.
"You're not asking, "Is this a Samsung router?"
"Is this an Apple router?"
and my hope is that's what's going to happen in the industry,
where Cardano is infrastructure,
Ethereum is infrastructure,
Bitcoin is infrastructure."
Charles sees a more consumer-friendly crypto future that just works,
which is part of why he and IOHK have adopted the scientific approach to development
instead of Ethereum's 'move fast and break things' mantra taken from Silicon Valley.
Before class is dismissed,
I want to take a moment to get real with all the members of the ADA Gang.
If you truly believe in Cardano and its ever-growing ecosystem,
it's important that we remain patient and not let the FUD get into our heads.
Like we've said for months on this channel,
don't sell your Bitcoin,
don't sell your Ethereum,
don't sell your Cardano,
and don't sell your XRP.
Stand by that statement today.
You can only lose if you sell the bottom.
Avoid selling the bottom by staying up to date with the latest crypto news
by smashing that like and subscribe button on this video.
But when these shakeouts keep happening over and over,
understand that the institutions and the financial cartels
are intentionally suppressing the prices to get you out before the bigger pumps.
They want you to sell.
I know that countless traders believed
that the price of ADA was going to spike upwards on September 12
after the rollout of the Alonzo mainnet.
You probably already know this did not happen.
In fact, we've seen a pullback since then.
But it's okay.
Charts go up and down every day.
This has helped the market activity.
Focus less on the daily and hourly charts and more on the big picture.
This is only the beginning for Cardano.
Don't give in to your emotions in the world of trading.
Decisions based on fear are commonly referred to as mistakes.
The most experienced traders learn to counter trade their emotions
because it's at the bottom of the chart,
where it seems the most miserable and depressing,
that's where you'll find the best possible entry.
Just like me waiting for the bus nervous before my first day of school
asking myself all those questions,
sometimes, we don't know the answers to the questions in the forefront of our minds.
In today's digital age,
instant gratification seems to always take priority over patience.
But in the world of crypto assets,
patience is the virtue that separates the weak hands from the gains.
That's all I got.
Be blessed.
BitBoy out.