I just sent my first Bitcoin Cash (BCH) transaction from Gemini to my hardware wallet. It cost only $0.05 to transfer one whole BCH (currently worth ~$1,000). I'm very impressed by how quickly the transaction took to confirm (under 1 min) and how cheap the transfer cost. I don't know much about the Bitcoin Cash protocol until now but I would like to learn more.

I had originally purchased Bitcoin Cash because it was one of four coins offered by PayPal so I figured it must be a good enough altcoin if PayPal is willing to invest developer resources to adopt it into their network. I am bullish on Bitcoin Cash because of my experience so far. 

Edit (2:38pm): Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, announced that it will now allow users to buy/sell the same four cryptocurrencies that I mentioned above. Not surprising given the relationship with PayPal but this is exciting as -- based on my anecdotal research -- there are many more young people who use Venmo over PayPal, whose demographics tend to skew towards the older crowd. 

I am going to start a new series where I post a short video (approx 10 mins or shorter) each Sunday about cryptocurrencies. Today's video is about how Ethereum works. Even for a newbie like me, I understood what a Merkle Tree is and how it relates to blockchains. Hope you enjoy this short video.

Dogecoin has been a tear recently. By my count, it's had over 500% return in the past couple weeks -- my perspective is that this is a sign that the crypto community is still very nascent and reminiscent of the internet in the 1990's. There's a lot of potential in crypto and also a lot of speculation; except that this phenomenon is happening on a global scale with very little barriers to adoption. I think there is more hype coming and the peak is yet to come.

I've been trying to understand what is a smart contract. According to the GitHub post, the ELI5 version is that you're basically paying a bunch of computers on a network to process a piece of code that you send to it. I think you can think of it similar to Amazon's AWS but runs on more basic code. The costs to run a smart contract varies with the price of gas, which is paid in ETH.

And closes at $328 so a 31% pop on day 1.

Brian has written some pretty good blog posts that are worth your time.

And for posterity, here is Brian's plea to HN seeking a co-founder.