Travel to Nagoya, Japan in Fall of 2024

Our journey began as we landed at Nagoya Chubu Centrair International Airport. I went together with my wife as part of mini trip we have every year. We were immediately impressed by the efficient services and warm hospitality. After settling in, our first stop was Yanagibashi Food Court. We started our culinary adventure at Sarashina Restaurant, enjoying some traditional Japanese dishes. We then moved to にほんのうみ水產 Restaurant for fresh seafood delicacies.

On the second day, We explored Midland Square, the tallest skyscraper in Nagoya. We spent hours shopping and dining. Later, we walked to Takashimaya, a luxury shopping paradise. At ECHIRE, we bought some exquisite French butter, a delight for any cheese lover.

Day three was all about diving into history. We visited Nagoya Castle and we were amazed by the history of the main keep and the beautifully reconstructed Hommaru Palace. Later, we strolled through Osu Shotengai Shopping Street. We stopped by Gaburi Chicken for some juicy fried chicken, Ikinari Steak for a hearty meal, and Don Quiote for some quirky shopping finds.

The fourth day was thrilling. We spent the day at Nagashima Spa Land, riding the Steel Dragon, screaming through the haunted house and experiencing the exhilarating Hakugei. The Giant Wheel Aurora and the Viking ship ride added more fun to the day. We ended the day at Mitsui Outlet Park Jazz Dream Nagashima, shopping for a variety of brands at discounted prices.

On the fifth day, We took a day trip to Shirakawago. The Observatory offered breathtaking views of the traditional gassho-zukuri farmhouses. We visited Wada House to step back in time and enjoyed delightful custard and jelly puddings at Purin House. Later, we continued to Hida Takayama, known for its beautifully preserved old town. I couldn’t miss Hidagyu Maruaki for delicious Hida beef skewers.

Returning to Nagoya, we dined at Sumibiyakiniku Sugimoto near Nagoya Station, renowned for its premium grilled meats. Before heading home, we dropped by Supermarket Seijo Ishi to stock up on unique Japanese snacks and goodies to take back as souvenirs.

It was a new and memorable experience for us and we glad that we took it. Next Stop, Osaka !

Travel to London, UK in 2024

 

It started with a dream. Sailing high up in the clouds using Singapore Airlines, the flight to London was all about expectations and comfort. When the plane landed at Heathrow International Airport, London, the universe played itself in the most dramatic way.

In a lovely part of the city, Stratford, it was pretty much returning home. Every day started with a tea and plans to conquer the endless beauty that this city has to offer. Buckingham Palace was more than a building, it was the epitome of history and followed a hundred-year-old tradition of welcoming people at its gates with the God Save the Queen chorus.

The London Eye was an altogether different experience with an aerial view of the whole city. From the most apparent heights, everything exists and it is undoubtedly possible to imagine the most pleasant sight, where the Thames slowly meanders through central London. The lines were long but the experience was great.

London Bridge has its obligatory stories and stepping on its stones invokes responses from centuries of business, victory and an unyielding will. This is a must visit if you ever go to London.

Westminster Abbey was an unsettling aspect of history in all its horrible dimensions where all the kings and the queens ended up buried. The design was quite striking as even the smallest pieces engraved into the history were somebody's hard work. Kensington Palace was an uninterrupted rewind of the happiest hours and the spicy sounds of its gardens brought some peace and tranquility from the hustle and bustle.

There were far more of them, be it street vendors’ stalls or secluded corners of a cafe, all promising to divulge the story. Owing to the historic as well as the contemporary, the aristocratic and the mundane, the city of London did not cease only as a place, but rather remained a memory.

Stratford, whichever way both ‘day’ and ‘night,’ was one such day which ended with the same glow. It was not only an exploration. London was a different world altogether that was full of surprises on a different level.

After 10 days, it's time to go home. This experience will surely be an experience to remember.

About Solana

The next best blockchain that I would like to cover is Solana. Although new, Solana has been one of the fastest growing technology in the crypto world. It is challenging Ethereum Dominance with faster speed and bigger throughput.

Solana is an innovative high-speed platform focusing on the development of decentralized applications and cryptocurrencies. undefined

1. High Throughput: Solana stands out from the rest due to its fast transaction rate that is capable of thousands of transactions per second (TPS). The high throughput of this solution resulted from leveraging both cutting-edge technologies and design elements, including a new consensus mechanism and a robust network architecture.

2. Proof of History (PoH): One of the distinguishing features of Solana is its consensus mechanism, known as Proof of History (PoH), a cryptographic clock function that order and time transactions in a fast and reliable manner. The PoH improves the network scalability by eliminating the traditional need for a leader-election mechanism, and as a result, the validators agree on the order of transactions.

3. Proof of Stake (PoS): Together with PoH, Solana employs the Proof of Stake with Proof of Replication (PoS-PoRep) mechanism called the Proof of Stake. The validators of the Solana network stake SOL (Solana's native cryptocurrency) and are selected to be block producers by amount of stake and their past performance.

4. Web-Scale Architecture: Solana's architecture is built to be web-scale in nature. Therefore, it can sustain the stress produced by the large-scale applications and facilitate global popularity. This scalability is created by applying a unique combination of technologies which consists of Tower BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) and parallel processing.

5. Low Fees: Solana acts by ensuring that the transaction fees are low and conducive for the users and developers to interact with the blockchain network. This is achieved by means of efficient network design and optimization, which make SOLA net fees low even in periods of high demand.

6. Ecosystem and Development: Solana is developing an increasing number of dApps, projects, and developers who is using its platform. The Slogan Foundation is responsible for assisting the ecosystem through grants, funds, and technical expertise.

7. Interoperability: Solana is a blockchain with a feature of interoperability that can be designed with other blockchain platforms and protocols thus allowing for cross-chain communications and compatibility. This interconnectivity enables Solana to leverage the capabilities of other ecosystems and, hence, ensures smooth interactions among the blockchains networks.

8. Decentralization: One of the main goals of the Solana network is to attain a high level of decentralization by delegating infrastructure and governance across a wide variety of validators. This, in turn, helps to secure and resist the integrity of the platform from any potential risks.

To sum up, Solana is a high performance blockchain platform, which solves scalability and performance issues that the most blockchains networks deal with nowadays, and gives the opportunity to develop decentralized apps and cryptocurrencies that are fast, scalable and cost-effective.

The year 2024 might just be the year for Solana.

About Cardano

In this Blog, I would like to talk about my favorite blockchain: Cardano.

Cardano is a blockchain platform that seeks to provide a more secure and scalable infrastructure for smart contracts and decentralized applications development. 

Here are some fun facts about Cardano:

1. Proof of Stake (PoS) Consensus Mechanism: Cardano uses a Proof of Stake algorithm called Ouroboros as its consensus mechanism. PoS systems are different from Proof of Work (PoW) systems like Bitcoin in that validators who participate in the network and have their own stake are in charge of validating transactions and creating new blocks. This method is cheaper in terms of energy as compared to PoW.

2. Layered Architecture: Cardano is a layered architecture built on which are sitting two layers: the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) and the Cardano Computation Layer (CCL). The CSL processes transactions and handles exchange of ADA (Cardano's native cryptocurrency), which is aimed at smart contracts and decentralized applications development through CCL.

3. Native Cryptocurrency - ADA: ADA is the in-house coin of the Cardano platform. Such a currency can be used for numerous purposes within the environment, including transactions, staking as well as being used as a means of exchange. ADA is found on multiple different crypto exchanges.

4. Scientific Approach: Cardano is a project of peer-reviewed academic research and have a formal methods philosophy. Through this manner, the sustainability and the scalability of the system are assured with the help of academic rigor and mathematical principles.

5. Decentralized Governance: Cardano has a decentralized governance system that harnesses the power of ADA holders to partake in the decision-making process which is directed towards protocol upgrades and enhancements. This mechanism, called Voltaire, allows participants to submit and vote on ideas by using their ADA tokens.

6. Interoperability: The target of Cardano is to increase the interoperability between blockchain platforms as well as traditional systems. For example, these efforts incorporate the ability to communicate across chains and also integrate with the existing monetary and identity systems.

7. Partnerships and Development: Cardano runs on the technology of Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), a company that was founded by Charles Hoskinson who is one of the co-founders of Ethereum. IOHK aims at multiple partnerships with the educational institutions as well as the industrial leaders in order to progress the Cardano network.

8. Sustainability: Cardano has a sustainable growth strategy that targets for the creation of a self -sufficient ecosystem. It also contains methods of financing and maintenance such as transaction fees and treasury reserves.

In a nutshell, Cardano seeks to overcome some of the issues like scalability, security and sustainability that the current blockchain platforms have, by combining rigorous research, interoperability and decentralization.

Although currently Cardano is not yet as big as Solana, with the backing of its founder, it can be one of the biggest blockchain in the future. 

About Ethereum

In this article, I would like to give some fun facts about Ethereum as well as give insights regarding the second biggest blockchain in terms of marketcap: the Ethereum blockchain. 

Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain system that features smart contract functionality. Proposed by Vitalik Buterin in late 2013, the development was crowdfunded in 2014 and went live on July 30, 2015 on the website. 

Here are some basic facts about Ethereum:

1. Ethereum is a decentralized and open-source blockchain software, Ethereum has been created with smart contract functionality. The idea was put forward by Vitalik Buterin in late 2013. The project was crowdfunded in 2014, and after that on July 30, 2015 went live on the website. 

Some basic facts about Ethereum: 

1. Blockchain Technology: Just as Bitcoin does, Ethereum uses blockchain technology. Nevertheless, unlike the former it was made to be more adaptive while allowing developers to create decentralised apps and smart contracts for its platform. 

2. Ether (ETH): Ether is the main cryptocurrency of the Ethereum platform. It is used to compensate participants when auditing and to recognize transactions. Ether can also be traded on various cryptocurrency exchanges and is commonly used as a means of exchanging goods and services in the Ethereum ecosystem 

3. Smart Contracts: Smart contracts are self-executing contracts where the terms of the contract are written directly into law. They draft and enforce the terms of the contract on their own subject to fulfilling certain conditions, without the need for an intermediary. Ethereum’s support for smart contracts enables a wide range of decentralized applications, from decentralized finance (DeFi) to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

4. Decentralized Applications (dApps): Ethereum allows developers to create decentralized applications on its platform. These dApps can range from financial applications such as decentralized exchanges and lending platforms to gaming, social networks and supply chain management systems 

5. Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM): The Ethereum Virtual Machine is a runtime environment for creating smart contracts. It’s a decentralized Turing-filled virtual machine, which means it can run any code with enough computing resources and time. 

6. Proof of stake (PoS): Ethereum is transitioning from a proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. This change is known as Ethereum 2.0 or Eth2.0. Compared to PoW, PoS is expected to improve scalability, security and energy efficiency. 

7. Ethereum Enhancement Proposals (EIPs): EIPs are proposals for changes to the Ethereum protocol. They may include improving the performance of the network, modifying the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), or modifying the financial parameters of the network. 

Overall, Ethereum has become a foundational product in the blockchain-cryptocurrency space, providing a platform for innovation and development of decentralized applications across industries

I believe despite the emergence of ethereum competition such as Solana, Cardano, and other blockchain, Ethereum will still be one of the main player in the crypto industry. With strong foundation backing its growth, the future is bright for Ethereum. 

About Bitcoin

Bitcoin, being a form of digitally decentralized money, has its origin in the year 2009 where it was invented by a single person or a group of people with pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Blockchain is a platform supported by distributed ledger that documents all transactions across multiple networks of computers and this platform is where it runs.

Bitcoin has a concept called halving. With halving , usually the interest in bitcoin will arise and the price of bitcoin usually increases. With halving around 100 days away, let's get to know bitcoin.

Here are some key aspects of Bitcoin:

1. Decentralization: The Bitcoin has no control from central administration such as the government or bank. Instead, it utilizes a set of nodes (computers) that approve and file transactions onto the blockchain.

2. Blockchain: First, every transaction of bitcoin gets recorded in a public ledger known as “blockchain”. Each transaction block is linked with previous blocks in order to form a chain that preserves every transaction, thus maintaining it within a system of nodes. It ensures transparency and safety of this technology.

3. Mining: A process known as “mining” is used to verify Bit coin transactions. The process involves miners solving difficult mathematical questions using powerful computers to verify transactions. Miners get paid through creation of new bitcoins which are then given to them in recognition of their labour. Moreover, this procedure assists in securing the network.ICENSE://input: The patent should have clearly mentioned that the patented material would have been made available under a specific copyright license.

4. Limited Supply: There are only 21mil Bitcoins available as supply. Its inherent scarcity designed in its protocol is meant as an imitation of the scarcity of precious metals such as gold. The primary purpose of the controlled supply is to curb long-term inflation.

5. Wallets: People use Bitcoin and in doing so they have to have a digital wallet that could be one of these: the software based, hardware based or paper based wallets. Wallets help users to keep and control the amount of bitcoin, as well as the sending and receiving processes.

6. Volatility: Bitcoin is subject to huge price fluctuations. Its pricing is dependent on market demands and supplies for, and it may witness dramatic price movements during brief time.

7. Pseudonymity: Although these transactions have a record in the blockchain, the identities of those concerned are usually pseudonymic. Rather, users are distinguished in terms of alphanumeric addresses and not personal identifying information.

8. Acceptance and Regulation: Some merchandisers have started using bitcoins as payments for goods and services over the time. However, it is not generally accepted and its regulatory status differs from country to country.

9. Security Considerations: Although the blockchain is deemed to be secure, each user must ensure that his/her private key remains safe as it serves for accessing and managing one’s bitcoins. If you lose your private key, then you have lost your coins in bitcoin.

However, it’s worth noting that the crypto field is rapidly changing and unforeseen events could evolve that will reshape our perspective on the bitcoins. There are also other cryptocurrencies popularly called altcoins and these have variations in the technology they employ to the features that they offer.

Bitcoin & Ethereum Prices - May 5, 2023

 

Hello my friends, welcome back to Digiwarehouses. 

As we navigate our way out of the bear market, we can see some light at the end of the tunnel. The road will be bumpy as we build our market structure but in the end i believe bitcoin will get out of the bear market with strength. Approaching mid 2023, we can see that several market conditions start to shape up:

- The Fed is slowing down on Rate Hike

- Economy is slowing down as we seee that banks started to show weakness and job cuts are still happening everywhere as the Fed still try to force a recession to slow down the economy.

We see that during this week that gold has reached a new all time high above $2,000 USD as investor turn to gold for safety. 

All this economic condition affecting the price of bitcoin for sure. However we can still see that bitcoin had a major rebound to around $28,000 USD despite all these conditions.
I believe the next few months until the end of the year will be crucial to bitcoin as bitcoin might test our nearest support but will eventually go up to around $40,000 at the end of the year and hopefully go even higher in 2024 based on technical analysis.

Hopefully this will coincide with the next bitcoin halving that should happen at around April next year and spur a new all time high for Bitcoin. But i believe based on economic condition and base on historical technical analysis, bitcoin might not reach $100,000 USD next cycle.

As of this week, the prices of bitcoins and friends are at:

Bitcoin ( BTC ) - $29,095.- / IDR 426,512,000.-

Ethereum ( ETH ) - $1,898.- / IDR 27,886,000,-

CoinSwapSpace ( CSS ) - $0.012

Here are some of the prices of crypto assets in my portfolio:

Cardano ( ADA ) - IDR 5,710.-

Polkadot ( DOT ) - IDR 85,035.-

Chainlink ( LINK ) - IDR 103,871.-

Stellar ( XLM ) - IDR 1,368.-

Tezos ( XTZ ) - IDR 14,603.-

Don't forget my favorite token : Coin Swap Space

DAPP: https://app.coinswap.space/#/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/CoinSwap_Space

 

See you in the next post !

Stay rational and stay safe !

Bitcoin & Ethereum Prices - November 21, 2022

 

Hello crypto peeps, welcome back to Digiwarehouses. I am sorry I haven't updated you guys in a while as I have been busy and the crypto world has not always been a friendly place to go to lately.

In the bear market, all the events that keeping bitcoin down keep unfolding. After the luna events, when people's trust in bitcoin started to grow, there is another event occured while I was away that could have a huge impact in the crypto world.

You guys are correct, it's the FTX debacle. In the last 2 weeks, the crypto world has been shaken up by the news that FTX, the 2nd largest crypto exchange has collapsed and now declaring bankruptcy. So what happened ?

Well all good things must come to an end. Long story short, Binance started chain of events that would collapse FTX. Binance announced that they would sell their FTT Token due to suspicions that FTX is not transparent. Binance hold a huge amount of FTT Token, hence the bank run started. People started selling their FTT in fear of the token goes to 0. 

At first, it seems that everything is OK since FTX should have enough assets to cover the liquidity of the FTT Token. However, soon after, it was found that they don't have the liquidity. They asked Binance for helped and upon due diligence, it was found that there are USD $ 8.000.000.000 hole in FTX book. The story then unfold that FTX has been channeling money to Alameda Research. A company headed by Sam's girfriend and that Alameda Research had lost so much money in previous months. In the end FTX filed for bankruptcy and could no longer survive. 

What we need to worry about is the chain of events that will unfold after this. Many crypto players lend money to FTX and have some ties to FTX that it could collapse more players in the crypto industry. We shall see this in the coming months as more and more unfolds.

As of this week, the prices of bitcoins and friends are at:

Bitcoin ( BTC ) - $16,250.- / IDR 256,969,000.-

Ethereum ( ETH ) - $1,139.- / IDR 18,049,000,-

CoinSwapSpace ( CSS ) - $0.029

Here are some of the prices of crypto assets in my portfolio:

Cardano ( ADA ) - IDR 4,956.-

Polkadot ( DOT ) - IDR 83,600.-

Chainlink ( LINK ) - IDR 92,797.-

Stellar ( XLM ) - IDR 1,365.-

Tezos ( XTZ ) - IDR 15,347.-

Don't forget my favorite token : Coin Swap Space

DAPP: https://app.coinswap.space/#/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/CoinSwap_Space

 

See you in the next post !

Stay rational and stay safe !

Bitcoin & Ethereum Prices - August 4, 2022

Hello crypto peeps, welcome back to Digiwarehouses. Let's talk about what has been happening this week in the crypto world.

There are several occasions that marks the highlight of this week. First bitcoin is showing some strength on the chart. There are some dip attempt, but bitcoin seems to be relatively comfortable at around USD $22,000,- Fear and Greed Index is at around 30 right now, so no sign of BTC going back to $30,000,- just yet but it is a great start.

I believe BTC has bottomoed, and now we should start the accumulation phase and waiting for major economic push. ( As long as the macro economic does not falter lower and inflation goes higher than it is, then it could play out well for bitcoin )

There are some concerns regarding crypto security. One of the biggest is the Solana attack that is happening as we speak. The Solana Attack is due to fault of Slope, the maker of phantom wallet. Hopefully people can get back their crypto. Keep your crypto safe folks. If you are using phantom wallet, move your crypto asap !

As of this week, the prices of bitcoins and friends are at:

Bitcoin ( BTC ) - $23,000.- / IDR 343,248,000.-

Ethereum ( ETH ) - $1,632.- / IDR 22,865,000,-

CoinSwapSpace ( CSS ) - $0.056

Here are some of the prices of crypto assets in my portfolio:

Cardano ( ADA ) - IDR 7,550.-

Polkadot ( DOT ) - IDR 121,474.-

Chainlink ( LINK ) - IDR 109,713.-

Stellar ( XLM ) - IDR 1,724.-

Tezos ( XTZ ) - IDR 26,300.-

Don't forget my favorite token : Coin Swap Space

DAPP: https://app.coinswap.space/#/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/CoinSwap_Space

 

See you in the next post !

Stay rational and stay safe !

Bitcoin & Ethereum Prices - July 25, 2022

As we are navigating through the bear market with no bottom in sight, it is crucial that we take this chance as an opportunity to clean our portfolio and choose the correct portfolio that will make us wealthy in the next bull run.

Bitcoin is currently ongoing a small correction after a pretty strong week last week. However it is concerning that we cannot go through above $24,000 USD. There are some negative news or as we say FUD .. that Elon Musk had sold their bitcoin holdings because Tesla was in need of liquid cash due to Chinese lockdown and ongoing inflation. Since our price is still holding the line, I believe it didn't have much impact on the market.
I am not a financial advisor but i believe that we have a strong foundation at around $19,000 to $20,000 USD and if we can hold it, we shall bounce higher.

Also, ( Not a financial advise ) , I found this crypto that might have a good foundation for the next bull run. It's a utility token where u can stake , swap and farm and its highly decentralized. It also has launchpad for token launch. I believe it's a pretty good token for the future. The telegram community is friendly and responsive. The twitter is active. So i might be holding on to this for the next bull run. The token is : Coin Swap Space

DAPP: https://app.coinswap.space/#/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/CoinSwap_Space

 

As of this week, the prices of bitcoins and friends are at:

Bitcoin ( BTC ) - $21,870.74 / IDR 329,148,000.00

Ethereum ( ETH ) - $1,516.80 / IDR 22,865,000,00 

CoinSwapSpace ( CSS ) - $0.0530773

Here are some of the prices of crypto assets in my portfolio:

Cardano ( ADA ) - IDR 7,420.00

Polkadot ( DOT ) - IDR 105,927.00

Chainlink ( LINK ) - IDR 101,741.00

Stellar ( XLM ) - IDR 1,664.00

Tezos ( XTZ ) - IDR 22,835.00

See you in the next post !

Stay rational and stay safe !

Bitcoin & Ethereum Prices - July 18, 2022

Hey guys, we are officially in the crypto bear market. More over, we are also in the midst of a recession and the highest inflation rate in the history of most countries, including United States. United States had a 9.1% year on year inflation for June. It will be interesting how much the Fed will increase rate because of this inflation.

As you all know, i am still holding crypto and I have firm believe in crypto that crypto will be the future of technology. As of today however, crypto is down almost 70-80% from its all time high. Many people are discussing where is this marketcycle bottom. Many people are saying 13.5 K is the bottom. Some people who are long crypto analyst are saying that 19.5K is the bottom because some of the charts are flashing bottom. Well let's see what happens next. As of now, as we are in a major economic downturn , we shouldn't see any major rally to the upside anytime soon. I believe that our macro economic doesn't help with the situation.

 

As of this week, the prices of bitcoins and friends are at:

Bitcoin ( BTC ) - $21,638.18 / IDR 320,392,000.00

Ethereum ( ETH ) - $1,437.63 / IDR 21,446,000,00

Here are some of the prices of crypto assets in my portfolio:

Cardano ( ADA ) - IDR 6,945.00

Polkadot ( DOT ) - IDR 109,000.00

Chainlink ( LINK ) - IDR 99,100.00

Stellar ( XLM ) - IDR 1,649.00

Tezos ( XTZ ) - IDR 22,400.00

See you in the next post ! Let me know in the comment what crypto are you holding now ...

Stay rational and stay safe !