RaiBlocks (XRB) is a potentially revolutionary cryptocurrency. And now, in this dippy market, is the perfect time to open a position.
RaiBlocks doesn’t operate on a traditional blockchain infrastructure. It operates using what it calls a “directed acyclic graph.” Think of it like a network of blockchains, with each user having their own “mini-chain.”
There are no “miners” with RaiBlocks. All the RaiBlocks coins that will ever exist already do (133,248,290, with each being divisible into billions of sub-units).
RaiBlocks is very fast, with transactions taking 10 seconds or less. And it has no transaction fees at all.
Now, considering the fact that bitcoin’s average transaction fees have crept up to $30 or so, this is… big.
How are “fast, free” transactions possible?
Most of the processing power used in a RaiBlocks transaction is provided by the sender and receiver. Since they are both running their own private blockchains, it doesn’t take much. And the system is extremely efficient.
Additional assistance is provided by what are called “nodes,” dedicated servers that help support the network.
So, who runs these nodes (since there are no fees to be collected)?
Right now, RaiBlocks nodes are run by…
- Cryptocurrency exchanges
- RaiBlocks wallet providers
- RaiBlocks holders and enthusiasts
- RaiBlocks developers
- The RaiBlocks team.
Exchanges, for example, must run nodes in order to interact with RaiBlocks. By doing so, they help the entire network out.
It doesn’t cost much to run a node. For around $50, you could run a node on a major hosting service like Amazon or DigitalOcean for a year.
If RaiBlocks takes off and becomes the cryptocurrency of the future, plenty of businesses, banks, exchanges and more will need to run RaiBlocks nodes to transact with the network.
I’m not worried about a lack of nodes slowing this project down. If it keeps growing, the number of businesses running nodes will scale in a similar way. Plus, there are always members of the development community who will run their own nodes simply because it gives them more control.
The amazing thing about this crypto is how it’s efficient enough to run with very minimal outside support. It’s practically a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency.
If you want more details on the technical aspects of RaiBlocks, read this piece, which compares it to IOTA, a competing coin. It’s technical, but a very good read.
To learn more about where RaiBlocks is headed, you can see its road map here.
The Team
The lead developer and founder of RaiBlocks is Colin LeMahieu. He’s an extremely talented coder.
Colin worked at Qualcomm, the giant chipmaker, until he recently left to pursue RaiBlocks full time.
He was also a software engineer at AMD and Dell.
Colin seems to also be an excellent communicator, which is rare among coding geniuses. You should read this article Colin wrote on Medium.
With all the recent excitement around RaiBlocks, you can be sure it’s flooded with developer interest. And with the recent rise in price, any developers RaiBlocks is already working with should be very happy. (Most crypto developers take their pay in crypto.)
Colin appears to be building a top-class team of developers, and he can now afford to pay some top-notch ones. (This is good, because great crypto developers are hard to find these days. They only want to work on the coolest projects with the most potential, or the ones that pay them the most.)
RaiBlocks is now (rightfully) considered one of the coolest and most potentially game-changing crypto projects in the world. So it should have no problem attracting top talent, and it shouldn’t have to overpay for it.
Here’s a snapshot of the development team’s overview last week on GitHub (where most open-source companies, including RaiBlocks, store their code):
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So we have eight separate authors pushing 15 significant changes (commits) live. Overall, there have been 2,795 additions and 72 deletions. This indicates that major improvements and fixes are being rolled out on an almost daily basis.
This is what a nice, dedicated team’s GitHub profile should look like.
Community
The RaiBlocks community is amazing. I joined their Discord chat and was surprised by the amount of activity. At 8:30 p.m., 2,800 people were online, all busily chatting about RaiBlocks.
The RaiBlocks Reddit community is also booming and extremely active. Same story on Twitter, where they have a large, diverse and real community of followers. (It’s easy to tell fake followers from the real ones if you look at enough of ’em.)
One of my favorite things I discovered while researching RaiBlocks is that one of PayPal’s lead software engineers in the checkout department is working on a RaiBlocks product in his spare time.
The appropriately named engineer, Daniel Brain, built a RaiBlocks checkout app. He wrote a very nice piece on Medium describing it. I highly recommend giving it a read, but here’s an excerpt:
… Then I found out about RaiBlocks, and read a little about the project. I tried a few sub-10-second transactions firsthand, found out that the protocol is entirely without fees, has no mining, and the technology is actually something new, as opposed to just being an incremental improvement on top of bitcoin’s blockchain tech.
I was won over straight away.
How to Buy RaiBlocks
RaiBlocks isn’t on many exchanges yet. So we’re going to have to open a Kucoin account to buy it.
Kucoin is a relatively new exchange. It’s crypto only. No fiat dollars. It’s a Chinese exchange catering to foreign investors (since most Chinese citizens can’t trade crypto by law).
I vetted its security procedures, and they are solid. Fees are extremely cheap at 0.10% of the transaction.
First, register and set up an account here: https://www.kucoin.com.
Note: Your verification email from Kucoin may go to your spam folder (mine did). So definitely check your spam folder for that.
Make sure you go directly to Kucoin.com. Do not search for it in Google and click on ads – they could be imposters. Now, once you’re logged in…
In the upper-right corner of the screen, you’ll see a little circular dollar sign. Click on that, and it will bring you to another screen.
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Once you’re there, click on “Deposit” on the left side of the screen.
Pick the coin you want to deposit. (I strongly recommend bitcoin or Ethereum, as almost all coins trade only in pairs with one of them.) If you don’t have any bitcoin or Ethereum yet, you’ll need to buy some at a crypto exchange such as Coinbase, Gemini or Kraken.
To select the coin you want to deposit, click the dropdown menu where it says “Kucoin Shares.” That will bring up a menu of all the options.
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The exchange will now show you a new wallet address where you can deposit that coin. Copy this new wallet address to your clipboard (control+C on Windows).
In a separate browser window, log in to your other wallet/exchange where the bitcoin/Ethereum is. (We’ll use Coinbase for this example.)
Now you need to send the bitcoin or Ethereum from your Coinbase wallet to the new Kucoin address.
Go to “Send” in Coinbase and paste the Kucoin wallet address you copied earlier into the “Send To:” field in Coinbase.
Double-check and make sure you are sending bitcoin ONLY to a bitcoin wallet address, or sending Ethereum only to an Ethereum wallet address, etc.
Once you have either bitcoin or Ethereum in your Kucoin account, go to the “Markets” tab.
RaiBlocks should be right near the top. It will say “XRB/BTC” or “XRB/ETH.” Choose whichever trading pair you are buying with, bitcoin or Ethereum, and click on it.
Next you’ll be brought to the trading page.
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Entering orders will seem a little strange at first. The interface still needs a little work, and it’s all translated from Chinese (impressively, in my opinion).
If you want to make it easy, only transfer the amount of bitcoin/Ethereum you want to spend on RaiBlocks to Kucoin. Then simply click on the numbers next to “Best price” and “Max.”
If you want to buy less, you can slide the “Ratio” bar in the middle that will move up and down, representing the amount of bitcoin/Ethereum you will be spending.
Once you’ve entered the amount you wish to buy – I recommend using the best (market) price, unless you’re an experienced trader – simply press “Buy.”
You may be asked to enter your Google Authenticator code again here. And by the way, I do strongly recommend turning on two-factor authentication for Kucoin and all other exchanges.
To activate Google Authenticator on Kucoin, go to settings, and on the left-hand side select “Google 2-Step.”
Write down your backup code BEFORE scanning it into the Google Authenticator app. Keep it somewhere very safe. Triple-check everything.
Risks
As with all cryptocurrency and early-stage investments, this is a high-risk, high-reward investment. There could be technical problems down the road that are unforeseen, regulatory problems, etc.
While the upside is tremendously high on this one, there are still significant risks. Don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose.
Good investing,
Adam