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As digital assets gain popularity, investing in cryptocurrencies may be warranted, but their volatility requires careful research.With thousands of cryptocurrencies to consider, investors can get overwhelmed. However, my view is to start with the top ten options by market capitalization, and work from there.

This list contains some of the most recognizable and well-known projects available. For those seeking relative stability, this is your starting point. Additionally, these cryptos have performed well over the past two months and have shown a long track record of impressive growth.

Lets dive in!

Source: Sittipong Phokawattana / Shutterstock.com

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) sets the crypto market tone, evolving from worthless to high-value but in early adoption stages. Cryptos infrastructure is still immature, similar to explaining modern banking to people from centuries ago.

Additionally, Bitcoin remains a pioneer and enduring crypto investment. Its remarkable journey to an all-time high of $68,789 is captivating. The crypto infrastructure is in its early stages, and Bitcoin, as digital gold, is still shining brightly.

Recent events, like Grayscales Bitcoin ETF success and an evolving SEC stance, signal a dynamic regulatory environment. This momentum boosts the crypto industry, fostering hope for digital currencies in regulated finance. As regulation clarifies, Bitcoin gains appeal, particularly for institutions seeking stability.

Source: shutterstock.com/BT Side

Ethereum (ETH-USD) pioneered smart contracts, enabling actions and value transfer. It, alongside Bitcoin, anchors todays crypto landscape. With 280,000+ ERC-20 tokens on its blockchain, Ethereum has a solid position. Competitors recognize its moat, favoring compliance over competition. Ethereums dominance makes it challenging to replace, and its more likely to strengthen over time than be surpassed.

Ethereum leads in smart contracts, with a strong developer community and switching obstacles for competitors. Transitioning to proof-of-stake offers eco-friendly advantages and significant potential returns over the next five years, in my view.

That, along with token burning and layer 2 solutions, will fuel Ethereum adoption, making it a top blockchain investment.

Source: solvertv / Shutterstock.com

Solana (SOL-USD), an early Ethereum competitor in Web 3.0, faced turbulence from $260 to $25 but shouldnt be dismissed. Termed Visa for digital assets, it gains institutional traction, offering scalability, affordability, and compatibility. Solana excels in DeFi, NFTs, and innovations like the Helium migration, a crypto dark horse.

Solana made headlines in 2021, surging 700% to $260, thanks to its rapid transaction processing. However, it later dropped over 90% from its peak during late 2021 and early 2022 crypto downturns.

In recent SOL news, Solana co-creator Anatoly Yakovenko pushes to redistribute seven million SOL tokens from FTX reserves to former customers, potentially reshaping FTX and boosting Solana. He proposed allocating SOL tokens to new users to compensate FTX customers and invigorate Solanas growth, decentralization, and vitality.

On the date of publication, Chris MacDonald has a LONG position in SOL, ETH. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Chris MacDonalds love for investing led him to pursue an MBA in Finance and take on a number of management roles in corporate finance and venture capital over the past 15 years. His experience as a financial analyst in the past, coupled with his fervor for finding undervalued growth opportunities, contribute to his conservative, long-term investing perspective.

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The 3 Best Cryptos to Buy Now: September 2023 - InvestorPlace

The world of blockchain technology is expanding rapidly. Many different blockchains have emerged, each with their own unique capabilities and features. Yet one of the major challenges facing the industry is a lack of interoperability between these different networks. This can limit the potential growth and real-world utility of blockchain technology.

Cardano aims to address the interoperability challenge through its thoughtful, research-driven approach to blockchain development. Led by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, Cardano seeks to create a blockchain platform that can easily connect with other networks. Let's explore Cardano's vision for achieving interoperability and why it matters for the future of blockchain technology.

A core part of Cardano's strategy is developing a standardized communication protocol that can interface between different blockchains. This protocol aims to enable transactions and other information sharing between otherwise disconnected networks.

Cardano is specifically developing an "Inter-Blockchain Communication" (IBC) protocol. IBC will act as a universal language that diverse blockchains can utilize to communicate with each other. The open-source nature of IBC will allow other blockchain projects to easily integrate the protocol. If widely adopted, IBC could provide the foundation for an "internet of blockchains."

Developing a standardized interoperability protocol aligns with Cardano's goal of following research-driven engineering practices. Instead of creating a fully isolated platform, Cardano is focused on developing open-source blockchain infrastructure that can benefit the broader ecosystem.

Another element of Cardano's interoperability vision is enabling cross-chain smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing programs that run on blockchains like Cardano and Ethereum.

Currently, smart contracts can only run within their native blockchain environment. But Cardano wants to make it possible for smart contracts to seamlessly operate across multiple chains. The calculation would be performed on one network while pulling data from another.

Cross-chain smart contract interoperability would allow developers to build decentralized applications that harness the unique capabilities of different blockchains. For example, a decentralized finance (DeFi) application could use a stablecoin on one network while accessing lending services on another.

For end users, this cross-chain approach means that they aren't limited to only applications running on a single blockchain. As smart contract adoption increases, interoperable contracts will become essential for delivering a seamless user experience.

Sidechains represent another tool that can facilitate interoperability on Cardano. A sidechain is a separate blockchain that runs parallel to a main network and is attached as a secondary layer.

The key benefit of a sidechain is that it allows developers to experiment with new features or changes without impacting the primary chain. Cardano intends to utilize sidechains both to test out their own experimental features as well as connect to external blockchains.

For example, Cardano could develop a sidechain specifically designed to enable compatibility with the Ethereum network. This would allow assets and other information to move fluidly between the two platforms. Sidechains lower the difficulty of integrating external blockchains compared to changing the main chain.

Overall, sidechains give Cardano flexibility to customize connections tailored to the needs of different networks. Sidechains will be essential to broadening interoperability as Cardano evolves.

Achieving wide-scale interoperability between blockchains has the potential to profoundly impact the broader cryptocurrency industry. Here are two ways enhanced interoperability could reshape the market:

One of the most immediate effects of connecting blockchains together would be enabling easier transfer of assets between networks. Moving assets between wallets on separate chains currently requires going through centralized exchanges.

But with protocols like IBC, assets could move directly between chains through decentralized bridges. This would greatly improve liquidity in the market by removing friction in cross-chain transactions.

Direct asset transfers also open up new possibilities like using Bitcoin on decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Overall, seamless cross-chain transactions would significantly expand the possibilities for how users interact with blockchain services.

Another major impact interoperability could have is sparking greater innovation in decentralized applications (dApps). Right now developers face limitations by having to build exclusively on a single blockchain's environment.

But if smart contracts could seamlessly operate across chains, developers could mix and match the best features from different networks. This composability would allow creating novel dApps taking advantage of blockchain diversity.

Interoperability would also give dApp users a smoother experience not constrained to a single chain. Widespread adoption of dApps requires an easy user experience, which interoperability helps enable.

Cardano has made significant progress on its vision for an interoperable blockchain ecosystem. However, substantial work remains to make this vision a practical reality used widely across the industry.

In 2021, Cardano took a major step forward by successfully launching smart contract capability on its mainnet in the Alonzo upgrade. This provides the foundation for more advanced interoperability functionality down the road.

The team is actively developing the IBC protocol for standardized communication between blockchains. But IBC is still likely years away from large-scale adoption. The protocol must be thoroughly tested and embraced by other major blockchain projects to create a truly interconnected network.

Cardano is also researching the technical challenges around enabling cross-chain smart contracts. But this capability is still early in conceptual development.

Overall, Cardano has the right strategic outlook focused on interoperability. But patience will be required to let Cardano's thoughtful and peer-reviewed approach evolve the technology to fulfill its potential.

Interoperability has become one of the most pressing issues facing the blockchain industry today. With so many different networks emerging, the walls between these isolated ecosystems have to come down for blockchain adoption to reach mainstream status.

Cardano stands out for its vision focused on open, research-driven blockchain development.standardized communication protocols like IBC and cross-chain smart contracts are the types of foundational infrastructure needed to connect these disparate networks.

Of course, Cardano is still early on its ambitious roadmap. However, the blockchain's methodical approach inspired by academia could make it uniquely positioned to solve blockchain interoperability compared to other projects. If achieved, seamless interoperability promises to profoundly expand what is possible with decentralized technology and bring blockchain closer to mass adoption.

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Cardano's Vision for Interoperability with Other Blockchains - BTC Peers

Millions of people use messaging apps such as Twitter (now X), WhatsApp, Signal, Threads, and others to communicate online. Many businesses too, rely on messaging apps for branding, product announcements, and keeping in touch with customers. Typically, none of these account holders have any say in how platforms develop, unless theyve signed up to OpenChat, which has a different view on the governance of messaging apps.

Weve become used to the model of tech giants offering free or low-cost services in return for the insights gained from customer data. But the creators of OpenChat, which runs on the Internet Computer a decentralized platform for hosting computer code, data, and compute (see below) offer their app as an open internet service.

This means there is no backing company tracking and selling your data, explained Hamish Peebles, OpenChat co-founder and one of the Rust developers on the project, in an online introduction to OpenChat. Instead, the service is owned and managed by the holders of the services governance tokens. And in our case, we will be distributing those tokens amongst the users.

Changes to the open internet service are made via proposals, which are made public, and users who want to get involved in the decision-making process can vote on the proposed code or feature changes. Proposals that gain enough support are then adopted.

Also, to encourage others to get involved, contributions are rewarded with additional governance tokens.

Nothing happens behind closed doors, everything happens out in the open, and everyone is welcome to get involved, said Peebles, when introducing the project back in 2021. And for those that just want to use [OpenChat] as a normal chat app, thats fine too.

The first step is to sign up for example, by creating an Internet Computer identity. And users have the option to generate a passkey a unique public/private key pair that is stored in the secure hardware chip present in smartphones and other messaging devices.

Messages carry an initial tick to indicate that theyve been received by the OpenChat services and a second one appears when the correspondence has been read by the recipient. Users can add emojis to their messages and upload attachments.

Media files such as images and videos are rendered directly in the message panel, and other file types are badged as a downloadable attachment. The OpenChat team recently launched a communities feature and has a roadmap of technical updates advertised online.

Notifications and messages can be sent between browsers using peer-to-peer Web RTC connections that are brokered using the OpenChat service operating on the Internet Computer, according to co-founder Matt Grogan another software engineer working on the project. And this enables extremely fast messaging for example, when two users in a conversation are both online.

Search data is available on a users own chat canister secured on the Internet Computer. And this means that a user can query their entire chat history from any device.

Another feature of the service is the ability for users to send so-called Cycles to each other. Cycles are similar to gas in Ethereum, and are used to pay for Internet Computer resources down to the CPU instruction and byte of memory, Grogan explains.

The basic unit of Cycles is in trillions, and this is a good point in the story to answer the question what is the Internet Computer?

To borrow the words of Dominic Williams Founder and Chief Scientist at DFINITY, the foundation responsible for building the federated computing resource the purpose of the Internet Computer project is to extend the internet and make it far more powerful.

Rather than have services hosted by private firms in the cloud, the Internet Computer aspires to provide a worldwide compute platform. And Williams dubs the project the third great innovation in blockchain, with the first being the invention of Bitcoin in 2009 conjuring up the notion of digital gold followed by the second milestone of smart contracts on Ethereum in 2015.

A decade ago, Williams witnessed how blockchain could do much more than enabling cryptocurrencies, and could be used to host computer code (smart contracts), data, and critically computation. Internet Computer smart contracts can deliver user experience (UX) by processing HTTP commands, which sets the platform apart from other projects.

Also, recent developments mean that Internet Computer nodes can talk to Bitcoin nodes. That enables smart contracts on the Internet Computer to directly process Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain without the need for bridges, said Williams earlier this year, recapping the projects achievements so far. The next step is to integrate with Ethereum.

The Internet Computers governance system is known as the network nervous system (NNS) and it provides the means for an adaptive blockchain, where protocol upgrades can be introduced without having to perform hard forking.

Williams points to other efficiency gains too. He believes that the Internet Computers crypto cloud can be more efficient than centralized tech in the end. The foundation has worked with Carbon Crowd on a Proof of Green initiative. And its been reported that a single Google search is four times more energy intensive than a transaction on the Internet Computer.

OpenChat one of a number of Internet Computer apps is hosted across independent data centers running Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). And some believe that ICP could be a potential replacement for legacy IT stack, considering not just messaging applications, but other products too.

Software is reimagined as interoperable compute units known as canisters, which comprise a bundle of WebAssembly byte code and associated memory. Parallelizable, canisters run at web speed, and can be used to build various services from websites to enterprise systems and industrial platforms.

Developers write code in any language that compiles to WebAssembly, such as Rust, and then upload the resulting canisters to the Internet Computer through ICP. The architecture is said to eliminate cloud services, database servers, web servers, and the use of a content distribution network to speed up delivery.

Williams goes as far as to say that the approach even does away with firewalls as canisters run within a tamperproof environment. Supporting the system are node machines (arranged as subnets) that host the canisters, with everything permissioned by a so-called network nervous system.

Looking at the Carbon Crowd Internet Computer dashboard shows that the majority of nodes are hosted in Switzerland (DFINITY is headquartered in Zurich), with a total of 26 data centers and 66 nodes providers worldwide.

Internet Computer architecture explained by Dominic Williams.

In OpenChat, canisters are created when users register for the decentralized messaging service. They hold direct chats and list which groups a user belongs to. Cannisters also behave as individual user wallets by linking to a ledger account.

System security comes from the fact that the canisters user is the only person with permission to instruct that canister, which also benefits voting rights. The one user, one canister approach also makes the system highly scalable and avoids having to shard users as the platform grows.

OpenChat was hugely successful earlier this year in raising ICP funds, with the Internet Computer community endorsing the project. And now its in the developers hands to live up to those expectations and deliver a decentralized messaging app to rival WhatsApp and other big names in chat services.

Practically, for the OpenChat team, that means ramping up from tens of thousands of daily active users to hundreds of times more and beyond.

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OpenChat puts governance to the vote thanks to Internet Computer - TechHQ

Vince Staples fired off a timely drone joke in response to the latest appearance of a man widely referred to as a con artist whos again trying to revive unsubstantiated claims about former POTUS Barack Obama.

The individual in question, Larry Sinclair, recently spoke with former Fox News shill Tucker Carlson (who else?) for an interview in which he purported to have done cocaine with a person introduced to me as Barack Obamaa peculiar way of wording that should be notedin 1999. Sinclair further purported, without evidence, to have had sex with this person and to have witnessed them smoke crack.

Before we go any further, its always worth pointing out that cocaine and crack are the same substance, pharmacologically speaking. The separation of the two, of course, is merely part of an unjust war on drugs-related federal push known for facilitating extreme sentencing disparities and racist policies. The Fox News crowd eats that kind of shit up, so its no surprise to see Carlson and Sinclair trying to get more mileage out of it.

As Staples pointed out in a tweet on Tuesday in response to homophobic meanderings spurred by the Carlson teaser, its actually the crack aspect of Sinclairs statements that make this all top tier smut against the president.

I hope Barry drone this n***a, Staples wrote in one tweet.

In another, he added, "Yall focused on the wrong things he tried to put the crack rock on Obama."

For readers who were around for the 2008 presidential election, Sinclairs name likely rings a bell.As highlighted in a recent Media Matters piece from Matt Gertz, Sinclair previously failed a polygraph and even reportedly claimed terminal illness in a 2004 affidavit. As this article makes clear, Sinclair is still alive. As reported by Politico during the initial (and almost exclusively conspiracy sites-oriented) round of coverage surrounding Sinclair, his then "27-year criminal record" included multiple forgery-related charges.

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Vince Staples Jokes Obama Should Drone Man After Unsubstantiated Sex and Coke Claims in Tucker Carlson Video - Yahoo Entertainment

Explainer

19:10

by Oliver Bateman

The prince of the American Right has become a court jester. Credit: Tucker Carlson/X

Whats old is new again. In a move that underscores his continued trajectory from traditional conservative pundit to voice of populist outrage to social media provocateur, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is now interviewing figures on the periphery of credibility, such as manosphere influencer Andrew Tate and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. Tonight, hes taking it a step further by speaking to Larry Sinclair, a man notorious for making unverified claims that he engaged in a drug-fuelled sexual encounter with former president Barack Obama in 1999.

Carlson teased this forthcoming interview on X. The promo clip featured Sinclair rehashing an old story about giving Obama $250 for drugs before they had a sexual encounter. In a bold move, Carlson deemed Sinclairs account to be credible information that [Obama is] smoking crack and having sex with dudes providing his interviewee with the biggest platform of his career in the process. Yet Sinclairs allegations have never been substantiated. His credibility is further marred by a lengthy criminal record, which includes convictions related to forgery, fraud and larceny. He even once claimed to be terminally ill, likely as a strategy to have an arrest warrant dismissed.

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By choosing to interview Sinclair and resuscitating decade-old theories once peddled by Jerome Corsi, Carlson appears to be trading intellectual rigour for sensationalism.Although these topics may excite a certain faction on the Right, theyre fundamentally recycled and unimportant tales that reveal more about Carlsons willingness to capitalise on controversy than they do about the state of American politics.

The evolution of Carlson from a bridge between traditional Republican orthodoxy and the burgeoning populist Right to his current persona is both striking and indicative of the broader shifts within conservative media. Once wearing the bowtie of establishment conservatism, Carlson was a figure who could comfortably navigate the worlds of both policy wonks and grassroots activists. His critiques of globalism, immigration, and the liberal elites had elements that could resonate across party lines, opening up conversations that had bipartisan relevance.

However, this previous image of him as a political intermediary seems to be fading into the rearview mirror. In its place is a provocateur who increasingly trades in National Enquirer-style sensationalism. The change isnt just cosmetic, involving the occasional wearing of flannel shirts and working in a woodshop: it signals a shift in focus from presenting issues of legitimate public concern to resurrecting salacious tabloid stories that were debunked or broadly dismissed years ago. The line between respectable journalism and gossip-mongering has not just been blurred: for Carlson, it appears in danger of being completely erased.

Whats particularly interesting is how this transformation is received by his viewership. For the based Right a faction that appreciates audacity and often eschews political correctness Carlsons latest antics may be a welcome development (save for those who believe he is an op, discrediting fringe stories by presenting them in ridiculous ways).

But this new tack seems more like a play to the lowest common denominator than a genuine attempt to enlighten the public discourse. By choosing to air interviews with fringe figures peddling old, discredited rumours, Carlson no stranger to evolving to grow his brand is completely embracing commercially-oriented opportunism. Its a move designed to draw eyes and clicks, not to encourage serious reflection on the state of American society or its politics.

While the presenters shift may be personally profitable in the short term, one cannot help but feel pessimistic about the prospects for political discourse in general and populism in America specifically. Carlson, who presented himself as a peoples champion during the peak of his Fox-era celebrity, now seems to be a free agent more interested in chasing engagement by any means necessary.

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Tucker Carlson's Obama interview is a conspiracy too far - UnHerd