 Open Digital Asset News to get top stories in cryptocurrency digital assets and bring them out of bite-sized pieces. Today, a lot of interesting stuff. First up, Americans to buy Bitcoin with their second stimulus checks after initial investment turned in a 50% profit. I'm going to tell you why this is and when you can expect it also. Cardano's making news. Cardano adds another pillar of technology as highly anticipated Shelly upgrade successfully goes live with no hiccups and no problem, which was pretty amazing. Now, we're going to take a look at Cardano's staking, which is everything you need to know about ADA returns. And this was a fantastic article written by Crypto Briefing, which goes over the ins and outs. And I got to say, thank you so much to them for explaining it simply. We'll take a quick look at Delegate Your Stake from staking.cardano.org. And lastly, I'm going to answer some of your hard-hitting questions as hard fork effects on cold wallet storage of cryptocurrency, which is a perfect timing because of the Shelly Mainnet launch. Before we do that, let's take a look at what's going on in the market. So today it is July 30th, 1130 Texas time, everything's looking pretty good. So Bitcoin, hey, you can't keep going up forever. That's just the way it is. And it's down 2% for the day. So there was a question yesterday about, you know, should I just go all in or should I dollar cost average? This is what I'm talking about. So there's going to be dips, there's going to be ups and downs, but there's not that stress of just going all in and going, okay, here it is, here's $20,000. And hopefully it goes up. So just be patient, stick to your plan. But although Bitcoin is up 15.7% for seven days. So good for that. Ethereum still doing great, had a 0.2% increase. Now it's at 3.22, XRP 24 cents, almost going to get 25. So everything's looking good, Bitcoin cash, Cardano in that sixth spot, I don't see it staying there. I'm going to tell you why in a little bit, but Cardano's up 13% for the week. Bitcoin cash up 15% Litecoin up and bigly 26% for the week, crypto.com. And before I forget, I'm going to have a discussion with one of the VPs of operations for crypto.com or VP of relation management or something like that today at 8pm. And I'm just not sure about crypto.com. I know some of you just love it, but I just don't get it. So I need you to, whatever you questions that you have that you'd like to be answered, include those in the comment section and I'll be sure to ask this person when I talk to them. We're going to do a Zoom meeting later tonight. So I'm interested to see what it's all about. But again, I just don't see it. Binance coin, Chainlink is up, wow, hey Chainlink, 5.2 or 0.4 for the day, so 7.40. And it looks like a pretty good day for most V-Chain, 12.9% for over 24 hours. Not too shabby. All right, let's break into today's top story. So I don't know if this is like the top story, but to me the big excitement is around Cardano right now, especially with that Shelley Mainnet launch, but I don't want to take away anything like this. This was actually a great article from Bitcoin.com. Talks about Americans are going to buy more Bitcoin when they get their stimulus check. So what exactly is going on? So we recovered this a couple of days ago and I just wanted to reiterate this because I'm going to think that I think that there is going to be a pretty big push for Bitcoin when the stimulus check comes out because people love to invest now, especially in cryptocurrencies assets and Bitcoin is going to be a big winner. So the US government on Monday expected to approve plans for this second payout, which looks like they already have. There is actually a confirmation. And even Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, said it's going to be pretty much the same thing. So what happened before the stimulus checks, this is a couple of months ago, but at that time when the checks, as far as stimulus checks were first issued, each Bitcoin traded for around $7,000. Remember those days? Below $10,000? Oh yeah, so long ago. Today, each $1,200 check that was invested in Bitcoin at that time is now worth about $1,829, which is a gain of more than $600. So imagine this, imagine if you could put your money into the traditional market and get $600 back in like two months, three months. That's insane gains. And these are unprecedented times, my friends. And when you get some kind of gains like that, I mean, that is amazing to me. Anyhow, moving on, according to US government officials, the latest stimulus checks are expected to be paid out in August. So August, we're almost there and it's going to come on the pipe. So all this different momentum that we have as far as the markets go, just for us, just for crypto. I don't care about traditional markets. I just don't. But for all the momentum that we have right now, we're going to see an acceleration of that with these stimulus checks. And it's right around the corner. So the White House economic advisor, Larry Trudlow, told CNN that families will receive this second $1,200 payout as part of a $1 trillion stimulus package. When the government first paid out their stimulus money in April, large crypto exchanges, Coinbase and Binance reported a spike in exactly $1,200 equivalent deposits on their platforms. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase said at the time that the number of $1,200 worth deposits and buys in the exchange climbed by 400% that month. So I believe it's going to be the same thing that's going to come on the pipe. And especially if they're going to have those stimulus checks plus another round of PPP or paycheck protection plans, I don't see an issue with people putting it into the Robinhood players, the traditional market players, and of course the Cryptocurrency asset players. So I see a big push around August. We'll see if I'm wrong. Let me know what you think of the comments section. Let's move on to what I'm really most excited about Cardano. So here we go. Here's another pillar of technology as highly anticipated. Shelly upgrade successfully goes live. So what exactly is going on? So the move to Shelly will allow holders of ADA, Cardano's native token, to stake their coins and receive rewards. And if you aren't familiar with this, over the weekend, the Cardano team, they actually battled it out and they took a look at it because they were going to launch Shelly on the 29th. And over this last weekend, they did a bunch of tests. They ran out of the gambit. They tried to find every single problem that they could and they couldn't find it and actually push forward, which to me is amazing because this, I've had complaints about Cardano many, I mean, for a long time because their main net took forever, I mean, forever, literally took forever. So I was like, you know, as an entrepreneur, I'm like, just throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks doesn't work. Just fix it. And of course, you know, that's why I'm not a programmer. Just be honest. So again, I'll tip my hat to them. They did everything that they could do. It looked like they worked very hard. And I watched the stream from Charles Hoskinson and he just looks, you know, exhausted, but elated because it all went off without a hitch. And to do that much work and have not a problem happen and as meticulous and as streamlined as that group is where there's just so into making everything as good as it can. It's amazing to me that they didn't shut it down. If I could have put money on it, I would have guaranteed that they would have shut it down and they would have pushed it back. But I was wrong. And that's just, that's good. I'm glad I'm wrong. I'm glad I was wrong. I'm glad it's moving forward. So I'm pretty happy about that. But moving on the article, in the past few months, the ADA price has more than doubled. So many experts are predicting that there is room for a lot more growth. Moving down another development that has been long awaited by holders and many others in the cryptocurrency community is the addition of the Cardano's native token, ADA, to Coinbase. And Coinbase has already made its interest in the Cardano public or publicly known. The expectation has been that the move to the Shelley phase would be the catalyst for ADA's addition to Coinbase. They already have a relationship, that line of thinking makes, I mean, it always makes sense, right? If you already have a relationship, things are going on, then why not do it? And the relationship they're talking about is that early in July at the Cardano virtual summit, it was announced that Cardano had signed an agreement with Coinbase Custody that staking would be supported by the crypto onboarding giant. So here's the thing. Back in the day, when Coinbase only had like three or four different cryptocurrencies, it was Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, I remember those days, that's when I got into it, 2017. So when another coin came on, it was like, oh my God, this is huge, this whole thing and it was called the Bitcoin pump. I mean the Coinbase pump, Coinbase listing pump, excuse me. And these days, there's a lot more different assets on there, so it's not as big of a deal as it used to be. There's a little bit of a thing there, but not so much. However, with Cardano, with it being so high up there, and I believe as time gets closer, it's going to flip with Bitcoin Cash. It's going to be the top five. And I have predicted actually that Cardano will be a top three cryptocurrency coin. I see when people look at it and they go, hold on, okay, let me get this straight. Bitcoin is 11,000. It's all time high, it's 20,000. Well, people don't like to buy fractions of coins. They just don't. And I understand what people are going to say, hey, you can have a millionth of a Satoshi, you know, that's just how it is. People want a full coin. So just like fractional shares, they don't want to have a fractional share of Tesla. They want the whole one Tesla stock. So when they look at that and they go, okay, well, to get to this all time high, I got to spend 11,000, which sucks, but people do. And I'm only going to get, you know, 9,000 back. So whatever. That's maybe I could double my money. Maybe not. Then they take a look at, you know, Ethereum, like Ethereum, well, that's around 300 bucks and it used to be 1200. So what are we looking at? Like 4x? It's pretty good. Then they look at Cardano, like, hold on, let me get this straight. It's like 13 cents, 14 cents, and it used to be a dollar or something. Well, that's like 8x, 9x. I like those odds and it's just got listed and there's all these upgrades and they've taken years to do it and they have all these different partnerships. I mean partnerships. I mean, well, PricewaterhouseCoopers, I suppose. And things are really getting to really hit the stride. I think I'm going to invest in that. That seems pretty good. And it's been around for how long? And the CEO or the person at the helm used to be at the helm of Ethereum. Okay. Now, I know there's some people that hate Cardano and it's very few people. I know what they're going to say. So go ahead and say what you want to say in the comment section. I understand where you're coming from, but I still think Cardano is going to be a big thing. That's just me. Let me know what you think in the comment section. Am I just some foolish person who just is blinded by the light and it's just all a big scam? Let me know what you think and let's move on to, let's take a look at staking. So staking. Everything you need to know. Again, crypto briefing hats off to you. Thank you so much for making a great article. So this is the kind of stuff that I actually need and I actually need to do this. So Cardano staking, just if you don't know, operates on a cyclical basis. Rewards are paid out every epoch or every five days, which is pretty cool, right? I mean, if you're a staking time somebody thing, every five days you get free money. I like that. I like money. I like cryptocurrency. I'll take it. During the network's initial launch, there will be epochs in which no rewards are paid out, but that will change. Cardano addresses have separate keys for spending and staking. This means that if you decide to stake your Cardano tokens, they will never leave your wallet. Plus, Cardano doesn't require your tokens to be locked in for a term. You can unstake your tokens at any time. So that's pretty nice. You don't have to have them locked out for a month, three months, six months a year. They're in there. They're out. It's up to you. So here's the big thing. Joining versus running a pool. You have to be either a part of a pool or the pool itself. You can't just individually stake. Kind of like Tezos. You have to find a baker and just kind of give them, not give them your coins, but you can stake them with them. And the same type of thing here. So Cardano relies heavily on staking pools, whereas some other blockchains rely heavily on individual staking nodes. Advanced users should run their own pool during higher profits if you are an advanced user. That is not me. I'm just going to be honest. I am not advanced at all. So I'm going to just join a pool. However, individual users can stake their tokens with an existing stake pool, which is a much simpler process. I like simple. I have a lot of stuff going on. I'm going to do that. You can delegate tokens from your Daedalus or Yori wallet as explained here. And I'm going to link this, this, of course, in the comments section, or the comments, the description. It looks something like this, how to delegate your stake. It's just at staking.Cardano.org. And it pretty much just lays it all out, but let's run back here. What do you need to run a pool? If you decide to operate a staking pool, you'll need constant internet connectivity and you'll need various technical skills. This is what you need. You'll need a knowledge of how to run and maintain a Cardano node on a 24-7 basis. System operation skills, experience of development and operations, or DevOps and server administration skills, operational maintenance. I do not have any of those. I'm not going to do that. You won't need a powerful computer and ASIC device provides no advantage. So that's pretty nice, right? You don't have to break the bank for a brand new computer if you want to do that. So what do you need to join a pool? This was interesting to me. If you join a staking pool, you won't need a constant internet connection and you won't need to monitor your stake 24-7. There is no minimum staking amount on most pools, which, unlike Ethereum, where you need 32, there is no minimum here. Very nice. However, you will need to choose a pool that is reliable and which offers low fees. Websites like PoolTool and Adapools allow users to view the status of each pool. Also Cardano's deadless wallet also helps users choose a pool through its delegation screen. Once you've staked your Cardano, you don't need to do anything at all. That's awesome. Rewards are automatically paid out. Also awesome. And there is no need to make a claim. Triple awesome. If you do not withdraw your original stake, your ADA will remain staked and you will continue to earn rewards. Quadruple awesome. Fantastic. So how will Cardano achieve decentralization? So this is for everybody who is really concerned about decentralization, which, I mean, you should be. We should be. Right? Cardano will ensure that its staking pools do not accumulate too much power. This was interesting. For one thing, Cardano's stake pools will offer lower rewards as they get larger. Imagine that. The bigger your stake pool is, the lower the rewards get. And this will encourage users to move between pools on a regular basis. And this will, in turn, theoretically prevent any pool from getting dominance. So there's always going to be someone who tries to gain the system. That's just how humans or people work, right? So I still like how they're trying to say, hey, we don't want things get too big. We want to kind of keep it and try to make it as central as possible. And we don't want to have too much of these huge conglomerates over everything. So that I can appreciate that. Secondly, Cardano's staking pools will have little control over governance. Stake pools don't vote. One of the Genesis key holders will be able to vote, and this is the key word here, initially, initially. So as things move forward, everybody should be able to vote. Democracy wins, decentralization wins. I like the whole thing. So again, I will link this article plus all the information as far as how to delegate your stake and everything else in the description of this video. And that is it for that part. So now I'm going to actually answer a great question that was posed to me by a subscriber. So let's jump into my office, huh? Great. So welcome back to the office. As you can see, here we are. I know the comments section of people say, oh, it looks so nice to have a pool and everything else. Well, it's a lot of work and there's maintenance, so don't think it's that fantastic. So anyhow, so here's what we have for the question today. This was from Nurbik Modi. I think I butchered that. But anyhow, the question is, hi, Dan. Hope you're doing good. Absolutely content. That's why I love your channel. Fantastic. So he says, I'm having a difficult time finding content about what happens when there is a hard fork with the cryptos stored in a cold wallet. Good question. So he breaks down into four pieces. He said, if you store Bitcoin or ETH or any crypto in a cold wallet like a ledger, does a hard fork matter? That's number one. Two, how do we claim coins for the hard fork? Three, do I need to sell the crypto coins on the old blockchain through the exact same exchange which I bought? And the last one was, are there any tax implications if you do not claim the hard fork coins? So the last two are pretty easy to answer. And the first two are a little bit more difficult. And what I actually did was I actually reached out to the ledger corporation, ledger company. And they asked these same questions. And I said, who can jump on with me and do a quick call? And one of their lead operators, Fabrice Dottariat, he actually responded. And he came on. We did a great interview. And it was like a quick five to seven minutes. And unfortunately, I did not click on the audio record part. So that is my fault. And I'm not going to bother Fabrice again because he is in France. He is eight hours ahead and he has a lot of things with his family. So I'm not going to bother him. However, good news was, is that he had actually sent me an email previously and had told me, you know, like his rough answers. So I'm going to tell you what he told me in his interview and also in the email so he can make this crystal clear as much as possible. So number one, if you store Bitcoin or ETH or any crypto in a qualled wallet like a ledger, does a hard fork matter? And Fabrice says, yes, it does. A hard fork is basically a change of the blockchain protocol, make it incompatible with previous versions. Since there is a protocol change, it's very likely that there are also some changes in the way as far as what the transactions are built. As a consequence, the new transactions may not be possible to sign using your ledger hardware wallet. And from there, several questions arise for ledger. And one of the big questions that we actually talked about was the new hard fork for the Shelly mainnet launch. And the question was, will ledger actually work now because of what just happened with Cardano? And he said, well, he said, in essence, no, it's not going to work. But he gave me a little snippet and said that, and I was the first one to know this, he says, is we actually just upgraded everything. So now it does work with Cardano. So as far as like, if you store Bitcoin or ETH in a cold wallet, does a hard fork matter? Yes, it does. And to really get to the meat and potatoes of it, it really comes down to a case-by-case basis. So will a ledger Cardano app still work? No. The Shelly update is breaking compatibility with the previous transaction format, but they've actually fixed it already. So kudos to them. Well, I lose my Cardano token. That's another big question that came about. Well, you actually lose everything. And no, your private key remains safe during a fork. So remember, the ledger doesn't store anything. The ledger doesn't store your cryptocurrency. What a ledger does is it stores your private keys. On the blockchain, which is throughout all the nodes throughout the entire globe, that is where all the information is stored. This is not like you're actually storing coins or storing a physical property. And if you have questions, I'm going to link the very end of this video to one of my basics, which talks about ledger wallet, what is a private address, what is a public address, and everything that goes along with that to make you understand to help you out. OK. So that was the first question. And then the second question was, how do we claim coins for the hard forked crypto, assuming the crypto is in a cold wallet? And this was actually a very long, drawn-out answer, because he said it's a very tricky question. But he states, as explained before, a hard fork is a breaking in the protocol. From there, two things can happen. Either people running nodes all agree to the update as necessary, in which case everyone moves to the new version of the protocol. And that's what's happening here with Cardano. Everybody's agreeing that there's not going to be a split, just because it's a fork. An example would be, and the best example would be Bitcoin, when it's split between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. So some people went with Bitcoin Core, how do you want to call it? And somebody went with Bitcoin Cash. And what was interesting about for Breeze is he told me that what they do during these forks is they don't automatically flip a switch and go, OK, we're going to make sure that we have everything compatible with this new fork. What they do is they first follow it, because there is no reason if it's not viable, a chain that kind of comes off and is actually not used by anybody, just some wacky group that's like, we're going to do this thing. And everybody's like, no, we're not going to follow you. So an example would be like when you had all those different Bitcoin forks. You had Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Onyx, Bitcoin Tomato, Bitcoin, whatever. Those things are not viable. So they're like, we're not going to waste our time with it. And that makes sense to me. So the last thing would be then, I almost forgot about this, is that will you actually get, if you had back in 2017, I believe it was 2016, I forgot, when Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash actually split, would you just see Bitcoin Cash in your ledger and at that point, it didn't actually happen. So again, it's going to be a case by case basis. So if you have some type of coin, some other project that actually splits off, the best thing to do would just be to contact ledger and say, are you going to support this, or are you going to wait, or how's it all going to happen? And the last two questions we went over, but they're pretty basic. And I think it's the easiest one to answer. So the third question was, do I need to sell the crypto coins on the old blockchain through the same exact exchange, which I bought when the hard fork happens? And he says, when a hard fork happens, if you think it will result in two living chains, which is a good term, living change, some are just going to be defunct and not going to be followed, then you should keep your funds in your ledger vice, as you can be sure you'll end up with tokens on the two chains once the fork happens. If you deposit funds on an exchange before the fork, you're basically letting the exchange decide which chains they'll follow. They might support the fork, or they might not. You'll have to check with the exchange. So again, just make sure that you have some type of ability to have your private keys. If you have your private keys, everything should be safe. And this actually happened to me. I remember when Litecoin and Litecoin Cash, I don't know if anyone remembers that. Litecoin actually split into Litecoin Cash, and it was on Coinbase. And that didn't actually work out. So if you don't have your private keys, like if you keep them on exchanges, then you're probably not, they're not going to support it all the time. However, I do remember Binance and Coinbase supporting certain type of forks. But they let you know, like, well far in advance if they're going to do it or not. So just check with them, and everything should be OK. The last question was, are there any tax implications if you do not claim the hard forked coins? And there's no tax implications. I can't speak for everybody throughout the entire globe. I don't know the tax rules in Australia and South America, all the way throughout North America and Mexico and Canada. But I can tell you for the United States, for a taxable event to actually happen, you need to sell your cryptocurrency or you need to exchange it for something. So like if you have Bitcoin and you transfer it into Ethereum, that is a taxable event. If you have Bitcoin and you sell your Bitcoin and you get fiat for that, that is a taxable event. But if you move your, let's say, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever else, into your ledger hardware wallet that is not a taxable event for anywhere that I know of. But again, check with your personal account and your tax representative, and it should be OK. All right, so that's it for today. So hey, before we take off, I just want to make mention and give thanks to all my subscribers. If you don't know, just join now button underneath. You don't get anything special. I don't hold anything back. It's kind of like a tip. It's like a buck 99. And I just do random shout-outs. And then you get like a little badge when we do live streams, which we really need to do more of. I've been trying to slack on that, but there's been so much going on. So first up, Iran Rodriguez. Eric Maiko, JCR Central. What's going on, everybody? So we got also John P. All right, soft, my man from way back in the day. Sam Rossman, TDG, Cheya, my man, Metic, Jack Minion, beloved, and Steven Schmitz. So hey, thanks so much, everybody. I really appreciate it. If you like these types of videos, there'll be two more that's going to pop up on your left and right. I have no idea what they are, because that's what YouTube does. They have control of that. So if you like these videos, pick one of those and then move on. But that is it for today. So thanks a lot for sticking with me. I appreciate it. And I'll see you on the next one.