Louisiana Crypto Companies: Blockchain on the Bayou

Originally posted on Pelicoin.com on 10.16.18

While not exactly being known as a crypto industry leader, Louisiana nevertheless hosts several homegrown businesses and organizations that use crypto and the blockchain in a number of different, innovative, and exciting ways. Despite Louisiana’s lag in the number of crypto companies located in the state, the businesses that currently exist here showcase the ingenuity and business savvy of its residents and, if it’s any indication, point to a very bright future for crypto in the bayou state.

Let’s take a look at our comprehensive list of all the crypto and blockchain companies currently located in Louisiana.

Moxey

Created in early 2018 in Baton Rouge by a group of enterprising entrepreneurs and local crypto enthusiasts, Moxey is Louisiana’s only cryptocurrency. Moxey is a community of small business owners that are committed to keeping their business truly local. The way they do this is through their cryptocurrency, Moxey. This allows their members to do business together, purchase the things they need with Moxey, and save their cash. Through the Moxey currency and easy-to-use payment platform, a community of trusted businesses has been created who benefit from accessing this unique and powerful medium of exchange.

Business Blockchain HQ

Headquartered in New Orleans, Business Blockchain HQ is a media website providing high-quality content and research on blockchain applications for business and IT professionals. The goal of their website is to inform and educate managers and executives on the blockchain to help them realize the technology’s possibilities in addressing inefficient processes and business challenges.

Louisiana Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Council

First established on January 15, 2017 at Mojo Coffee in New Orleans, the Louisiana Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Council (LABCC) is an organization focused on blockchain education, with the mission of building and implementing use cases of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies across the state of Louisiana.

Gilded

Gilded is a New Orleans-based crypto company that specializes in crypto accounting services. The company’s mission is to promote cryptocurrency adoption with simple, innovative crypto tools for businesses. From crypto accounting to crypto invoicing, Gilded compliments your existing crypto wallet, making crypto transactions safer and easier to track.

BEAN – Building Economic Advancement Network

The Building Economic Advancement Network, or BEAN, is a social network centered on economic advancement for urban communities. BEAN leverages the latest developments in blockchain technology and social networking to provide a clear path to economic advancement. The blockchain is used to incentivize business transactions among users, who are able to see their daily economic impact and are rewarded with BEAN Coin tokens for their efforts. These tokens are then used as cryptocurrency on the social network.

Revolutionary among social networks, no other website currently exists that utilizes modern social networking to drive economic growth and inclusion.

Crypto Coin Trader

Founded in Baton Rouge by CEO and co-founder Joe Blackburn, Crypto Coin Trader is a blockchain based social media site.  With a focus on Social Media, Community Management and Community Engagement, Crypto Coin Trader is widely considered one of the most influential and successful social media communities in the blockchain.

Coin Bayou

Originally headquartered in New Orleans, Coin Bayou announced earlier this year that it was moving operations of its crypto data mining center to a nearly 3-acre plot nearly at 15635 E. Airline Hwy. in the tiny industrial zone of Norco in St. Charles Parish. While it doesn’t look like much right now, the site is actually gearing up to become one of the largest Bitcoin operations in all of the South.

The reason is simple. Electricity costs are extremely low in Louisiana, making Louisiana the best place to mine Bitcoin in the entire United States.

Crypto Research

Crypto Research was launched earlier this year by Joe Castille in Lafayette, Louisiana with the goal of performing quality research on the crypto industry and the various applications for crypto and the blockchain. Still in its early stages, this ambitious startup hopes to launch its website soon and begin making its mark on the burgeoning crypto scene.

Last But Not Least, Pelicoin

We can’t make a list of Bitcoin businesses in Louisiana without including our very own. Since 2014, Pelicoin has served as the industry pioneer in our state, creating the first Bitcoin ATM a couple of years before the current crypto craze and continuing to expand and dominate the local market for instant cryptocurrency transactions. If you’re interested in purchasing Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Ethereum, Pelicoin’s numerous ATM locations spread across the state are ready to help you make it happen. Call (504) 507-0879 or email us at support@pelicoin.com for any questions.

Cryptocurrency Is Not Dead

It’s actually the future, and you need to be paying attention.

Smart Contracts for Dummies

Noah Pollack

What are smart contracts?

To put it simply, they are contracts that are executed automatically without the help of a third party. You can think of it as actually a mini computer program stored inside the blockchain.

Smart contracts use “if this, then that” logic and work much like a digital vending machine. If you agree to put money in the machine and make a selection, then the snack you chose will be distributed to you automatically. This transaction is an automated agreement between human and computer and does not require anyone else in order for the contract to be executed.

Everyday uses of automated “If this, then that” contracts.  

Computer Scientist Nick Szabo first coined the term in 1994 when he described smart contracts as “a computerized transaction protocol that executes the terms of a contract. The general objectives of smart contract design are to satisfy common contractual conditions, minimize exceptions both malicious and accidental, and minimize the need for trusted intermediaries. Related economic goals include lowering fraud loss, arbitration and enforcement costs, and other transaction costs.

An easy example of how smart contracts can be used right now in real world situations is for improved crowdfunding solutions. Currently, companies like “Go-Fund-Me” and “Kickstarter” act as third party intermediaries to make sure the money being raised by their members actually gets to them in a safe way. For this service, they take a percentage of the money raised. A smart contract solution could be as simple as an agreement that says that if enough money is sent to a certain address before a certain date, then the funds will be released to the address that is asking for the crowdfunding. There could be any number of conditions included in this contract, all following the “if this, then that” logic.

So why should you trust a smart contract? 

The main reason is because the contract is stored on the blockchain, and that fact guarantees it two special properties that will keep you and everyone else involved safe and treated fairly. Blockchains are immutable and distributed. The benefit of smart contracts being immutable is that that once it is written, it cannot be changed, it is essentially “tamper proof”. The benefit of smart contracts being distributed is that the output has to be validated by everyone on the network. No one person can force the release of funds, or the rest of the network would mark it as invalid.

Right now the most widely accepted smart contract blockchain is Ethereum. Ethereum was created specifically to support smart contracts. One of the most common usage of a smart contracts are decentralized exchanges (DEX). Users can create simple sale contracts that says if someone pays me X, they will be sent Y. These trades can be executed for an extremely low cost because no third party has to verify the transaction. Bitcoin also has some smart contract application but it is much more limiting.

Check out one of the first DEXs, Etherdelta

With smart contract technology we might one day live in a world when you pay for the product you ordered only AFTER it has it has a delivery confirmation. That same world will leave you with a lot more money in your pocket as the need for all third parties facilitators will drop drastically and so will the cost of doing any type of business. Smart contracts have many real world applications that can start being used right away in a number of different industries from banking to real estate and even postal!

Non-Fungible Tokens for Dummies.

Noah Pollack

Ethereum Request for Comment: Non-Fungible Token Standard # 721. Better known as ERC-721 tokens, or just Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs); are Tokens on the Ethereum blockchain that can offer unique characteristics which make them different from one another and digitally scarce.

Before we dive into the what, or the why regarding NFTs, it is important to know the difference between fungible and non-fungible assets.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fungible as “capable of being substituted in place of one another” The easiest-to-understand real world example of fungible assets are dollar bills of the same denomination. If I loan you a $1 bill, I will not care which of the other 11 billion $1 bills I get in return because the value of those two bills will always be exactly the same. All cryptocurrencies are fungible assets too, if you are receiving a payment in bitcoin, it makes no difference which of the individual bitcoins end up in your wallet because, although the value of bitcoin may change, 1 BTC will always equal 1 BTC. The same is true with gold, other commodities, and shares of a company.

Non-Fungible assets, on the other hand, do differ from “thing” to “thing”. Take paintings as an example. An original painting and an exact copy appear to be identical when you look at them, but everyone knows the value of those two things can differ massively because of information about the original. Art has value based on the unique characteristics each piece holds, such as; the artist, the past owners, and how much it has sold for it in past transactions. Another example of a non-fungible item is a plane ticket. Two plane tickets look the same at first glance, but the information stored in the plane ticket gives each one a unique purpose and value. More examples of non-fungible assets are anything with value that can not be exchanged for goods at a store such as; baseball cards, antiques, or even sneakers.

Fungible Non-Fungible

Now that we know the difference between fungible and non-fungible assets, let’s look take a look at non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Although other chains have started implementing their own non-fungible protocols, the most widely used is the ERC-721 that runs on the ethereum blockchain.

Why would anyone want a non-fungible token if you can’t spend it? Because non-fungible tokens are not a currency, NFTs represent a unique asset on the blockchain as smart contracts.

Smart contracts are computer programs that act only after specific conditions are met. The best example would be calling it a digital vending machine. With a real vending machine, you put money in, choose what you want and it comes out. This all happens with complete trust and without a third party facilitating the transaction. In the case of NFTs the smart contracts are used to record specific information about each individual token, mostly to validate the origins.  

Digital collectables are the most common usage for NFTs right now. The most popular of these are Crypto Kitties. Crypto Kitties were actually the inspiration for the ERC-721 proposal, in December 2017 when Crypto Kitties was releases as a decentralize app (dApp) they quickly gained popularity as everyone wanted to get their hands on these valuable, one of a kind, digital cats. While transactions took place in cryptocurrencies, and that data was imprinted on the blockchain, the actual unique data about the Crypto Kitties did not exist on the chain. The popularity of these digital collectibles led to the ERC-721 proposal which now lets us store a ton of specific data about each token, in smart contracts, on the ethereum chain. The highest price ever paid for a Kitty was 600 eth ($170,000 at the time of sale)

Crypto Kitty #1 owned by Eth Address: 0x79bd592415ff6c91cfe69a7f9cd091354fc65a18

All Crypto Kitties and other ERC-721 token can be viewed on https://etherscan.io/ just like any ERC-20 token transaction. You can check out a huge ERC-721 wallet full of Crypto Kitties here. https://etherscan.io/address/0x79bd592415ff6c91cfe69a7f9cd091354fc65a18#tokentxnsErc721

The data stored in the ERC-721 tokens can be anything about the asset, such as; when it was created, who created it, who the different owners were, or how much it as previously been sold for. This could lead to huge breakthroughs in verification for art, collectables, medical records, and even identification (like passports and state IDs). Although may be many years away from having the deeds to our homes or our birth certificates being turned in Non-Fungible tokens; at least for now you can take advantage of this world changing technology to grow a sweet collection of super rare digital cats!