There has been some discussion lately about recent changes to our platform related to the earning and distribution of ASK. In this post, we’ll provide the rationale for these changes in keeping with our commitment to operate with full transparency and also to clear up any confusion on the part of our members.

First, the minimum amount of ASK required in ‘pending’ before it can be transferred to a user’s wallet has been increased to 50,000. Our experience after having hundreds of thousands of users interact with the platform has revealed that Permission’s off-chain operational costs for executing potentially millions of withdrawal transfers in minimal amounts is unfeasible. Instituting this limit will decrease the frequency of these withdrawals, reducing our operational costs.

We are working diligently to bring on new advertisers and content partners to generate revenue that could potentially support these operational costs. So far, our business development effort and reception from advertisers has been extraordinary. Preliminary discussions with prospective partners consistently validate our premise; that is, that the future of advertising will be permission-based.

Still, we are very early in the launch. We need time to demonstrate performance capabilities and grow the platform. As we expand the advertiser ecosystem, we expect this threshold number to change. In addition, we are rolling out very soon many new ways to earn that can accelerate the time it takes for active members to transfer.

Speaking of earning, we’d like to address two frequently asked questions related to 1) the maximum amount of ASK that can be earned per day by watching videos and 2) the amount of ASK earned per video.

Since launch, we have released additional earning mechanisms (“My Data,” “Open & Earn,” etc.), which required an adjustment to the amount earned per video. As we continue to roll out new earning opportunities, we will be regularly adjusting the amount of ASK earned for performing certain tasks, and such amounts will vary depending on how much earning is happening on the platform at any given time. The max number of earn events per day, and the amount of ASK you can earn from each engagement, was never meant to be fixed.

We are proud to share some astonishing metrics about how active our member base has become. Last month, users averaged more than 10 minutes on-site and watched over 80,000 videos per day. This is increasing daily as our user base grows. Again, as advertiser demand for ASK increases, we anticipate that both the amount earned per day and per earn event will surely change.

We recognize that many people may be frustrated by these changes. Please understand that these are growing pains which are ultimately good for the project and the whole community. We are very excited about how things are progressing and want you to know that the best way that you can contribute to the success of Permission is by referring your friends. The more members that sign up and the more widely distributed ASK becomes, the more the utility of ASK grows.

We hope that this post addresses many recent questions that we have received from the community. As a long-term, mission-focused project, we need to implement certain policies to ensure the integrity of ASK for the benefit of all participants in the network.

Feedback on these changes is welcomed, and we look forward to providing additional updates soon.

GDPR took the internet by storm in 2018. You may remember that day when your entire inbox was flooded with privacy policy updates, or perhaps your business decided to expand its reach to the EU, and you were reminded that GDPR compliance had to be sound before beginning.

GDPR is the most impactful modern internet privacy law to pass in recent history. At its core, it is designed to protect internet users from exploitative data collection and breaches, and GDPR aims to give users more control over their information while forcing companies to adopt proactive data security and transparency habits.

We’re going to cover what any business owner, user, or marketer needs to know about GDPR. Consider this piece your foundation. Whether or not you choose to dig deeper will be determined by your needs.

Let’s get right to it.

What Is GDPR?

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a data protection law from the EU, and it’s dense — there are over eleven chapters and 99 articles. This can make it difficult for companies and users to understand, but its goal is to protect the personal data of users, modernize data collection, establish clear directives for data transparency, and give people more choice over what personal data they share.

GDPR is a replacement for the EU’s previous law, the Data Protection Directive (DPD), which was passed over two decades earlier in 1995. Think of GDPR as the modernization and expansion of DPD. DPD couldn’t have predicted the intricate and expansive ways data is used today, and it badly needed updating.

What Countries Does GDPR Apply To?

The law applies to any companies operating in or out of all EU member states and Ireland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.

Who Does GDPR Protect?

GDPR protects any of the users in the member states and additional countries. What’s important to note is that it protects those users regardless of whether the company targeting them is based in the protection zone or not. In other words, it protects users from any company worldwide that decides to do business with the users of those states.

Let’s look at that a bit more.

Who Has to Follow GDPR?

Any company that targets EU citizens must adhere to GDPR. That goes for companies based in EU countries but also any other company (including U.S. companies) who target or work with EU citizens in any internet-based capacity.

Let’s look at a few examples of companies that have to follow GDPR standards:

1. A U.S. eCommerce company using ads to retarget users from France.
2. A digital clothing company based in Brussels that collects information for shipping and fitting.
3. A digital subscription newsletter collecting email addresses in the EU.

Now, let’s look at a few examples of companies that wouldn’t have to follow GDPR standards.

1. A Brazilian coffee distributor selling bags on its own website, which is in Portuguese. Even if someone from the EU found it and bought from it, because the company isn’t actively pursuing EU citizens, it shouldn’t apply unless they were using advertising to bring EU users to their site.
2. A U.S. landscaping service that merely has their contact information on the site and doesn’t do any business in the EU. Because they aren’t collecting any EU user information, GDPR doesn’t apply. Any business that isn’t collecting or processing information in any form or fashion is exempt, although that is extremely rare.

Even though GDPR passed in May of 2018, companies have had since 2016 to prepare for GDPR. But even with that runway, following GDPR at first proved to be confusing and nebulous. Many companies struggled to understand exactly what was demanded of them, and many are still at risk of GDPR non-compliance.

Does Brexit Impact GDPR?

No. The UK government has decided to continue operating under GDPR law even after leaving the EU. In other words, treat the UK just like you would any other country protected by GDPR.

Now that we know the scope of GDPR, let’s talk more about what it protects: personal data.

What Personal Data Actually Means

Directly from the source, here is what GDPR means by “personal data”:

The data subjects are identifiable if they can be directly or indirectly identified, especially by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or one of several special characteristics, which expresses the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, commercial, cultural or social identity of these natural persons.

In practice, these also include all data which are or can be assigned to a person in any kind of way. For example, the telephone, credit card, or personnel number of a person, account data, number plate, appearance, customer number, or address are all personal data.

That’s a complex way of saying any type of data that can be used to trace back to an identity is considered personal. This is purposefully broad — that way the law doesn’t need to be updated as often.

In modern practice, this includes data like:

1. Shipping information
2. Billing information
3. User behavior
4. Cookie data
5. Pixel Data
6. Purchase behavior
7. Name
8. Phone Number
9. Geographic data and history
10. Demographic identifiers
11. And more.

What Rights Do Users Have Because of GDPR?

GDPR gives additional privacy rights to users, and when these rights are violated companies can be held liable.

Here are the main rights users are guaranteed and that serve as the basis for GDPR compliance:

1. The Right to Be Informed

Users have the right to know what is and what will be collected by companies before the data is processed (collected).

2. The Right of Access

Users have the right to see any data that a company collects. This service must be delivered within a month and must be free.

3. The Right to Rectify (Correct) Information

Users have the right to submit a request to fix inaccurate data.

4. The Right to be Forgotten

Users have the right to withdraw their data consent and request that all data about them be deleted.

5. The Right to Restrict Data Processing

Users have the right to object to data processing and limit how their data is used.

6. The Right to Data Portability

Users have the right to collect their own data and have it delivered to them in a readable format that can easily be transferred to a different company.

7. The Right to Object

Users always have the right to object to specific data collection and marketing mechanisms that use that data.

8. The Right to Breach Disclosure

Users must be informed if their data has been breached within 72 hours.

For a complete list of user rights, here’s a direct link to the appropriate GDPR chapter.

It is the duty of the company to honor these rights effectively. The processes and practices companies have in place to honor these rights are the basis for GDPR compliance evaluation.

And as a user, you have these rights, so if a company is taking advantage of them, you have the full power to report them. Although in many cases a company (especially a small business) may not be aware, so reaching out to them first to talk about it before lawyering up is usually the best first step.

If it’s a major beach and you are whistleblowing, then you can file a complaint here.

What Happens if You Break GDPR?

GDPR stipulates that national authorities have the power to issue fines and limit data processing when GDPR regulations are breached.

According to the fines and penalties section of GDPR, severe violations can result in fines of up to 20 million euros OR up to 4% of the total global turnover of the preceding fiscal year, and smaller violations can still reach 10 million euros or 2% of global turnover.

The six biggest GDPR fines issued so far have been:

1. British Airways – 204.6m Euros
2. Marriott International Hotels – 110.3m Euros
3. Google Inc. – 50m Euros
4. Austrian Post – 18.5m Euros
5. Deutsche Wohnen SE – 14.5m Euros
6. 1&1 Telecom GmbH – 9.5m Euros

Many of these fines were a result of breaches or failing to disclose exactly how companies would use user data when onboarding users.

And while GDPR fines tend to only make headlines when targeting big businesses, GDPR applies to all businesses, both small and large.

The point is, the EU is devoted to making GDPR a standard, and they have shown that they will hold businesses accountable to it.

How Are the Levels of Fines Determined?

There is a multitude of factors that determine how a fine is calculated, and the GDPR text outlines a few factors:

1. How widespread the damage is
2. What kind of personal information was released (in the context of a breach)
3. How quickly the company fixed it
4. The fidelity of the fix
5. The Intention of the violation
6. How prepared the company was for the violation
7. Was the company proactive in data protection practices?
8. Did the company cooperate effectively and quickly with all parties?
9. Did the company notify users of the damages as quickly as possible?

There are more specifics than these, but essentially the data protection board and officers in charge of issuing fines will be looking at how honest and proactive companies were before, during, and after a breach or violation. If at every step in the process a company was doing their best and had proof of that, then the fines will be lower. If the company clearly exhibited negligence, then the fines will likely be steeper.

In Practice: How to Approach GDPR Compliance

Companies must show good faith by achieving initial data compliance and then by incorporating GDPR principles into every part of their operation.

If you own or are in charge of GDPR for your business, then you need to make sure data collection is transparent, legal, and secure in every part of your business.

GDPR compliance must become a fundamental part of your operation. With every new product, you need to make sure data is being collected appropriately. GDPR compliance is about having a plan and devoting resources to actualizing that plan. If you are familiar with the world of PCI compliance in payment processing, GDPR compliance is somewhat similar.

In order to become officially compliant with GDPR, you may have to request a DPO (data protection officer) to oversee your data collection practices, although this is only necessary for companies processing large amounts of data OR if your company’s core business model relies on data collection.

   Here’s what the legislation says on that directly:

Contrary to popular belief, decisive for the legal obligation to appoint a Data Protection Officer is not the size of the company but the core processing activities which are defined as those essential to achieving the company’s goals. If these core activities consist of processing sensitive personal data on a large scale or a form of data processing which is particularly far-reaching for the rights of the data subjects, the company has to appoint a DPO.

In other words, most businesses are fine simply following best practices for compliance, but if you fall under the definition above then you need to reach out and request a DPO.

GDPR compliance is ongoing and can only be the result of consistent effort. It is not a short checklist you can complete and move on. It must become fundamental and be a result of consistent, recurring tasks, and effort.

With this in mind, here are actionable guidelines you can incorporate to maintain GDPR compliance.

Core Guidelines of GDPR Compliance for Businesses

There is no perfect guide for GDPR compliance. It is a collection of efforts unique to each company designed to protect the privacy rights enshrined in GDPR. That being said, there are guidelines and best practices that are standardized across modern businesses.

Here are the major ideas of GDPR compliance, and then we will cover specific steps in the following section.

1. Data transparency, fairness, and lawfulness. Are you actively open and lawful with your data collection and storage?
2. Put limits on how and why you collect data. Do you have scheduled processes to remove old and unused data? How can you build the best product using the most specific and least demanding data collection practices?
3. Only collect the minimum necessary for your operation. If you don’t need it, then don’t collect it.
4. Devotion to data accuracy. How are you ensuring your data is clean and accurate for each individual?
5. Data security. How are you protecting against breaches? How does encryption play into your strategy?
6. Data deletion and portability. Can users easily delete their data? Can they request their data and then give it to someone else?
7. Data consent. Is your consent for data accessible and easy for users to understand? Is your service still usable without it? Are you transparent on what you collect and easily give users the ability to opt-out?
8. Privacy by design. Are safety and design fundamentally built into your product?
9. Data simplicity. Is it easy for users to understand what data you’re collecting? Can they collect for themselves and understand it?

These are the questions that make up a unique and effective GDPR compliance plan. The burden is on companies to build them into their own workflows.

6 Steps to Start Your GDPR Compliance Journey

It’s easy for GDPR to feel overwhelming. Here are a few ways for you to take action today.

Step 1: Start With an Analysis

Outline every aspect of your business that uses data and why. Examine how it’s collected and where it’s stored, and then make sure user rights are protected at every step. Clear opportunities to consent and opt-out must be present at every point.

Step 2: Create a Breach Contingency Plan

Your company must report a breach within 72 hours, and every minute that goes by after a breach will be scrutinized by officials. Make sure you have a specific plan to stop and disclose a breach.

Step 3: Log Everything You Do Around GDPR Compliance

As we said earlier, proof of ongoing effort toward GDPR compliance is critical to remain compliant and reduce fines. Create a centralized location for your efforts and log everything you do in detail.

Step 4: Ensure Partners Are Actively Working Toward Compliance

Even if a breach happens through third-party software, your business could be liable. It is your responsibility to evaluate the trustworthiness and security of your partners. Choose wisely!

Step 5: Create a Checklist for New Products, Operations, and Decisions

Anytime your business grows, makes a new product, or collects new data, it needs to be incorporated into your GDPR efforts. Make sure GDPR is in every conversation.

Step 6: Schedule Ongoing GDPR Training by Department

Make sure your tech teams, marketing teams, security teams, product development teams, and anyone else involved with data has scheduled GDPR training. This is one of the best bits of proof you can hand to data officers to show you have been proactive.

The Bottom Line on GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation is the biggest modern user privacy law in existence. It is designed to make data security and fidelity the norm in companies and give users more agency over what data they give up and why — while also giving them protected rights to opt-out, remove, and object to any sort of data collection by internet companies.

While the GDPR can seem like a burden on businesses, it gets easier as you develop your own systems and is crucial to creating an internet ecosystem that users can rely on safely.

GDPR is an important step for user privacy, but there is so much more we can do.

GDPR is a good start, but it’s a band-aid for a flawed system. The best kind of internet is one where users have complete control over data and are compensated for it directly (and automatically). Companies make money from your data — why shouldn’t you?

See how Permission is making that dream a reality.

“Dear Charlie, how do users benefit from joining Permission?”

Our vision is to create and popularize a new and different engagement model, where you can control and profit from your time and data while engaging with the web as you normally do.

It means YOU give permission to advertisers to target you in exchange for rewards (our native cryptocurrency, ASK) when you view ads and content. Advertisers no longer pay the likes of Facebook and Google for exploiting personal data – they pay you.

Permission has built the infrastructure and tools to enable this evolved advertising model.

Our members can sign up and choose to watch ads and content and are rewarded for doing so. We are building an innovative platform powered by a digital asset that will serve as the beating heart of the advertising process. On one hand, it will assist our members to curate their personal data that they can (if they choose) permission for use by advertisers.

On the other, it will enable advertisers to accurately target our members. The result is that members will receive and be rewarded for watching ads and content that interest them.

What you won’t see is aggressive in-your-face ads that are delivered to you after a site you’ve visited has tracked you and sold your data without your permission. Advertisers won’t have to deal with the bots and fraudsters that have become the scourge of the digital advertising world. It is a clean system.

Advertisers are motivated to participate because they can achieve higher ROI. Our members are motivated to participate because they get rewarded for their most valuable assets, their time and data. We think of it as win-win advertising.

It’s All About Network Effects

If you read our whitepaper, you’ll note that our vision is to build a totally decentralized permission economy, where you, the individual, are in control of your data.

All of our business innovations are designed to help you earn from your data while you interact with the web and to make it possible for advertisers to respect your data by rewarding you for your permission to access it.

One of our strategies for executing this vision is to make it possible for you to earn from your data beyond the Permission.io Platform. To accomplish this, we are building an application that enables our members to encounter permission-based ads on websites while surfing the web. This will make it possible for millions of publishers and merchants across the world to reward you for your data and also to accept payments in ASK.

Your ability to earn and spend ASK beyond the Permission platform and while surfing the web allows user scale, creating a powerful network effect.  The more users, the more advertisers, the more demand and retention for ASK. All participants benefit by the growth of the network.

While decentralized exchanges (DEXs) only played a minor role in the crypto industry a year ago, their volumes exponentially increased over the past few months.

From January’s $280 million, the monthly volume of decentralized exchanges surged to nearly $22 billion in September, representing a Year to Date (YTD) increase of over 7,700%.

In addition to occasionally surpassing leading centralized exchanges, DEXs are continuously growing their market share. According to a recent report, the spot trading volumes’ ratio on DEXs compared to centralized exchanges reached 6.06% in August after hitting 3.95% in July.

Based on the above data, DEXs can soon become worthy competitors to centralized exchanges that have been ruling the crypto trading space for a very long time.

But what is the reason behind the rise of decentralized exchanges?

We will find out in this article along with all the essentials about DEXs.

What Is a Decentralized Exchange (DEX)?

A decentralized exchange or DEX is a peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency service that directly connects buyers with sellers.

As the connection between the parties is direct, there are no middlemen involved in the process. Due to the lack of third parties, DEXs often feature lower fees than centralized crypto exchanges.

One of the most important features of decentralized exchanges is that they take no custody of customer funds.

Contrary to their centralized counterparts, you are in control of your private keys on DEXs. This means that, upon a successful hacker attack against the exchange, malicious parties won’t be able to steal your digital assets via the data they acquired from the service provider’s servers (as your wallet credentials are not stored there).

Also, while centralized exchanges require their users to create an account, submit Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money-Laundering (AML) documents, most DEXs allow their customers to remain (semi-) anonymous while trading cryptocurrency.

Despite what their name suggests, aspects of the DEX solution are only partly decentralized. Such services often include centralized elements, such as order books, central servers to host the platform, and mandatory KYC checks.

Although, some DEXs maintain a high decentralization level with blockchain-based trading services supported by cryptocurrency miners. And, as web-based services could come with increased levels of centralization, some exchange solutions create their own decentralized applications (DApps) for trading.

Still, no matter how decentralized they are, a DEX never controls the users’ private keys or funds.

How Do Decentralized Exchanges Work?

How decentralized exchanges work depends on the solution you use for cryptocurrency trading.

Many DEXs do not support fiat currencies, allowing only crypto-to-crypto trades on their platforms. Due to the lack of national currencies, most decentralized exchanges don’t have to comply with regulations, which allows the solutions to offer services without KYC checks.

Smart Contracts and Trading Accounts

On a decentralized exchange, trading is either fully automated or semi-automated via smart contracts.

Simply put, a smart contract is a computer code that executes a digital agreement between two or more parties automatically if its conditions are fulfilled.

To start trading, users have to either connect their (external) wallets or create a new account (verification is needed for regulated services) to deposit cryptocurrency.

Market Makers and Takers

Most trading platforms include market makers and market takers.

While makers create buy or sell orders that aren’t fulfilled immediately (e.g., they only sell BTC when the Bitcoin price reaches $20,000), takers execute their orders instantly (e.g., they sell their BTC at the current price). Market makers create liquidity, and their orders are filled by takers.

When a market maker creates a new order for a trading pair on a DEX, a cryptographic hash is generated, which is signed with the market maker’s private key.

The order is either sent to the blockchain or off the chain with the maker’s signature.

When a market taker trades against the maker’s order, both the corresponding order data and the signature is sent to a smart contract.

Upon verifying that the signature originates from the maker, the smart contract ensures that the order is not filled or expired.

If all conditions are met, the smart contract automatically exchanges the funds, takes the trading fees, and transfers the funds to both parties’ wallets.

DEX Withdrawals and Atomic Swaps

After a successful trade, users can withdraw their exchanged funds to external wallets outside the DEX’s platform.

Alternatively, some decentralized exchange solutions (especially in the DeFi space) allow crypto users to utilize their own wallets for trading, without requiring them to deposit or withdraw their funds.

These platforms utilize atomic swaps – an instant cryptocurrency trade without third-party involvement – allowing users to connect their own (external) wallets to the service to create and execute trade orders.

How Did Decentralized Exchanges Become So Popular?

Earlier in this article, we mentioned that decentralized exchanges did not play a significant role in the cryptocurrency industry until the past few months.

But what’s behind the popularity of decentralized exchange services?

Reason 1: Major Issues With Centralized Exchanges

First, centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have earned a rather bad reputation while dominating the digital asset trading industry.

As they control the private keys of their customers, centralized exchanges hold user funds in their custody. Because of this reason, upon a successful attack against their services, hackers can steal the traders’ funds by obtaining their private keys.

As a result, there have been many high-profile cryptocurrency exchange hacks with devastating consequences since the industry’s inception. For example, the infamous $460 million Mt.Gox hack shook the crypto industry so much that the BTC price decreased by 45% between February 1 and March 31, 2014.

And attacks are not the only way centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have lost their customers’ funds in the past. In December 2019, the Canadian digital asset exchange, QuadrigaCX, allegedly lost $190 million from cold wallets that only the company’s deceased CEO had access to.

Whether the business’ claims were valid, we don’t know. However, centralized exchanges have long struggled with fraud, wash-trading, weak security, improper customer fund management, and a lack of transparency.

While many centralized providers have made major changes to their services to feature a regulated solution with moderate to high levels of transparency and decent security, their past mistakes have led to the rise of decentralized exchanges.

Despite that DEXs are not hack-proof – as attackers can still exploit flaws in smart contracts – their decentralized infrastructure eliminates single points of failure as well as limits the risks of user funds loss and fraud.

In addition to a higher security level, decentralized exchanges also feature increased privacy, transparency, and interoperability with other blockchain-based applications.

Reason 2: The DeFi Boom

The second reason why DEXs have become so popular is due to the rise of the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

DeFi refers to a movement within the cryptocurrency space where developers build blockchain-based, decentralized alternatives to centralized financial solutions.

From lending and borrowing to insurance and tokenized assets, DeFi solutions eliminate the middlemen and bureaucracy to make finance more accessible, efficient, and democratic for users.

Based on recent stats, the DeFi industry has grown exponentially in the past few months.

Compared to January 1’s $676 million, the total value locked in decentralized finance applications is standing at $10.91 billion at the time of writing this article, representing a YTD surge of over 1,500%.

With DeFi’s growth, there’s a higher demand for DEXs among crypto users, which many creators have integrated with their decentralized finance applications to expand the ecosystem.

Furthermore, next-generation DEXs like UniSwap and Kyber Network allow cryptocurrency enthusiasts to exchange their coins in a few seconds without leaving their wallets while preserving full control over their funds.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Decentralized Exchange Platforms?

Now that you know the basics of decentralized exchanges, let’s see what the pros and cons of DEXs are:ProsConsDue to the lack of custody, users are in full control over their fundsIncreased control comes with greater responsibility since DEXs are not able to restore access to users who have lost or forgot their credentialsUsers possess their private keys, which eliminates the risk of a single point of failureWhile DEXs feature increased security, flaws in smart contracts can still result in loss of user fundsIncreased security and transparencyDEXs often feature lower liquidity than centralized exchanges and have to use DeFi pools to improve their liquidityMost decentralized exchanges are blockchain-based and automate trades via smart contractsA part of DEXs use centralized components for trading and often move transactions off the chainNo need to create an account or submit KYC/AML documents (in most cases)Some decentralized exchange solutions request KYC/AML documents from users as DEXs face increased risks of regulatory crackdownsNo middlemen involved in the processIntegration with other DeFi applications and services

Where to Trade Crypto: The Top 5 Decentralized Exchanges

Decentralized exchanges are on the rise, and they provide several benefits to crypto enthusiasts.

But which DEX should you use for trading?

We will find out in this section where we listed the top 5 decentralized exchanges currently on the cryptocurrency market!

1. ViteX

Launched in 2019, ViteX is a relatively new decentralized exchange on the cryptocurrency market.

However, despite being a new player, ViteX is growing at a fast rate, ranking in the 110th place among the top digital asset exchanges and featuring an over $700,000 24-hour trading volume.

According to its creators, ViteX is a truly decentralized exchange that uses its own high-performance blockchain for order matching, asset management, and cryptocurrency trading.

With every process running and published on the project’s public chain, ViteX seeks to provide a high level of transparency to its users.

ViteX features its own native token, VX, mined exclusively by the decentralized exchange’s community. Users can mine VX in multiple ways, such as staking, trading, referring, and market-making, to earn rewards on the platform.

What’s interesting about ViteX is that the decentralized exchange distributes all trading fees to the community based on the amount of VX each member holds.

ViteX also features a unique role in the community called the operator. Operators can run their own mini decentralized exchanges (called zones) on top of ViteX to set up new trading pairs and earn transaction fees from users who trade in their zones.

For every transaction on the platform, ViteX charges a base fee of 0.2%. However, if a user trades in an operator’s zone, he could pay an up to 0.2% additional fee (0.4% in total with the base fee).

Permission, the next-generation blockchain-based advertising platform, has listed its native ASK coin on the decentralized exchange.

2. Uniswap

Uniswap is an Ethereum-based decentralized liquidity protocol that allows users to swap ERC-20 tokens via its DEX solution.

What’s so special about Uniswap is that it doesn’t require buyers and sellers to create liquidity, eliminating a significant issue decentralized exchanges face.

As part of an open-source solution, Uniswap doesn’t rely on order books or other centralized components to facilitate cryptocurrency trading.

Instead, Uniswap utilizes a model called “Constant Product Market Maker” and operates through smart contracts to create liquidity pools. Users trade against these pools, which are supported by liquidity providers who deposit their tokens in the pool.

In exchange for maintaining liquidity pools with their coins, providers receive a share of trading fees based on the proportion of their tokens in the pool.

As long as there is a liquidity pool for the coin, any ERC-20 token can be listed on Uniswap without permission from the service providers.

To trade on Uniswap, crypto users only need an Ethereum wallet they can connect to the decentralized exchange.

3. Kyber Network

Like Uniswap, Kyber Network is another “DeFi unicorn” that features a decentralized liquidity protocol and allows crypto users to exchange coins instantly via smart contracts.

For instant cryptocurrency swaps, Kyber also utilizes liquidity pools. However, unlike Uniswap, which focuses mainly on end-users, Kyber Network seeks to cater to various participants of the cryptocurrency market.

A typical participant is a cryptocurrency project with a native platform token.

Suppose a user doesn’t hold that specific coin. In that case, he has to register an account at a cryptocurrency exchange, transfer his digital assets there to convert them, and then withdraw the project’s token to his wallet.

It’s a long, tedious process that can discourage some users from utilizing a specific crypto service.

Kyber solves this issue by allowing crypto services to integrate its protocol into their platforms, allowing customers to instantly exchange their coins to the project’s native token.

In addition to supplying projects with liquidity, crypto projects can use Kyber to accept transactions in numerous tokens, but receive the payment in their preferred coin to their wallets.

While Kyber Network supports instant swaps for several tokens, the DeFi solution aggregates liquidity from multiple sources to provide the best rates for traders.

4. Bisq

Bisq is an open-source, decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that features its own DApps (iOS, Android, and desktop) for trading.

Bisq is governed via a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). This means that the DEX is not maintained by a business but the community itself to achieve a high decentralization level.

An exciting feature of Bisq is that it is built on top of Tor, a highly anonymous network, to make the decentralized exchange truly censorship-resistant and private.

Bisq provides a high level of security and privacy to its users by offering a non-custodial crypto exchange service as well as featuring security deposits, 2-of-2 multisig escrow, and a decentralized human mediation and arbitration system to prevent fraud.

Despite the lack of account creation and KYC/AML checks, Bisq allows users to exchange both crypto and fiat currencies privately.

For this, the DEX uses a similar process as the peer-to-peer exchange Localbitcoins, where traders have to choose between other users’ offers (instead of automatic order matching).

However, while Localbitcoins is a centralized exchange, Bisq operates on a fully decentralized nature, without any central servers to store user data.

5. ShapeShift.io

For users who seek a non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange with fast coin conversions and an easy-to-use interface, ShapeShift is a good choice.

You select the coin you want to purchase, the digital asset to use for the transaction, and the amount of cryptocurrency to buy. ShapeShift then provides you with an address to deposit your crypto.

After you have successfully deposited, the service will automatically convert your coins and send them to your wallet.

While ShapeShift is considered a DEX, it features a lower level of decentralization than the previous services we listed.

Because of this reason, you have to create an account with the service to exchange cryptocurrency and submit KYC documents to verify your identity. As a result, ShapeShift transactions are not as private as with the other DEXs.

Also, ShapeShift holds user data on centralized servers and uses multiple off-chain processes for trading cryptocurrency.

On the other hand, you can take advantage of the DEX’s 24/7 customer support as well as rapid, user-friendly service.

For each transaction, ShapeShift charges a 0.50% spread as well as a miner’s fee. However, you can eliminate most fees if you hold the company’s native FOX token in your wallet.

How to Trade on a Decentralized Exchange?

By now, you know how a DEX works and what the best services are. The next step here is to explore how to trade on a decentralized exchange.

Below, you can find a short but comprehensive step-by-step guide for purchasing on ViteX, one of the top decentralized exchanges on the crypto market.

Step 1: Download the Vite App

To get started with ViteX, you have to create an account with the service (no need to submit KYC documents) or connect a compatible wallet (e.g., Ledger).

While ViteX features both a web platform and native apps (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac), you have to download and install the application on your device to create an account.

To do that, use the following link or click the “Log in” button near the top right corner of the trading platform, and head to “Create an Account.”

On the next page, you can find the QR codes (for mobile) or links (for desktop) to download and install the Vite App.

Step 2: Create a ViteX Account

Once you are done with the installation, it’s time to open the application.

Here, you need to click “Log in” and the “Create an Account” button again. On the next screen, fill out the form with your login credentials (make sure to choose a strong password).

After you are ready, the service will generate you a mnemonic seed, which you can use to restore your ViteX wallet.

Important: Write down (either physically on a paper or in a doc file on your computer) your seed and store it in a safe place you have exclusive access to. Don’t share it with anyone as it could compromise your security and may result in a loss of funds.

When you are ready with your seed phrase backup, click the “Submit” button to proceed.

Step 3: Deposit Funds Into Your Wallet

When your ViteX account is ready, it’s time to deposit funds into your exchange wallet.

To do that, click the wallet icon near the top left corner of the page, select BTC, and click the blue “Deposit” button next to it.

After you click “Confirm and Proceed” on the pop-up, ViteX will display your wallet address. Scan the QR code (for mobile) or copy the address and paste it into the wallet you will use for sending funds.

It’s essential to double-check (or even triple-check) your wallet address to ensure that you are transferring your coins to the correct place.

When you are ready, initiate the transfer, and wait for miners to process your transaction (ViteX BTC deposits need two confirmations). Unless the network is congested, this shouldn’t take longer than an hour or so.

Step 4: Trade Crypto on ViteX

When your Bitcoin has arrived in your ViteX wallet, the next step is to click the trading icon on the top left side of the page and select your preferred coin pair (e.g., ETH/BTC) under the “Exchange” menu.

On the next screen, you will see a chart as well as a form to submit your order to buy the cryptocurrency (ETH in our example) with your BTC.

Specify the price you are willing to pay for each token as well as the total amount of coins to purchase.

When you are ready, click the green “Buy ETH” button to submit your order. ViteX will then match you with a seller, execute your trade, and deposit your newly purchased tokens into your wallet.

Decentralized Exchanges: The Solution to Trade Crypto Without Middlemen

With the rise of the DeFi industry, decentralized exchanges have been increasingly popular in the cryptocurrency space.

Due to their decentralized nature, DEXs provide increased security, transparency, and privacy to users who are looking to find a solution to the common problems of centralized exchanges.

From ViteX to Bisq, it’s not hard to find a decent decentralized exchange solution on today’s crypto market.

—

FAQ

Is Coinbase a decentralized exchange?

No, Coinbase is a centralized exchange where the service provider controls the users’ private keys.

Unlike with decentralized exchanges, Coinbase users have to create an account with the service and verify it by submitting different KYC and AML documents. Because of this reason, it is not possible to trade cryptocurrency anonymously (or privately) on Coinbase.

Why is an exchange decentralized?

A cryptocurrency exchange can be decentralized for a wide variety of reasons.

With a decentralized exchange, users have full control over their funds, which decreases the risks of losing funds due to a hacker attack. Also, many DEXs use blockchain technology and smart contracts to automate trading, increase transparency, and provide a high privacy level to their customers.

What is an example of a decentralized exchange?

A good example of a decentralized exchange is ViteX that uses its own blockchain to match buyers with sellers.

Instead of utilizing centralized servers, ViteX is maintained by miners who receive rewards for supporting the DEX’s ecosystem.

While you have to create an account to get started (unless you can connect a compatible wallet), you don’t need to submit KYC or AML documents for verification, allowing ViteX customers to trade cryptocurrency privately.

Congrats! If you’re reading this, you’ve likely signed up to become a Permission member, earned some ASK and are now ready to access your coins.

We are happy for you and are very proud to be the platform that helps you earn from your valuable time and data. Our goal is to make ASK simple and delightful to earn and use.

In this article, we’re going to show you how to transfer your pending ASK to your wallet.

After you’ve completed KYC, your Permission wallet will display the following message:

“Identity Verification is complete. Pending ASK will be available to transfer into your wallet upon final verification.”

You will receive a notification to the e-mail address associated with your Permission account once your account has been fully verified.

After final verification is complete, your wallet will now display a “Transfer to Wallet” button just below your Pending Balance:

Click on the “Transfer to Wallet” button.

A prompt will appear that allows you to enter the amount of ASK you wish to transfer:

In this example, we will transfer 200 ASK:

After entering the amount you wish to transfer, click, “Transfer.”

After you’ve initiated the transfer, your wallet screen will indicate that the transfer is in progress:

This should take just a few moments.

Upon successful transfer, your Wallet Balance will be adjusted to reflect the amount transferred:

Voila!

You can see the details of your transaction in your History:

Now, you are ready to HODL, exchange or SPEND your ASK on thousands of products from your favorite brands on our very own Shop & Earn.

If you experience any issues with transferring your ASK, please submit a support ticket.

At Permission, our goal is to help you earn from your data.

Instead of your personal data being exploited by tech giants, we ensure that you are rewarded for the data you share while searching, shopping and consuming content on the web.

Our innovative platform allows you to receive crypto rewards for your data while keeping your personal information anonymous to advertisers.

Come back often to earn and spend on Permission.io. And, don’t forget that referring friends and family is a simple way to earn and also helps us grow our Permission community! A growing community benefits all network participants and is how we’ll together create a more transparent and trustworthy internet.

As well as being core values of Permission, transparency and trust are important aspects of all cryptocurrency businesses. While the current Internet has always been dominated by businesses whose operations are opaque and deliberately hidden in the shadows, the advent of the blockchain holds out the promise of something refreshingly different.

Permission.io sees itself as part of a new generation of businesses that has such values at its foundation and which will help to define a more evolved Internet.

Nevertheless, this refreshing new world approach has been tarnished by examples of fraudulent behavior from a few cryptocurrency companies. In addition to that, the cryptocurrency world has also proved to be a natural target for hackers and bad actors. And whenever they succeed in their criminal endeavors, unwelcome publicity ensues.

Thus in the minds of some people, cryptocurrency businesses are suspect. A company that is helping to change this is Messari.

Messari: A Standard For Transparency

Messari states its company mission with the following words:

We want to help investors, regulators, and the public make sense of this revolutionary new asset class, and are building data tools that will drive informed decision making and investment. We believe that crypto will democratize access to information, break down data silos, and ultimately give everyone the tools to build wealth.

Messari delivers a means of measuring the transparency of cryptocurrency companies. It developed its own set of methods for computing metrics (over 100 quantitative metrics) and to classifying assets (15+ qualitative classifications) for such companies.

It also provides the Messari Disclosures Registry, in the form of an open-source database that can be accessed by anyone.

Permission and Messari

Permission.io, along with more than 60 other cryptocurrency businesses, has been verified against the Messari transparency index. You will find our registry details at https://messari.io/asset/permission. Messari updates such details regularly.

As soon as we became aware of Messari, its methodology, and the disclosure registry, we were keen to participate and thus we have subjected ourselves to Messari’s standardized test for assessing the truthfulness and completeness of our project’s transparency. We consider Messari to have established itself as the natural standard for due diligence and research in the cryptocurrency sector.

Messari’s methodology enables individuals and organizations to compare “like with like” when investigating businesses in this space. Studying its methodology and the indexes it uses is an education in itself.

We are proud to be included in Messari’s registry of transparency-verified companies, alongside other leading and well-known crypto companies such as Blockstack, Waves, Dash, Cardano, Ethereum Classic and Zcash.

No matter where you go, you are being constantly bombarded with ads.

You see them on the streets while you are walking to your favorite café, before watching movies in the cinema, and when you read the latest news on your smartphone.

Sometimes, we can’t blame businesses for these tactics. Many earn their revenue by placing advertisements on their apps so people can use them free of charge.

Nevertheless, others grab every possible chance to increase their profits by displaying tons of annoying ads in their apps, which provides a horrible experience to users.

Loading too many ads on smartphone and tablet devices – like the iPhone and iPads – drains the devices’ battery quickly while using increased mobile data.

Some consumers choose to support their favorite content creators by interacting with advertisements in their apps. But no one can blame those who decide to block ads on their devices to restore the user experience and the privacy advertisers have taken away from them.

Fortunately, users can set up ad blockers on their smartphones to eliminate the ads and trackers in the apps they use and on the websites they visit. And even if you use an ad-block solution, you can still support your favorite content creators by whitelisting their apps or websites.

What Is an Ad Blocker for iPhone or iPad?

Before we take a deep-dive into showing you the best ad blockers for iPhone and iPad, let’s first see what ad-block software is for iOS.

The most basic version of an iOS ad blocker eliminates ads, trackers, and other intrusive content from the web pages you visit via your browser (mostly in Safari) on iPhone and iPad devices.

On the other hand, advanced ad-block software can even prevent ads from showing in most apps on your smartphone, providing a (near) ad-free experience to iOS users.

Ad blockers for iPhone and iPad devices use different methods to get rid of ads.

The first and most common way is to identify the advertising content on a web page or in an app and replace it with something else before it gets displayed on the user’s device.

Other solutions completely disable these requests, leaving broken links or holes in the places where you would normally see the ad.

One of the most effective methods to block ads on smartphone devices is to encrypt the user’s DNS traffic via a local VPN, allowing the iOS ad blocker to work in all (or at least most of the) apps on the device.

As a result, an iOS ad blocker allows you to have an ad-free experience while playing your favorite games, browsing the web, or using your favorite apps on your iPhone or iPad device.

Also, since you load much fewer advertisements, ad blockers may increase the device’s performance while decreasing your energy consumption and data usage.

Furthermore, as ad-block solutions disable malicious ads and trackers, they also help keep your smartphone device more secure against cyber attacks and fraud.

Now that you know the basics, let’s see the best iOS ad blockers for iPhone and iPad devices.

1. AdGuard for iOS

Overview

AdGuard is a prominent multi-device (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, web browser) ad blocker solution that offers system-wide protection.

Based on the version you choose, the ad blocker blocks ads, trackers, and other intrusive content either in Safari or in all apps on your iPhone or iPad device.

In addition to a 4+ average rating on TrustPilot, numerous recommendations on forums and social media, independent review sites have been considering AdGuard as one of the best ad blockers for iOS devices.

As a side note, we have also included AdGuard on the top of our list of best Android ad blockers.

How It Works

The basic version of AdGuard allows you to block ads in the Safari browser.

If you choose the basic AdGuard, it will operate as a simple content blocker that works similarly to ad-block extensions for desktop browsers.

However, instead of installing directly from your browser’s extension marketplace, you have to download the AdGuard application from the App Store to set up the ad-block software on iOS devices.

It’s important to mention – and this will apply to all ad blockers that work in browsers only – that Apple only allows simple content blockers to operate in Safari without support for other browser apps like Chrome or Firefox.

Therefore, if you are looking to block ads in other iOS browsers, we recommend setting up an ad-block solution that offers system-wide protection against advertisements.

In Safari, AdGuard uses regularly-updated filters to screen the websites you visit and remove advertising content as well as different web trackers from the pages.

On the other hand, the pro version of the iOS ad blocker includes a DNS protection module that encrypts your DNS traffic to achieve higher levels of privacy.

With DNS protection enabled, AdGuard sets up a local VPN to block ads and web trackers in Safari and also in other apps on your iPhone or iPad device.

Whether you use the basic or the Pro version of the app, AdGuard allows you to customize both the blacklisted (the sites where you block ads) and the whitelisted (the websites where you allow ads) domains within the ad-block software’s interface.

Cost

As mentioned earlier, iOS users can choose to use either the basic AdGuard software or AdGuard Pro.

While the basic version is free, AdGuard Pro is a paid subscription that offers advanced features, such as DNS protection, custom filters, and security filters, for iPhone and iPad users.

Pros

1. While the basic version eliminates ads in Safari, AdGuard Pro eliminates advertisements and other intrusive content on the entire iOS device
2. Excellent reputation, great user feedback, and recommendations from independent review sites
3. Multi-device support (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, web browser extensions)
4. Ample options for customization
5. A paid subscription allows you to utilize AdGuard Pro on multiple devices

Cons

1. To achieve system-wide protection against ads on iPhone and iPad, you need a paid AdGuard Pro subscription

2. Wipr

Overview

If you are looking for a minimalistic ad blocker for iPhone or iPad, Wipr is probably your best choice.

However, unlike AdGuard’s pro version, Wipr only blocks ads on Safari. Therefore, if you want to disable ads on your entire system, you have to use an alternative iOS ad-block solution. Also, the app doesn’t offer too many options for customization.

But in exchange, you get a simple app you can use easily to block browser ads in iOS without amassing too much of your smartphone’s system resources.

How It Works

From this list of best iOS ad blockers, Wipr features the easiest setup process.

After downloading the application from the App Store, you only need to tap a button to get the ad-block software up and running.

By doing so, Wipr will block all trackers, ads, crypto miners, EU cookie, and GDPR notices, as well as other disturbing content when you are browsing the web with Safari or other apps that use Safari to display web pages.

In addition to saving you time with the easy setup process, Wipr automatically updates its blacklist in the background to provide up-to-date protection against intrusive web content.

Apart from its simplicity, what we like the best about Wipr is that the service provider refuses to accept money from advertisers seeking to get their ads whitelisted by ad-block solutions.

Cost

While Wipr is not free, you can purchase the app for a small, one-time fee of $1.99.

Optionally, you can choose to support the iOS ad-block solution’s creators with in-app donations.

Pros

1. Simplicity and straightforward setup
2. Lightweight app
3. Blocks various types of intrusive content in Safari
4. Honest service that doesn’t whitelist ads in exchange for money
5. Regular, background-only blacklist updates
6. Cheap price

Cons

1. No options for customization
2. Wipr only works in Safari
3. You have to pay to use it

3. 1Blocker

Overview

The next iOS ad blocker on our list is 1Blocker that offers numerous options for iPhone and iPad users to customize how they eliminate advertisements.

Like Wipr, 1Blocker doesn’t offer system-wide protection for iOS. However, it’s a great app to eliminate all kinds of ads and intrusive content while browsing the web via Safari.

How It Works

Like Wipr, it’s super easy to set up 1Blocker as you only need to tick the boxes next to the content you seek to block in Safari.

Also, its creators designed 1Blocker as a native, lightweight app that uses only a limited amount of system resources.

To improve the browser’s speed, instead of modifying web pages, the iOS ad-block software uses filters for Safari.

According to the service provider, 1Blocker can decrease web page load times in Safari by two to five times on average.

Also, you don’t have to worry about heavy updates as the ad blocker updates its Safari filters automatically via silent cloud updates.

1Blocker allows iPhone and iPad users to customize both blacklists and whitelists as well as the type of content you want to eliminate from Safari web pages, including:

1. Ads
2. Trackers
3. Annoyances (e.g., cookie notices and crypto mining)
4. Social media widgets, share buttons, and social icons
5. Comments
6. Adult sites

Cost

While you can download 1Blocker for free, the basic version of the ad-block software is limited to blocking one content type (e.g., ads, trackers, or adult sites).

To protect against all types of intrusive web content, you have to pay a monthly or a yearly subscription fee.

Alternatively, you can purchase a lifetime subscription for a more expensive, one-time fee.

Pros

1. Easy setup
2. Lightweight ad blocker solution
3. Numerous options for customization, including setting up general and regional blacklists, as well as whitelists
4. In addition to ads, 1Blocker’s paid version eliminates multiple types of intrusive content
5. Blocking adult sites is a useful feature for parents

Cons

1. While there’s an option to get a lifetime subscription, no matter the option you choose, 1Blocker charges hefty fees for the premium version of the ad-block software
2. The free version of the app is limited to blocking only one content type
3. 1Blocker only offers protection against intrusive content in Safari

4. DNSCloak

Overview

For those of you who possess basic technical skills and who are not afraid to dedicate some of your time to configure the app, we have included a geeky way to provide system-wide protection against ads on iOS.

While you need to do some configuration before you can block ads on your iOS device, using this method doesn’t cost you anything.

For this, we will use DNSCloak, a secure privacy app for iPhone and iPad that lets you override your DNS settings to eliminate ads and trackers from both the ads you use and the websites you visit on your smartphone.

How It Works

Remember AdGuard’s Pro version?

The paid version of the ad blocker software provides DNS protection to its users by setting up a local VPN to disable advertisement-related requests.

This way, you eliminate ads not only on the web but also in the apps on your smartphone or tablet device, achieving system-wide protection against disturbing digital content.

By using DNSCloak, you can achieve the same level of protection against intrusive iOS content at no cost.

However, to achieve that, you have to configure DNSCloak first. For the exact steps, we recommend checking out this article.

Cost

While AdGuard doesn’t charge you for using its DNS, you can download and install the DNSCloak app at no cost.

Therefore, upon successful configuration, you don’t have to pay a dime to block ads on your entire iOS system.

Pros

1. You can use DNSCloak to set up AdGuard’s DNS to block ads free of charge
2. System-wide protection against intrusive content on iPhone and iPad devices
3. You can customize the DNS you want to use to block ads (although, we recommend using AdGuard’s servers)
4. Automatic protection against ads after successful setup

Cons

1. You need some time and at least basic technical skills to configure DNSCloak
2. Risks of Apple removing DNSCloak from the App Store in the future

5. Firefox Focus

Overview

Developed by Mozilla, Firefox Focus is a privacy-focused web browser for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.

Firefox Focus is free, and it has built-in capabilities to block ads, trackers, and analytics software while you are browsing the web.

How It Works

The app is quite straightforward to use.

You set up the type of content you want to block – web trackers, analytics software, fonts, and ads – and Firefox Focus will automatically disable them while you are browsing the internet.

To achieve even more privacy, Firefox Focus automatically deletes your browsing data (including history and passwords) after you finish surfing the web.

As a plus, Firefox Focus can be integrated with Safari, enabling the same protection against intrusive content in the latter browser.

Cost

Firefox Focus is free to download and use without in-app purchases or subscriptions.

Pros

1. Firefox Focus effectively eliminates intrusive content on the websites you visit via the browser
2. You can use the iOS ad blocker free of charge
3. Optional Safari integration
4. Automatic deletion of browsing data after closing the app
5. Multi-device support (iOS, Android)

Cons

1. Lack of system-wide protection against ads
2. Firefox Focus doesn’t suit users who prefer to keep at least a part of their browsing history

Prevent Intrusive Ads With iOS Ad Blockers

As we are bombarded with tons of ads every day, it’s essential to use an ad blocker solution. This way, you can have a good user experience, protect your privacy, and block malicious content while browsing the web, reading the news, or playing your favorite game on your iOS smartphone or tablet.

Ad blockers for iPhone and iPad devices not only help you achieve an ad-free experience, but they can also speed up your device as well as decrease your smartphone’s energy and data usage.

You can choose from iOS ad blockers that offer system-wide protection against advertisements or use an application that disables ads exclusively in your web browser.

However, you don’t necessarily have to use an ad blocker software to have a non-intrusive user experience on the web.

With Permission, we have created a blockchain-based digital advertising platform where users can earn ASK cryptocurrency for the ongoing sharing of their time and data while engaging with ads. By volunteering to receive ads in exchange for compensation, users receive relevant, personalized content and get paid for it.

This advertising model also benefits brands that place ads and content on the Permission.io platform as they can increase their ROI while building long-term relationships with their (potential) customers.

If you are interested in learning more about how to earn from your data, we highly recommend checking out Permission's official website or following our official Twitter page.

You may have read the word “blockchain” a thousand times without properly understanding what one is. If so, you are definitely not alone, and even if you think you know, read on. You’ll enjoy it, I promise. I wrote it with you in mind.

The blockchain is revolutionary — revolutionary like the invention of the light bulb, not revolutionary like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin — and it will serve you to know why.

No doubt you understand that in order to create a cryptocurrency you need to build a blockchain, and if you didn’t understand that, take my word for it, you do.

What Is Blockchain? A Business Level Explanation

An accurate definition of blockchain would insist that it is a digital database containing transactions (often financial ones) that can be used and shared within a publicly accessible network such as the Internet.

However, let me boil all those words down to the important piece of information that few people tell you when they write about the blockchain. It is this:

The blockchain is a shared database.

When you understand this, it becomes easier to understand why a blockchain is organized in the way it is. So let me exhume the meaning of the above all-important and very short sentence.

A database is a way to share data. Yes, I know, there are lots of different types of databases — relational, document, XML, triplestore, etc. What they all have in common is that they allow data to be shared between different applications. Databases have well-thought-out standard interfaces that any program can use to get at the data. A blockchain is no different in that respect.

What makes it very different is that it enables data to be shared between organizations in a trustable way.

Hopefully, the first question in your mind is this: Why can’t all those other kinds of databases do that?

The answer is simple: They can’t be fully trusted.

Consider two organizations, A and B. A has data in a database and wishes to let B access that data, and add new data. Maybe such an arrangement will work fine, but maybe it won’t. Here’s how it can fail:

1. An employee who works for A and manages the database thinks up a fraudulent scheme that involves changing data in the database. He has the authority to make such changes and maybe he even finds a way to cover his tracks. As a consequence, B loses money.
2. A talented hacker who lives in Belarus finds a way to hack into the database and perpetrates a fraudulent scheme, knowing he is safe from extradition even if his identity is discovered.
3. A cybercriminal in China puts ransomware on A’s network. It encrypts the data and he sends an email demanding payment of $1m dollars in Bitcoin.

Even if both A and B do their level best to make the arrangement work, it can all go catawampus. The Internet is alive with security problems.

A blockchain database is different because it is secure — bullet-proof secure, superman secure, Internet secure.

Because of that if A and B wish to implement a shared database, they can achieve that by implementing a blockchain to manage the data they wish to share. Problem solved.

How Does the Blockchain Work?

I’ll explain step by step.

The first thing to know is that just like other databases, the blockchain writes data away in blocks. Databases have done this since before the deluge because it works way better than writing records away one at a time. So the “block” part of blockchain is no different from other databases. It is the “chain” part that is different.

All the blocks in a blockchain are chained together in the order in which they were created. The first block is connected to the second block, and the second block is connected to the third block and the third block is connected to the fourth block, now hear the word of the Lord.

The fact that they are connected is no big deal, it’s how they are connected that matters. They are connected by a hash.

Unless you’re a programmer type, you won’t know what a hash is. Let me tell you. Firstly, it has nothing at all to do with hash browns or hashish. A hash is a mathematical function that can be applied to a string of binary information, such as, well, a block of data that you want to write to a database.

I could try to explain the math, but let’s not bother. I’ll assume that you waved goodbye to hard mathematics sometime during your education and you are in no hurry to get reacquainted. Just accept that you can apply a hashing function to a block of data and it will spit out a string of numbers and characters like this: 39A1H55ZZ5178.

What’s really sneaky about the hash function is that if you change just one piece of data, even a single bit, the hash value that the hash function spits out will also change. So the blockchain, instead of just writing the block of data away, attaches the hash value of the previous block to the block, then hashes the block, and then writes the block away with the hash value it calculated.

So now the stored block looks like this: Hash-value-of-previous-block, block data, Hash-value-of-this-block.

And this means that:

1. Every block knows which was the previous block.
2. You cannot change any data in the block or the hash value of the previous block without changing this block’s hash value.
3. But if you change this block’s hash value, you will break the chain, because the hash value is already being used to build the next block.

In summary, this means that the block has become unchangeable — as unchangeable as the stars in the sky.

What Makes the Blockchain So Secure?

Now, if you have a criminal turn of mind, you may be thinking:

Wait a minute…

What is to stop me from taking control of the computer running the blockchain software, unraveling a few blocks, then altering a few records to grab a stack of someone else’s Bitcoin and drop them into my personal wallet, and then rewriting all the details with new hash values?

The answer is Consensus.

Consensus stops you from doing that. In practice, there won’t be just one computer creating new blocks, there will be many. In the case of Bitcoin, for example, there are thousands. And because the Bitcoin blockchain was the first blockchain, I’m going to use the way it works to explain consensus.

The blockchain doesn’t live on just one server computer, it is copied across a multitude. Each one of these servers is competing obsessively-compulsively to write the next block.

To enable this desperate crush of computers to compete in this sprint, all the transactions are sent to all of them. No computer is allowed to write the next block without solving a mathematical computing problem which relates to the data values stored in the block.

It’s a hashing problem of a kind, but I’ll not try to explain it, I’ll just provide an appropriate link for the benefit of those who are not mathematically challenged.

It’s a race against time, but the computing problem has been constructed in such a way that no particular computer can be guaranteed to win. Thus, it is impossible to predict which computer will write the next block.

The first computer that solves the problem gets that privilege and is rewarded with 6.25 Bitcoin — no small reward at current prices. This arrangement for mining Bitcoin is called “Proof of Work” because the victorious computer is able to prove that it did the work to find an answer.

If you are thinking, “that’s a completely goofy way of writing a one-megabyte block of data”, I agree with you. Furiously.

Think about it. You get thousands of computers to compete to solve a problem and you give the winner a prize.

I mean that has to cost, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. It costs plenty. In fact, with Bitcoin, it is fabulously expensive. It has been estimated that Bitcoin mining consumes about sixty-one terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, which is (and I am not lying through my back teeth here) about as much electricity every year as the country of Switzerland.

And on top of that, there’s the cost of the Bitcoin mining computers which you cannot buy by the truckload at Dollar Tree. You will pay over $1,000 for just one and much more for what is termed “a mining rig”. That’s multi-millions of dollars of silicon tied up in mining Bitcoin. And by the way, those are specialist computers that can only be used for mining.

Even if you get your electricity cheap, for example in Iceland for 6 cents a Kwh, that still amounts to $3.66 billion per year.

How Does This Relate to Blockchain?

Bitcoin mining didn’t start out expensive. When the infant Bitcoin first emerged from the maternity ward, most of the mining was done on dusty old seen-better-days computers.

Back in the day, prior to July 2010, you could buy Bitcoin for less than a cent, and in those days a cent bought you about six-kilowatt minutes of electricity. Aside from a handful of geeks and crazy coders, nobody was mining Bitcoin.

That’s the bizarre business dynamic of Bitcoin; mining activity is driven by the price of the coin.

As the price of the coin rose it attracted more miners. Eventually, there were too many and some dropped out. Others realized that they could make more money by using better computers, making those dusty old PCs redundant. Powerful gaming computers gave up gaming and took up mining.

It became an arms race.

Chip manufacturers realized they could make money by designing chips that were dedicated to mining Bitcoin. These were called ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits).

That isn’t the only factor at play here. It’s complicated to explain, but it only consumes the rest of this paragraph, so feel free to skip past it. The difficulty of the mathematical hashing problem can be altered and is regularly adjusted in a way that directly relates to an estimate of the computer power deployed for mining. This adjustment is made every 2016 blocks (about every 2 weeks) in order to keep the average time between writing a new block to about 10 minutes.

If you are wondering who the hell thought up this scheme… to impose a consensus system on the writing away of blocks of data to a blockchain, which has resulted in thousands of specialized computers competitively solving math problems 24 hours a day to earn the right to write the next block, while consuming enough electricity to keep the lights on in Switzerland, and thereby earning money…  the answer is Satoshi Nakamoto.

Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto?

That’s a question I cannot answer because Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym. If you’re thinking “Oh, he’s one of those modest Japanese guys you encounter in Ninja movies who is obsessed with economics and good at playing Go”, you may be right.

Or maybe he’s a shady ex-KGB operative who intends to undermine the US Dollar. Or maybe he’s a Libertarian hacktivist who thinks he’s striking a blow for financial freedom.

In a world where everyone seems desperate to grab a minimum of 15 minutes of fame, perhaps the most famous cryptographer since Alan Turing has decided to stay anonymous and has covered his tracks so well that nobody seems to know who he is. Perhaps he read about what the Brits did to Alan Turing and decided that anonymity had very definite virtues.

But never mind. The scheme that Satoshi Nakamoto invented: digital blockchain currencies and mining for consensus, was a brilliant conception. He will go down in history as one of the world’s great innovators — and because he was anonymous, every country on the planet will probably claim him as their own.

Species of Consensus

The Bitcoin blockchain has stood the test of time. It has never been successfully hacked and it has launched the value of its cryptocurrency into the stratosphere.

It has proved itself despite the fact that it has been declared dead over 380 times. This includes pronouncements by such legendary luminaries as Steven Mnuchin, Nouriel Roubini, Warren Buffet, and Paul Krugman to mention just a few.

However, even its avid fans must surely understand that there has to be a better way of achieving block writing consensus than by chewing up all of Switzerland’s electricity. And indeed there is. Think about it.

Here’s what we are gunning for: we want a network of a significant number of computers none of whom can conspire with each other to change the contents of the latest block. If we can’t achieve that then we do not have “immutability” and thus the blockchain is no more reliable than any other kind of database.

We need to limit the ownership of these computers so that no single provider of such resources can dominate the writing of blocks, and neither can any cartel of resource providers. For the record, achieving dominance of the population of block-writing computers is called a 51% attack. If you can mount a 51% attack you destroy the security of the blockchain and the currency that it supports.

Actually, there are many schemes for doing this that do not involve mining. The most prominent is called Proof Of Stake where a number of resource providers (who are in effect stakeholders) provide computers for block-writing and the computer that gets to write the next block is determined in some unpredictable way that does not involve electricity-hungry mathematics.

In fact, there are many different consensus methods: Aside from the two already discussed, there is: Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS), Proof of Capacity (POC), Proof of Elapsed Time (POET), Consensus as a Service (CaaS), Proof of Identity (POI), and Proof of Authority (POA) — the last of which is employed by the ASK blockchain.

If you want more details, feel free to Google.

What Is the Blockchain Used For?

Ok, so we know you can use blockchain technology to create a currency, but what else can you use it for?

The obvious place to look is wherever the sharing of data securely can be a problem. Here are some examples.

1. Payment Information. So obviously a blockchain is a great vehicle for storing payment information. Sure you can use it for cryptocurrency payments, that was its first application. But, actually, banks will probably end up using it as payment technology for most of what they do. Many of them are already using Ripple for just that purpose.
2. Government Data. It’s likely that governments will eventually use the blockchain for digital IDs, making public records available and even (horror of horrors) bullet-proof incorruptible voting (Dictators, take note).
3. Healthcare Data: This is an obvious application, particularly because security is a big deal in the healthcare industry. Medical records are difficult to share and can be plagued by inaccuracy. On a blockchain, they will be accurate, secure, and easily shared with medical professionals who are approved by you.
4. Insurance Data: Insurance is a similar area to healthcare in that data needs to be trustworthy and confidential. With the use of smart contracts (space forbids from explaining this incredibly useful feature of the blockchain), most of the customer interactions involved in making insurance claims would be handled with extraordinary efficiency. No more hassling your insurer week after week for your payout.

There’s also a really big area of blockchain applications for supply chain data.

The Blockchain and the Supply Chain

Do you like salmon? Most people do. Do you like genuine wild-caught salmon?

Maybe you’ve never had it. Quite possibly you think you have but you haven’t.

The conservation group Oceana produced a report on this very topic. During winter 2013-2014 researchers collected 82 samples of salmon labeled “wild” from restaurants and grocery stores in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, and sneakily did DNA tests on them.

It turned out that 43% of the salmon was fraudulently labeled. 69% of the mislabeled fish were farmed Atlantic salmon. Cheaper species of salmon were labeled as top quality Chinook. And the mislabelling was more common in restaurants than grocery stores.

In a supply chain that is built on the blockchain or a series of blockchains, such food fraud is harder to perpetrate. Did that Beluga Caviar really come from the Black Sea? Did that Roquefort really come to maturity in a cave near Roquefort-sur-Soulzon?

With the blockchain, such frauds will be harder to perpetrate.

Is the Blockchain the Future?

I have no doubt that the blockchain is the future of shared databases. It is simply the best technology that has ever been created for sharing data in a secure and trustworthy manner. The technology may evolve over time as all technology does, but it will not be superseded.

If you don’t believe me, just wait, and wait and wait. If you are not already using blockchain technology, you will be in a year or two. You will see more and more of it. Eventually, it will be as common as french fries in a fast-food joint.

And if, in the coming years, the blockchain dies a death and disappears — well, I was obviously wrong.

It’s the end of the road for third-party cookies—and that’s a good thing.

Perhaps you don’t know what third party cookies are. Let’s begin by explaining why cookies exist at all.

What Is a Cookie?

A cookie is a parcel of data stored in the browser to speed-up and simplify interactions between the browser and a website it is connected to. Any data can be stored in a cookie.

How Do Cookies Work?

The browser provides a place where websites can store data when that website is being accessed, and the browser stores it. The idea was invented by Lou Montulli of Netscape Communications in 1994, the year that the Web was born.

The problem was that a PC could disconnect from a website for many reasons: the PC or the website might crash or the internet could disconnect. So the website cookie could store your identity data, your preferences, and maybe even session information. Then, if anything failed you could restart near to where you left off.

Since then things have become more complex and there are several different types of cookie, as follows.

The Different Types of Internet Cookies

The Session Cookie

These are temporary cookies that last only for the duration of a session. They tend to store mundane data like login credentials and usually evaporate when you reboot the computer or close the browser. They can also be used to help with website performance like ensuring fast page loads.

There’s unlikely to be anything objectionable stored in these cookies.

The Persistent Cookie

Websites that plant these cookies in your browser usually give them an expiration date, which could be any time from seconds to years.

You know you have a persistent identity cookie if you are on a website and reboot your computer only to discover when you return to the website that you are still logged in.

Such cookies are commonly used to track your on-site behavior and to tailor your user experience.

There is unlikely to be anything objectionable about these cookies either.

The Secure Cookie

These cookies assist with encryption and hence are definitely good guys. They are only transmitted securely (via HTTPS) and they are used to implement security on banking and shopping websites.

They keep your financial details secret but allow the site to remember those details.

The First-Party Cookie

All the above are examples of first-party cookies. Technically first-party simply means that it’s a two-way arrangement between you and the website. However, many websites monitor website traffic with help from external vendors, particularly Google with Google Analytics.

The cookies placed by Google for that purpose are usually thought of as first-party cookies because they just monitor the site visit. Think of them as first-party by proxy.

The Third-Party Cookie

Third-party cookies are what drives “behavioral advertising”. They are called third-party because none of the websites you visited put them there. They were slipped into your browser by some advertiser’s ad server.

Advertisers add tags to web pages so that in conjunction with the cookies they place, they can recognize you as you skip from one website to another. They build a user profile of you and your habits in the hope of targeting you more effectively.

Whichever way you look at this, it’s a violation. They do not seek your permission and they are aggressive.

The bad advertiser practices of the web depend on these cookies. They include:

1. Cookie-bombing: This focuses on quantity over quality, to the detriment of both the user and the advertiser. It is “pray and spray”, matching the ad with neither the website nor the user. Think of, say, feminine hygiene products advertised to men who are visiting a bookstore website. Think of ads appearing in obscure places on a web page that you will never notice, except by accident.
2. Incessant retargeting: This is where ads seem to follow you around the web from one site to another.

The March of the Ad Blocker

Nowadays, 30% or so of people use ad blockers. The top three reasons for doing so, according to GlobalWebIndex, are: too many ads (48%), ads are annoying or irrelevant (47%), ads are too intrusive (44%). A lot of this can be put down to the kind of ads that third-party cookies thrust upon you.

Ad blockers are a severe problem for the digital advertising industry. It isn’t just that most users would rather see no ads. The digital publishing industry has no easy way of making a profit other than by ads. Web-users visit news and magazine sites page by page rather than go to one or two sites for their news. The web has no equivalent of a newspaper or a magazine.

However, there can be synergy between websites and ads, where ads are found in the context of a website to which they relate. The ads for yachts on a yachting blog, hiking gear on hiking blogs, and so on. Brand advertisers don’t want their brand ads to appear just anywhere, they want the context of the ad to be brand-positive.

Most advertisers, like most web users, do not want what third party cookies deliver, and neither do the software companies that develop browsers.

The Cookie War and the Browsers

As I noted at the beginning of this blog, the days of the third-party cookie will soon be over. It has no useful allies. All the browsers are waging war on it.

Safari

It began with Apple. In 2017, it introduced “intelligent tracking prevention” to stop cross-site tracking by third-party cookies.

Since then, Apple has improved the capability to the point where Safari will tell you which ad trackers are running on the website you’re visiting and will provide a 30-day report of the known trackers it’s identified, and which websites the trackers came from. Safari now blocks most third-party cookies by default.

Of course, Safari has less than 10% of the browser market. So, on its own, that doesn’t spell the death of the third-party cookie.

Firefox

In 2017, the Firefox browser also moved towards stronger privacy adding an optional feature that restricted cookies, cache, and other data access so that only the domain that placed the cookie had access to it.

Since then, Firefox has tightened up its privacy features. Currently, Firefox offers three levels of privacy: “Standard” (the default), “Strict”, and “Custom”. Standard blocks trackers in private (i.e. incognito) windows; it blocks third-party tracking cookies and crypto-jacking. The Strict setting does the same but also blocks fingerprinting and trackers in all windows. The Custom setting allows you to tune your privacy settings in fine detail.

As a side note, perhaps you’ve not heard of crypto-jacking. This is when a website, without so much as a “by-your-leave”, puts a script in your browser which sits there, chugging away mining cryptocurrency for the website owner. Firefox can block that.

Maybe you’ve not heard of fingerprinting either. This is when a server gathers data about your specific configuration of software and hardware in order to “fingerprint” you (i.e. assign a unique technology identity to you).

There are many details that can be gathered: your browser version and type, your OS, the timezone, active plugins, language, screen resolution, browser settings, and so on. It is really unlikely that any two users have identical information.

One study estimated that there is only a 1 in 286,777 chance that another browser will have the same fingerprint as you. The fingerprint is used to track you as you move from website to website.

Firefox’s market share is similar to Safari’s — a little under 10%.

Microsoft’s Edge

A long time ago, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the dominant browser. Its market share gradually declined to a few percent and Microsoft decided to reinvent its browser with Edge.

Edge provides 3 privacy settings to choose from: “Basic”, “Balanced” (the default), and “Strict”. Balanced blocks trackers from sites you haven’t visited. Strict blocks almost all trackers. Basic block trackers used for crypto-hijacking and fingerprinting.

How much traction Edge will get is uncertain. Right now it seems to have about 4% of the browser market.

Opera

Despite a fairly low market share, Opera is perhaps the most highly functional browser. It provides configurable security that is as tight as any other, including a configurable built-in ad blocker, a crypto wallet, and a VPN. It has been offering such features since 2017.

Brave

This is another niche browser but with a much smaller user base than Opera.

By default, it blocks all ads, trackers, third-party cookies, crypto-hijacking, and third-party finger-printers. It even has a built-in TOR private browsing mode (TOR stands for “The Onion Router”, open-source software that enables fully anonymous communication).

Brave tends to attract users who care deeply about privacy.

If you add up the market share of the browsers already discussed, you get less than 30%. The market gorilla is Google Chrome with a little under 70% market share.

Google Chrome

The death knell of the third party cookie sounded loud when Google joined the opposition with its Chrome browser. Google has decided to eradicate that scourge over a space of 2 years. Chrome will soon have a Privacy Sandbox, a privacy-preserving API.

Naturally, Google is very pro advertisements — they are its core business. So with Chrome, it is unlikely to shoot itself in the foot. It is far more likely to skew the ad market to its advantage.

Google’s intentions, in outline, are to hold individual user information in Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox and allow ad tech companies to make API calls to it. When they do so they will get access to personalization and measurement data to help them target ads and measure their impact, but they will get no access to your personal details that might help them identify you. The advertisers will get targeting data only.

The question is: if you eliminate third-party cookies how can ad tech companies target users and measure an ad’s effectiveness? The Privacy Sandbox is Google’s answer. It will run trials and make adjustments over the next two years to get it right.

Because Google Chrome is open-source, other browsers will be able to analyze what Google is doing and imitate it, if they choose to.

Publishers are particularly concerned about the Cookie Wars, because they may become collateral damage. Google released a study claiming that removing third-party cookies would reduce publisher ad revenue by 52%.

Making sure the change doesn’t greatly damage publishers is a sensible priority. So Google’s upcoming trials will compare monetization for publishers between the old and new setup for Google’s digital ad business (Google’s search ads and YouTube are unaffected).

The iPhone and iPad, and IDFA

What is an IDFA? The abbreviation stands for IDentifier For Advertisers, Apple’s unique mobile device number provided to ad exchanges to help them track user interactions and behavior.

It is the mobile device’s equivalent of a third-party cookie, enabling user tracking, marketing measurement, attribution, ad targeting, ad monetization, device graphs, retargeting of individuals and audiences, and programmatic advertising from demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), and exchanges.

If you were unaware that Apple assigns a number to your iOS device to help track you, I’m not surprised. It may be because it is an opt-out feature you have to notice and opt-out of to prevent its use (if you have an iPhone or iPad and wish to opt-out, go to Settings > Privacy > Advertising and then turn “Limit Ad Tracking” on).

Recently, however, because of Apple’s increasing concern for its customers’ privacy, it decided to make the IDFA opt-in for every single application. Thus, with the release of iOS 14 in September 2020, each app on your device will have to ask you if you want to opt-in and reveal your IDFA.

Apple‘s change of policy will have a negative impact on companies that provide mobile ad targeting, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter. It may also affect apps like Spotify, Uber, and Lyft that invest heavily in user acquisition and depend on user data from their apps.

Apple vs. Google

You can view what’s happening with respect to tracking as a struggle between Apple and Google.

On one side of the net is Apple. It has a very self-contained business model and has pursued it through good times and bad.

When you buy Apple, you tend to go the whole hog — Apple hardware on the desktop running the Mac OS and apps from the App Store. Your mobile phone is an iPhone running iOS with App Store apps and your tablet is an iPad. If you’re into digital watches it will likely be an Apple Watch.

Apple makes the hardware, nowadays even the chip gets a cut of most of the software and builds some of the apps itself. And, of course, it sells music, videos, podcasts, etc.

What it doesn’t care about is advertising revenue. Apple is an ad-free business and has no reason to care whether Google, Facebook, or any other advertising platform gets ad revenue from its devices or not. It is without an ax to grind. It cares about customer satisfaction, and thus its primary goal is to provide its users with bulletproof, but configurable privacy.

On the opposite side of the net, Google clearly wants to maximize its ad revenue. It is the last of the browser companies to prevent third-party cookies and it intends to do so in a way that does not damage its revenues.

But, when it comes to the mobile world it is poorly placed to dominate ad traffic on iOS devices. Right now, the iPhone has about half the cell phone market in the US, and Safari has more than 50% of the browser market on the iPhone. It also dominates browser usage on the iPad. Those Safari browsers have a simple setting to stop third-party cookies dead in their tracks.

Where the IDFA comes in is for placing ads in iOS apps. You probably didn’t know it but Google has an app called AdMob for placing ads in mobile apps. AdMob is installed in 1.5 million iOS apps of which, in total, there have been 375 billion downloads. Those ads generate revenue for the app maker, but now they only work if the user opts-in.

How many users do you think will want to opt-in for such ads? Perhaps none. Facebook plays the same game, by the way, but has less of the market. Its ad distribution app is installed on a whole host of iOS apps of which there have been billions of downloads.

You probably have some of those apps installed. Tim Cook’s point is that nobody asked for your permission to be an ad victim and yet those ad distribution apps are sitting there on your iPhone or iPad anyway. Well from here on in, permission will be required.

It’s All About Permission, Permission, Permission.

Let me explain my perspective on this. I don’t even like Apple’s solution, even though I think what they are doing is not exploitative.

At the birth of the Internet, cookies were an excellent idea that helped to maintain “session integrity”. They made the web work better. Since then, they have been bent badly out of shape and been used by the Internet giants to exploit anyone who ever lifted a mobile phone or touched a keyboard.

Any data stored that can enhance the technology and the user experience is welcome. Let’s not call such data cookies, let’s refer to it as “the performance data cache”. No-one should have any problem with technical innovators adding data to this cache if it improves your digital life.

Beyond that, there is no need whatsoever for cookies of any other kind. Let’s hope they sink into the dustbin of technology and never resurface.

It is crashingly obvious that any interaction between a person and a website should be completely device-independent. It is an interaction between a person, assisted by their stored personal data, and the website with all its capabilities, including its abilities to serve ads.

The user can give permission for the use of the data and the website can interact accordingly. Under these circumstances, the user can retain control and choose to allow the advertiser to examine all their personal data for the sake of targeting, especially if the advertiser is willing to reward the user for their time and data in watching its ads.

Kudos to those that facilitate the asking and granting of permission for use of data for the purpose of targeting. Permission does you one better and ensures that you are compensated for data shared. It’s the only fair and transparent solution. After all, it’s YOUR data.

Did you know there is a way you can spend your crypto like fiat currency without converting your coins?

Meet crypto credit cards that function like normal (traditional) payment cards with the only difference that you spend your digital assets instead of cash.

Early on, when digital assets were rather new, we didn’t have too many cryptocurrency credit cards to choose from. Fortunately, with the industry’s growth and the rising popularity of digital assets, there are plenty of great crypto credit and debit card solutions on the market.

In this article, we will explore what a crypto credit card is, how it works, and the best cryptocurrency debit card solutions to spend your coins.

Let’s dive in!

What Is a Crypto Credit Card?

A crypto credit card is a payment card that allows the cardholder to spend his digital assets like they were cash.

By utilizing large, global traditional payment networks like Visa or MasterCard, you can use your cryptocurrency credit card to shop even in stores that don’t have dedicated crypto payment gateways.

Therefore, crypto credit cards bridge the gap between the digital asset space and the traditional world, providing a new use-case for cryptocurrencies.

Cardholders benefit from the ability to hold some cryptocurrency in their wallet while using the other part to pay their bills, buy coffee, or spend their crypto for other products and services.

Additionally, merchants without dedicated digital asset payment gateways benefit from the purchasing power of crypto enthusiasts who use their cryptocurrency debit cards in their stores.

How Do Crypto Credit Cards Work?

How crypto credit cards work depends on the solution you choose.

Generally speaking, you send your digital assets to a dedicated cryptocurrency wallet (usually on the service provider’s platform) and load them on your card. Some crypto credit card solutions may require you to exchange digital assets into fiat currency to load them on your card.

Also, other service providers do not require their users to store cryptocurrency on dedicated wallets. So you are free to use whichever (compatible) wallet you prefer to load funds on your card.

After loading your crypto on your card, you are ready to make digital asset payments. Your crypto debit card will work as a traditional payment card. Therefore, you will be able to make all kinds of payments from paying your rent and utility bills to buying beer or your favorite latte while you are on your way to work.

Unless the service provider requires you to convert your digital assets into fiat currency, the cryptocurrency on your card will be automatically exchanged into cash when you make a purchase.

Like prepaid cards, your crypto card will have different periodical limits (e.g., maximum balance, daily purchase, and monthly top-up limits).

Some of the crypto debit card solutions use universal limits for all their customers. Others utilize tiered systems where users in the higher levels have increased limits as well as access to premium features (e.g., airport lounge access, cashback rewards).

In exchange for a higher tier, users have to either pay a monthly subscription fee or stake cryptocurrency (lock up some coins for a specific time in their wallets).

What Are the Best Crypto Credit and Debit Cards?

In this section, we have collected the top five crypto debit card solutions.

Let’s see them!

1. Crypto.com MCO Visa Card

Overview

Crypto.com’s MCO Visa Card is one of the most popular cryptocurrency credit cards on the market.

Formerly known as Monaco and later re-branding to Crypto.com, the Hong Kong-based company created a comprehensive cryptocurrency credit card solution after securing nearly $27 million in its token sale in June 2017.

What made Crypto.com’s MCO Visa Card popular is its crypto cashback rewards system, where users receive rebates in MCO tokens on their purchases.

In addition to the MCO Visa Card, Crypto.com features a rapidly growing ecosystem where users can store, exchange, and earn digital assets as well as use their coins as collateral to borrow funds on the platform.

Fees

The MCO Visa Card features competitive fees.

First, there is no card issuance fee. Also, you don’t have to pay a dime for maintaining your account.

While depositing crypto and exchanging it to other coins is free, Crypto.com charges a small fee for withdrawals. Also, if you use a credit or debit card to exchange fiat to crypto instantly, you will be charged a 3.5% fee.

Based on your account tier, you can withdraw a certain amount of cash in ATMs per month ($200 for the lowest level) for free. After you reach that limit, Crypto.com will charge a 2% fee for ATM withdrawals.

The same goes for interbank exchange limits, which will cost you 0.5% after reaching your monthly limits ($2,000 for the lowest tier).

Availability

The MCO Visa Card is available in the European Union, the UK, Canada, the United States, and multiple APAC countries.

Why We Like It

The first reason why we like the MCO Visa Card is its widespread availability, which is among the best among crypto debit card solutions.

While Crypto.com uses a tiered system – where you have to stake MCO tokens for at least six months to access premium features as well as higher limits and more rewards –, you’ll get quite high limits as well as a 1% cashback rate with the basic card (Midnight Blue) that requires no staking.

In addition to the competitive fees on all levels, you have access to plenty of premium features – such as free Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions, bonus Airbnb and Expedia cashback, as well as airport lounge access – at higher account tiers.

Read our review on the MCO Visa Card for more information.

2. Coinbase Card

Overview

Coinbase, one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, launched its crypto debit card solution in the EEA in 2019.

With support for nine coins – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Basic Attention Token, Augur, 0x, Stellar Lumens, and Litecoin – Coinbase cardholders can use their Coinbase Wallet balance to fund their cards directly with crypto.

Like the MCO Visa card, the Coinbase Card uses Visa’s network to offer its users worldwide coverage for cryptocurrency payments.

Fees

The company’s cryptocurrency exchange has been known for its user-friendly platform, not its low fees.

And the same can be said about the Coinbase Card. However, considering that you are using the cryptocurrency debit card of one of the most prominent companies in the industry, the Coinbase Card’s fees are more than reasonable. While there are no fees for account maintenance, Coinbase charges 4.95 EUR for card issuance.

Like with the MCO Card, you get a decent limit for free monthly ATM withdrawals with Coinbase (200 EUR). For domestic cash withdrawals, you have to pay a 1% fee, while it costs 2% to withdraw funds in an international ATM after you’ve reached your free limits.

In addition to some other fees – which you can take a look at here – Coinbase also charges your card for international transactions (3% for international and 0.20% for intra-EEA POS transfers).

Availability

Currently, the Coinbase Card is available in the EEA.

However, Coinbase will likely expand its crypto debit card service to additional markets (such as the United States).

Why We Like It

The Coinbase Card comes from a trusted service provider with a great history in the cryptocurrency space. And, as mentioned before, the Coinbase Card’s fees are reasonable if you take the service provider’s reputation into account.

While you can hold nine cryptocurrencies on your Coinbase Card, it’s a good feature to load your card directly using your Coinbase Wallet.

3. Wirex Visa Card

Overview

Founded in 2014, the UK-based Wirex has been one of the oldest crypto debit card solutions on the market. In addition to the crypto debit card, Wirex has a mobile app where you have access to a built-in cryptocurrency exchange and wallet. You can fund the latter with both fiat currency and digital assets.

Similarly to the MCO Card, you get crypto cashback rewards (in BTC) on your Wirex Card purchases. The percentage of crypto rebates you receive on your transactions is based on how much Wirex Tokens (WXT) you hold.

Fees

Like Coinbase, the Wirex Visa Card features higher fees than some of its competitors (e.g., the MCO Visa Card). However, as Wirex has been operating its cryptocurrency card service since 2014, it is reasonable to assume that your funds are secure with the company.

While there are no fees for card issuance and delivery, Wirex charges 1.20 EUR per month for account maintenance. Also, Wirex charges a 3% foreign exchange fee for international transactions, which is added to both your non-domestic card purchases and ATM withdrawals.

The fixed fee is 2.25 EUR for domestic and 2.75 EUR for international ATM cash withdrawals.

Availability

Initially, the Wirex card was only available in the EEA. However, the company has recently expanded its services to countries in other regions (such as the APAC).

You can find more information about the crypto debit card’s availability on Wirex’s website.

Why We Like It

Wirex has been a trusted crypto debit card service provider with a great history of operation.

In addition to the credibility, you also get an up to 1.5% cash back rewards rate by holding a certain amount of the company’s tokens.

With an integrated crypto-to-fiat exchange, you can easily load both digital and traditional currency on your Wirex Card.

4. Monolith Visa Debit Card (Formerly TokenCard)

Overview

Formerly known as TokenCard, the Monolith Visa Debit Card is among the most exciting cryptocurrency credit card solutions.

In addition to a crypto debit card that uses Ethereum’s network for digital asset wallets, the Monolith Card provides access to the DeFi (decentralized finance) economy for its users.

Monolith is powered by the project’s native TKN token, an ERC-20 digital asset running on the Ethereum network. TKN holders can use the coin to get fee discounts when they top up their card as well as redeem their share from Community Contributions.

Fees

In addition to providing an affordable crypto credit card solution, Monolith is very transparent about its fees.

You can get a Monolith Card in two base currencies: EUR or GBP, which will be used to calculate some of your fees. There is no account maintenance, card issuance, or shipping charges with Monolith. For funding your card, Monolith charges a 1+1% fee. One of these fees is the Community Contribution fee – that goes to TKN holders who can withdraw their share anytime – while you pay the other for card top-ups.

However, if you top up your Monolith Visa Debit Card with TKN, the service provider will waive the Community Contribution fee. You can also eliminate the top-up fee if you choose to load your card with DAI.

Although, it’s important to note that no matter which option you choose, you have to pay a 1% fee for loading your card with funds.

While it’s free to exchange fiat to crypto and vice versa at Monolith, the company charges 1.75% on transactions that are not in your base fiat currency (EUR or GBP).

You have two free base currency ATM withdrawals in a month. After reaching your limits, domestic cash withdrawals will cost you 0.85 EUR while withdrawing funds from your Monolith Card has a fixed 2 EUR fee (1.5 EUR for GBP withdrawals).

Availability

The Monolith Visa Debit Card is available in all 31 countries of the EEA as well as in multiple Special Member State Territories.

Why We Like It

The Monolith Visa Debit Card is nothing like the other crypto credit card solutions on the market.

In addition to the cost-efficient fees and high levels of transparency, you have exclusive ownership over your Monolith Ethereum wallet. You can track your spending in real-time for your Monolith Card in the service’s iOS or Android app.

As a great benefit, Monolith has a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) aggregator that you can use to swap tokens at the best rates on the market. In the near future, Monolith is planning to add support for WalletConnect to (optionally) integrate numerous DeFi solutions into user wallets.

Monolith also seeks to offer customers the opportunity to receive their salaries in DAI by integrating either a regular sort code and account number or a European IBAN into the app.

5. TenX Visa Card

Overview

In June 2017, TenX collected a huge sum ($80 million) from its contributors during the company’s token sale. Later on, the project launched its crypto debit card solution, the TenX Visa Card, which has become one of the most popular services in the Asia Pacific region.

Interestingly, TenX also offers its cryptocurrency credit card as a virtual payment card that customers can use instantly upon approval.

Fees

While the TenX Card’s fees may seem much at first, it’s important to note that the company does not charge any foreign exchange fees. Therefore, we can safely say that the TenX Visa Card has quite reasonable fees.

The card issuance fee is 15 USD or 15 EUR for physical and 5 USD or 5 EUR for virtual crypto credit cards. After the first year (which is free), TenX will charge a $10 annual fee, which can be waived by spending at least $1,000 in a year.

TenX does not charge any fees for card shipping, deposits, or crypto withdrawals. However, for ATM cash withdrawals, TenX will charge 3.25 USD or 3 EUR per transaction.

Also, the service provider will charge a small spread when you convert fiat to crypto or vice versa.

Availability

Currently, the TenX Visa Card is available in APAC countries as well as in Austria and Germany.

However, the company will likely expand its services to additional countries in the near future.

Why We Like It

Similarly to Monolith, we appreciate how TenX is transparent about its fees, which seem quite reasonable, considering that there are no foreign exchange charges for international transactions.

We also like that there is an option at TenX to get a virtual crypto debit card with your account that you can use instantly after your account is approved.

As an additional benefit, you have access to multiple security controls and spending features with the TenX Visa Card.

How Do You Get a Crypto Card?

Now that you know the essentials about crypto debit cards, it’s time to show you how to get one.

Please note that the instructions here are general, and the service provider you choose may require different steps to get a crypto card.

Step 1: Registering an Account

First, you need to open an account at a crypto debit card provider.

Most service providers use dedicated wallets to load cryptocurrency on your card. Therefore, you will get a crypto wallet when you open an account at such services.

Important: When you receive a cryptocurrency wallet with your account, make sure to write down and store your wallet’s secret keys at a safe place. You can either keep them securely on your computer or print them and store the document at a physical location. No matter where you store them, you should have exclusive access to your private keys, and you should never share them with anyone.

Step 2: Verifying Your Account

As the company operates a payment service, it has to comply with different regulations.

Therefore, the next step is to submit Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) documents to verify your identity and residence. You may also need to answer some questions, such as the purpose of your account or the origin of your funds.

After submitting the documents, the cryptocurrency credit card provider will take some time to verify them.

Step 3: Shipping and Activation

Upon successful verification, the service provider will ship your crypto debit card to your address.

While some cryptocurrency credit card solutions will do this automatically, others – especially those that require users to stake coins to unlock premium features – may ask you to deposit digital assets to a specific wallet before shipping your card.

In case you have to stake crypto to receive your card – and unlock higher account tiers –, make sure that you know the exact requirements and potential risks.

When you have received your card, the next step is to activate it based on the service provider’s instructions.

Step 4: Crypto Credit Card Top-Ups

Upon successful activation, send crypto to either a dedicated wallet or one that’s compatible with the cryptocurrency card solution you are using.

If you don’t have any digital assets, we recommend using a prominent cryptocurrency exchange to convert fiat to crypto, and sending those coins to your card wallet.

Crypto credit card solutions use two different processes here.

A part of cryptocurrency debit card services allows users to load digital assets directly to their cards. For these solutions, you have to use your coins to top up your card. Sometimes, it is enough to have your coins in the service provider’s dedicated wallet. In that case, they will be automatically loaded on your card.

For the other process, you have to convert some of your digital assets to the base fiat currency (usually EUR, USD, or GBP), and use those funds to top up your card.

Whatever the process, you are ready to use your crypto credit card after a successful top-up.

Crypto Credit Cards: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional Finance and the Cryptocurrency World

By allowing crypto enthusiasts to spend their digital assets directly from their wallets, cryptocurrency debit cards open up new opportunities for the industry.

Fortunately, as the industry is developing at a fast rate, we have access to numerous crypto credit card solutions that provide an excellent service to their customers.

From cashback rewards and premium features to access to the DeFi economy via the Ethereum blockchain, crypto debit cards empower the industry with new use-cases while providing numerous benefits to users.

However, earning crypto cashback with cryptocurrency debit card solutions is not the only way to stack sats.

Alternatively, you can check out Permission‘s next-generation blockchain-based advertising platform where you can earn ASK tokens for leveraging your data while engaging with your favorite brands and retailers.

Sounds great, huh?

“Dear Charlie, Both myself and some of my friends who are members of permission.io find your authentication procedures to be unnecessary and slow.”

I’m glad you asked about this. You are not the first to ask. You might be surprised at the number of times our executives, designers, and developers have met to discuss this issue. We would dearly love for everything to be simple and for members to have to do nothing more than provide a name, and an email address, and that would be it.

All I can say is that we have done what we can to make it as simple as it can be while at the same time being able to authenticate everyone who applies to sign up, so that we know they are genuine.

The point to note is this:

Whenever we release an exciting new feature or share some other notable news, we get a flurry of applications—thousands—from new users trying to sign up.

Scammers and Robots

We wish it wasn’t so, but among the throngs of interested users, there is always a population of scammers and bots that hope to trick us into rewarding them with ASK for fake activity. There are ways to detect who is genuine and who is not from their online behavior. Because of that, we defer the ability to distribute ASK until a member has proven that they are authentic. We try to make this as painless as possible.

The Revolution We are Leading

Permission.io is developing the ability for large numbers of individuals anywhere in the world to earn ASK in exchange for watching ads that they choose to view. We believe that the business model we are sharing here will revolutionize the digital ad market, making it far more efficient than it currently is.

1. Advertisers will get a far better return on their ad spend (for many reasons).
2. Our members will be rewarded for their time and sharing of their personal information in a currency that they can spend.
3. Our e-retailers will participate in an end-to-end sales cycle that begins with ads and ends with sales.

ASK and the web software we have built enables all of this. And within our platform, we intend to guarantee that genuine individuals are watching ads, and also purchasing goods. That bots are excluded and that we have created a win-win ad market where everyone wins.

We achieve this by ensuring that every one of our members is genuine. We apply a similar standard to the advertisers that use the platform and the retailers that sell goods. We are creating an honest and transparent market.

We hope you understand this. This is why we take pains to authenticate everyone and every organization that has access to our platform.

Cryptocurrency debit cards are the next big thing in the digital asset space.

And this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

A crypto debit card bridges the gap between traditional finance and the crypto world by allowing users to spend their digital assets directly from their wallets. From all the cryptocurrency debit cards, Crypto.com’s MCO Visa Card is one of the hottest solutions to spend your coins.

Join us as we take a thorough look at the crypto debit card in this MCO Visa Card review.

What Is the MCO Visa Card?

Crypto.com’s MCO Visa Card is a cryptocurrency debit card that allows users to spend their coins directly from their wallets.

As a result, there is no need for cardholders to exchange coins into fiat currency and withdraw those funds to their bank accounts.

One of the main reasons why the MCO Visa Card is so popular among cryptocurrency enthusiasts is the cashback rewards system, where you can redeem up to 5% of your total transaction value in the company’s native MCO tokens.

Crypto.com offers different card tiers with unique benefits for each. To unlock higher levels, you have to stake – lock up a part of your coins in a wallet for a specific time – MCO tokens (more on this later).

Higher tiers do not only offer higher cashback rewards but other benefits as well, such as free Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions, as well as premium airport lounge access.

Formerly known as the Monaco Card, the MCO Visa Card is a part of Crypto.com’s ecosystem.

In June 2017, the Hong Kong-based company successfully launched an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), collecting nearly $27 million of funds from contributors.

Since then, the organization has successfully launched the MCO Visa Card in multiple countries, including the UK, the European Union, Canada, the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition to the digital asset debit card, users of the MCO credit card also have access to the wide variety of products in the Crypto.com ecosystem, including a(n):

1. Cryptocurrency exchange
2. Smartphone app (iOS and Android)
3. Crypto wallet
4. Interest product where you can earn a passive income on your coins
5. Credit solution where you can borrow stablecoins (e.g., USDT, PAX) on your crypto assets
6. Automated quant trading solution

How Does the MCO Visa Card Work and How Do I Get One?

The MCO Visa Card works very similarly to other cryptocurrency debit cards.

The First Steps

You register for an account at the service and submit Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money-Laundering (AML) documents to the provider to confirm your identity and residential address.

After your account is verified, you should choose the tier of your MCO Visa Card.

If you choose the basic tier (Midnight Blue), you don’t have to stake any coins for your crypto card to be shipped to you.

However, if you choose a higher tier, you have to buy the required amount of MCO tokens, send them to your Crypto.com MCO wallet, where you have to hold them for at least six months.

While you are required to stake coins to access higher tiers, you don’t have to wait six months to get your card as you will be able to order it from Crypto.com as soon as you lock up the required amount of coins in your MCO wallet.

After ordering your card, Crypto.com will ship your card to your address, which you have to activate upon receiving it.

From Top-Ups to Spending Crypto

When you are done with that, the next step is to top up your MCO Visa Card with funds (either crypto or fiat currency).

Now that you have your funds ready, you can start using your MCO Visa Card to spend your crypto and earn cashback rewards.

Despite the fact that your MCO Visa Card is a cryptocurrency debit card, it will work very similarly to a traditional payment card.

The only exception is that you are spending crypto assets instead of fiat currency (unless you have already converted your funds to the latter).

As the MCO Card uses Visa’s global network, you will be able to use it in most countries and millions of stores worldwide.

What Rewards Can I Get With the MCO Visa Card?

The rewards you get for your MCO Visa Card is determined by your card tier.

While the basic tier (Midnight Blue) is free, you have to stake a specified amount of MCO tokens for at least six months – for example, 50 MCO for the second tier (Ruby Steel) – to access higher card tiers and better rewards.

Unlike at some competitor solutions, you also get cashback rewards with the basic Midnight Blue tier (1%).

However, if you stake MCO tokens, you can get an up to 5% cashback in MCO tokens on your card transactions.

In addition to the above-mentioned cashback rate, you get the following benefits for the highest MCO Card tier (Obsidian):

1. Free Spotify subscription
2. Free Netflix subscription
3. Free Amazon Prime subscription
4. 10% Expedia cashback
5. 10% Airbnb cashback
6. The ability to earn bonus interest on your tokens
7. Exclusive merchandise welcome pack
8. Access to Crypto.com Private
9. LoungeKey Airport Lounge Access for you and a guest
10. $1,000 of free ATM withdrawals every month
11. Unlimited currency exchanges on interbank rates
12. A metal card (all MCO Card tiers include a metal card except for Midnight Blue)

For more information on MCO Visa Card rewards, we recommend visiting Crypto.com’s website.

How Do I Top Up the MCO Visa Card?

You can top up your MCO Visa Card easily within your Crypto.com wallet using the “Top Up” menu under the “Card” section inside the app.

Based on where you are located, Crypto.com offers multiple payment methods you can use to load your MCO Visa Card with funds.

For example, in the United States, you can top up your MCO Visa Card with the following cryptocurrencies:

1. Bitcoin (BTC)
2. Litecoin (LTC)
3. Ethereum (ETH)
4. Ripple (XRP)
5. PAX Standard (PAX)
6. TrueUSD (TUSD)
7. EOS
8. Stellar Lumens (XLM)

US customers can top up their MCO Card with fiat currency (USD) via a credit card or bank transfers.

On the other hand, in addition to card top-ups, EU customers have access to low-cost SEPA bank transfers to fund their MCO Visa Card.

What Are the Fees for Using the MCO Visa Card?

Compared to other crypto debit card solutions, the MCO Visa Card features competitive fees.

You don’t have to pay a dime for card issuance while account and card maintenance are also free.

Furthermore, crypto-to-crypto exchanges, internal transfers (to other Crypto.com users), as well as SEPA withdrawals and bank transfer deposits come at no cost.

Until you reach your limits – which are very generous for even the basic Midnight Blue tier ($200 for ATM withdrawals and $2,000 for interbank exchanges) – you don’t have to pay for ATM cash withdrawals and currency conversions.

However, after your monthly limits are reached, Crypto.com charges 2% for ATM withdrawals and 0.5% for interbank exchanges.

Also, there is an inactivity fee where you have to pay approximately $5 after being inactive for 12 months.

While instant fiat-to-crypto exchanges (via credit cards) will cost you 3.5% per transaction, Crypto.com will charge $50 for card re-issuances and upgrades, as well as for account closures.

For more information on the MCO Visa Card’s fees, we recommend checking the “Fees & Limits” menu inside “Settings” in the Crypto.com smartphone app.

What Are the Pros of the MCO Card?

1. Widespread availability, including the European Union, the UK, the US, Canada, and some APAC countries
2. High free ATM withdrawal and interbank exchange limits for even the basic tier
3. Premium benefits and great crypto cashback rewards at higher tiers
4. A decent ecosystem where you have access to multiple Crypto.com products and services in addition to your MCO Visa Card
5. The basic 1% cashback rate for the free Midnight Blue tier is highly competitive among cryptocurrency credit cards
6. Unlike most of its competitors, there are no foreign exchange fees at Crypto.com until you reach your monthly limits. And, even when you reach your limits, you get interbank rates for currency exchanges where Crypto.com charges only 0.5%

What Are the Cons of the MCO Visa Card?

1. While the highest tiers provide tremendous benefits and high cashback rates, they are inaccessible for most users due to the excessive staking requirements
2. Staking MCO tokens at higher levels come with increased risks of volatility, which may result in losses for MCO cardholders
3. To continue receiving most of the benefits for higher tiers, you have to keep staking MCO tokens after the initial six-months period

The MCO Visa Card: An Excellent Crypto Credit Card Solution With Widespread Availability

The MCO Visa Card is indeed one of the best crypto credit cards on the market.

In addition to the competitive fees, the Monaco Visa Card offers excellent cashback rewards and access to premium features and benefits at higher tiers.

Even at the lowest Midnight Blue tier, you get 1% cashback on all your card transactions, which is highly competitive among crypto debit cards.

With the high limits for free ATM withdrawals and interbank exchanges, as well as access to other products in Crypto.com’s ecosystem, the MCO Visa Card could be a great choice for cryptocurrency enthusiasts in the EU, UK, US, Canada, and APAC countries.

“Dear Charlie, How does Permission help its members to own their data?”

The best way to explain this is to think of Permission.io as a platform for applications that enable its members to own their data and monetize it, should they wish to do so.

Our primary activity on behalf of our members is that we have created a digital advertising platform where advertisers can reward our members for watching ads and interacting with branded content. Members enter the platform by signing up and are immediately compensated for creating a wallet to be used on Permission.io and further into 3rd party applications.

Members can earn in a multitude of ways. They opt-in to register their interests, demographic, and other key data, and embark on various shopping journeys. For ongoing sharing of data and for granting permission to receive invited ads that address their desire to learn and buy, members are rewarded with ASK. Members can HODL, exchange, or spend ASK on the platform and/or on 3rd-party sites that accept ASK.

A core aspect of the current member experience is watching video ads. Members earn for engaging with videos ranging in duration and format, including shorter, gamified ads, opt-in value exchange video ads, and brand films. Users will be able to directly monetize their data collected while engaging with video content, unlike typical platforms that sell their information to third parties.

Over time, the platform will feature other opportunities for members to earn from their data while interacting with news, surveys, video games, premium content, and more.

By rewarding members for their profile and behavioral data, advertisers will be able to more accurately be able to provide members with personal, relevant ads. This means that the Permission platform will present members with ads that they will likely enjoy watching… and they’ll get paid for it.

In regards to data ownership, that is the point from where we start.

Permission QE

We have a project in progress at the moment which is code-named PermissionQE. The goal of this project is to build a query engine using our data algebra approach to data manipulation and management.

The QE stands for Query Engine, which is what the software we are building does. It can query large volumes of data, including, of course, member profile data.

If you are wondering where the member profile data will come from, the interesting thing is that most of this data already exists and is stored on a wide variety of websites, such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many other sites that store personal data. The primary objective of PermissionQE is to enable users to access, integrate, and monetize their data. Our technology makes this possible and is helped by the obligation of such sites to make the data available to its owners ever since the GDPR legislation in the EU.

We will be able to help our members gather their personal data together. This will include data that is permissioned on our platform together with data stored in third-party databases. Our members’ full dataset will then be available for members to monetize and for advertisers to target accurately.

It’s Just The Beginning

Such an arrangement is the beginning of our members being able to access, manage, and control their personal data. The thing to note is that while Permission.io will pursue its advertising and sales business model with a maximum of energy, it is also our intention to encourage developers to create new applications that can assist our members in monetizing their data.

The more apps we build, the larger the amount of personal data we will make available to the average member. If we can encourage an energetic developer community, and we intend to, we expect that many other apps will be created that will help our members put their personal data to productive use.

What if you could get paid while relaxing and watching movies? Settle into the couch with a bit of popcorn and come out with a few extra bucks?

Well, while you won’t make a career doing it, it turns out that dream is possible. There are services based online and in-person around the country that pay people to watch movies. Sometimes these opportunities are officially through movie theater companies, other times they are through separate services like movie trailer review sites or loyalty programs, but you have options.

As you would expect in a “get money for doing nothing” style space, there’s a lot of noise and bad faith players. You have to be careful about whom you choose to work with and why. To make this a bit easier for you, we’ve done our research and found a handful of legitimate ways you can get paid to watch movies.

These fall into two major camps: passive and active. Neither option will make you rich, but as you’d expect, you can make more by choosing “active” services. This means you have to exert some sort of effort, whether that’s proactively choosing the videos they serve up to you or by going to physical locations, etc. Passive services are usually data collection panels that simply observe what you already do.

So take a look, see which options look most interesting to you, and get watching!

1. Get Paid to Watch Movies in Theaters by Becoming a Theater Experience Reviewer

This isn’t as big as it used to be, especially in the wake of COVID-19, but you could look into becoming a “Field Associate” via CertifiedFieldAssociate.com or through the movie companies themselves.

These companies pay you to sit in on movies in local theatres to make sure ads are being run, count customers, figure out what movies are most popular and when, etc.

It’s essentially a hands-on data collection position. The main issue with this gig is that you can waste a lot of time and get paid much less than minimum wage. This is because depending on your task, you may have to wait for a movie to finish or run into issues with the local theatre management, etc.

Lots of people who have done these types of gigs for a while only recommend taking gigs with a defined scope.

How Does Being a Movie Theatre Field Associate Work?

By either signing up directly with movie companies or through third-party sites, you can get paid a lump sum for attending movies at movie theaters and answering specific questions related to your experience.

How Much Can I Make?

The pay varies from job to job, but they usually pay a project fee. This means if you’re not careful about time management, you can earn less than minimum wage.

Pros of Being a Field Associate

1. Can attend blockbuster movies for free.
2. Good track record for payment.
3. Can work near where you live.

Cons of Being a Movie Theatre Field Associate

1. Some jobs make you hop in and out of movies and never sit through an entire experience.
2. You have to explain what you’re doing to the local theater.
3. If you’re not careful, you can spend 8 hours doing a $40 job and make less than minimum wage.

Where to Get Started

1. Certified Field Associates – The website is pretty rough, but MarketForce Information is one of the most widely used field associate job sites.
2. EntertainmentCareers.net – This is an entertainment-specific job site, so you can search for “Theatre Checker” or “Field Associate” here and see if anyone is hiring.
3. Cinemark – You can also see if movie companies like Cinemark are hiring anyone directly.

2. Get Paid to Watch Movie Previews via “Online Task” Sites

There’s a whole internet culture around getting paid for surveys, small tasks, playing games, etc. Many of the large communities in this world also offer points and gift card opportunities for watching movie trailers or giving feedback on ads. This is definitely more of an “active” choice, but if you’re interested in making money online in your downtime, then the sites listed below are reliable places to start.

How Do Online Task Sites Work?

Popular “make money online” sites like Swagbucks and InboxDollars pay you in points to perform all sorts of online activities from playing games to watching movie trailers. You can then turn those points in for gift cards or cash.

How Much Can I Make?

You won’t make more than a few bucks a month, so it’s best to do this in your downtime or only when high point opportunities come around.

Pros of Watching Movie Previews on Online Task Sites

1. You can make money on your phone or computer anytime, anywhere.
2. Top online task sites are reliable and safe.
3. Opportunities to combine movie trailer watching with games, surveys, and other digital tasks to make more cash.

Cons of Watching Movie Previews on Online Task Sites

1. You won’t make more than a few bucks a month.
2. It won’t feel like relaxing because you’re watching what they want you to watch.
3. It requires consistent effort to see results.

Where to Get Started

1. Swagbucks – Swagbucks is the top of the hill as far as “get paid online” sites go, so this is the best place to start.
2. InboxDollars – InboxDollars is very similar to Swagbucks, so you could either split your time between the two or see which of the two has better movie trailer options.

3. Get Paid to Review Movies by Writing Articles or Creating Content

This is more on the active side, but if you have a passion for movies, then you could start reviewing movies you watch and submitting your writing to publications. Some of these will be paid, most won’t be. You could also start a YouTube channel and post your reviews there. There’s no sure path to becoming a paid critic, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

Your best bet is to find a different spin on what’s already being done. Look at the market and current popular movie reviewers and see how you can do something a bit different. Once you identify an opportunity, make a content plan, run a few tests, and ask your friends for their opinions before investing too much time.

How Does Reviewing Movies Work?

This is a creative pursuit that has no guarantee of success and requires passion. You will most likely start by writing your own reviews and refining your craft and eventually pursuing publications to work with. You could also create your own platform and publish there.

How Much Can I Make?

Most people don’t make anything, but successful critics can make a decent living doing a job they love. Like any creative pursuit, this will take a lot of time and effort before you reap any sort of monetary reward.

Pros of Reviewing Movies

1. A chance to pursue your passion.
2. Opportunity to think critically about movies.
3. Fun networking and social opportunities.

Cons of Reviewing Movies

1. No guarantee of payment ever.
2. Very difficult to “make it”.
3. Requires a lot of work upfront.

Where to Get Started

1. Study.com – Take the time to read up on the life and career trajectory of a movie reviewer. It’s best to make career and life decisions with as much information as possible. Take some time to read over people’s experiences before you dive in.
2. LiveAbout – Study the best movie critics of all time. If you want to be the best, then you need to know what the best did!
3. Five Stars! – This book is written by film critic Christopher Null and offers advice on how to get your start.

4. Product Test TVs or Other Entertainment Devices

This is getting at it from a different angle, but you could look into product testing for TV companies. They want to make sure their new products work and are user-friendly, so there are ways to get paid for answering questions about new products.

How Does Product Testing TVs Work?

People can apply to studies through third-party sites (a few are listed below). If you qualify for a study, you’ll either be sent a TV or a product related to a TV that you’ll have to report back on.

How Much Can I Make Product Testing?

Payment varies from study to study, but you can usually make between $10-$25 an hour when you’re participating.

Pros of Product Testing

1. Many established sites to use.
2. Payment isn’t an issue once you land a gig.
3. Variety in products and jobs.
4. Decent pay for your time.

Cons of Product Testing

1. You’ll have to search to find jobs that specifically involve watching TV.
2. High competition for good gigs.

Where to Get Started

1. Toluna – Toluna is a modern product testing site that’s easy to get set up on and is used by many major brands.
2. Product Testing USA – Product Testing USA feels pretty 90s but is well-established and can offer some interesting opportunities with some searching.

5. Work for a Company Like Netflix to Tag Movies

These opportunities are rare and have a ton of competition, but there are editorial/movie analyst positions that Netflix, Hulu, HBO, etc. have where people tag shows and improve their service’s metadata (the data that the algorithm uses to know what to display).

How Does Getting Paid to Tag Movies Work?

You have to get officially hired through a particular movie company like Netflix. This means browsing job sites, sending in resumes — the whole nine yards.

How Much Can I Make Tagging Movies?

That depends on what is involved in your position, but these can be full-time positions at large companies, meaning you could make a liveable salary.

Pros of Tagging Movies

1. Potentially a full-time gig.
2. Work at an established company.
3. There is no middle man.

Cons of Tagging Movies

1. Gigs are extremely rare.
2. You can’t just find these through a third-party service — you have to find a job at a specific company.
3. Tagging and watching movies won’t be the only thing you do at your job. There are bound to be other responsibilities.

Where to Get Started

1. Netflix – Netflix is the biggest streaming service out there, so this is your best bet for a position.
2. Hulu – Remember there’s no guarantee in how the job will be posted, so keep an eye out for anything that sounds remotely like an editorial analyst.
3. HBO – HBO has the biggest variety of U.S. offices, so if you have no interest in moving, then start here.

6. Sell Your Data and Keep Watching Movies Like Normal

This is the most passive option to make money while watching movies because you don’t have to change your habits at all. Major data collection and reporting companies like Nielsen will pay you to have access to your phone and computer. You can make an easy $50 a year and be entered into automatic sweepstakes depending on the panel, but the most popular and reputable company by far is Nielsen.

These companies turn this data into massive industry reports that businesses use to educate their strategies. Yes, you are giving up your privacy here, but you are also getting compensated for using your phone and computer like normal.

How Does Panel Data Work?

You download a piece of software, fill out an account, give the software a bunch of permissions, and voila.

How Much Can I Make Selling My Data?

If you’re selling via a single panel, not very much. Nielsen gives you around $50 a year and enters you into sweepstakes that could pay off but aren’t worth banking on.

Pros of Selling Your Data

1. It’s a set and forget it type deal — you can use your computer like normal after installation.
2. Companies like Nielsen are reputable.
3. Opportunity to contribute to useful data analysis.

Cons of Selling Your Data

1. You are letting someone have access to your device. Privacy cannot be a concern.
2. Pay isn’t that great.
3. The installation can be a bit annoying.
4. The software will use up some of your CPU and potentially slow down your computer.

Where to Get Started

1. Nielsen – Nielsen is the most reputable panel company by far, so I recommend using them. When you’re giving up this much data, it’s important to know who is getting it.

Bonus: Think Outside the “Get Paid to Watch TV” Box

Consider expanding your definition a bit and look for jobs that let you watch TV while you do them.

Babysitting comes immediately to mind. You could also consider house sitting, dog sitting, working at a parking garage, or finding some other position that is generally  “slow”. Not only will these pay you more, but you’ll probably enjoy them more because you can watch what you choose instead of being forced to watch specific content.

The Bottom Line on Getting Paid to Watch Movies, TV, and Previews

You won’t make much money simply watching TV or videos. Every option here has one thing in common: you have to provide value to the person paying you. It’s obvious, but it’s true. The less work involved, the less value you are typically providing. The more hands-on, the more you get paid. That’s how the game works.

Our advice is to use apps sites like Swagbucks alongside more lucrative product testing opportunities. In other words, mix your passive and active opportunities to keep things fresh and earn the most cash.

Good luck, and remember to make these services work for you and not the other way around. If you feel stretched and pressed for time, it’s almost certainly not worth it. You should approach these with a casual mindset and put your efforts toward other job opportunities if you are particularly strapped for cash.

Permission is working to get people just like you paid for the data you’re already giving away.  We are creating a new kind of internet that pays you for your time and data shared while engaging online as you normally do. The Permission Browser Extension suggests cool ads relevant to your internet browsing, and pays you cryptocurrency in return for watching.

See how we’re working to change the internet forever.

Fiat currency is government-issued and government-backed legal tender which is not linked to the value of anything physical like gold, silver, or even copper.

Perhaps you’d like to call it: I-can’t-believe-it’s-actually-money, money.

If you read The Bible in Latin—I bet you don’t—on the first page in the third verse of Genesis, you run across the words “fiat lux,” meaning “let there be light.”  Armed with this information you can deduce that the term “fiat currency” literally means “let there be currency.”

This widely-used term first saw the light of day in the book, “Fiat Money Inflation in France” published in 1875. It was an academic work written by Andrew Dickson White, the American historian, and co-founder of Cornell University.

At the time the book was written, there was a running debate about the nature of money. Andrew White chose the words “fiat currency” to describe money which has no intrinsic value. If you’ve never studied the subject, you’ll be surprised by how many different things that have value of themselves have been used as money at various times. Of course, it’s true of gold and silver coins, but it’s also true of beaver pelts (used as currency in New France, now part of Canada) and cigarettes (used as currency for over two years in post-WW2 Germany).

Surprisingly, cowry shells proved popular for many centuries. They were used as currency in ancient China, so much so that Classical Chinese character for “money/currency”, 貝, is believed to be a pictograph of a cowrie shell. And because cowries occur near the shores of almost all countries that border the Indian ocean, they were used as money in India and African countries that border that ocean.

The Birth of Paper Money

So, something qualifies as real money if it has “intrinsic” value—beaver pelts, cigarettes, and cowries were regarded as valuable by the peoples who accepted them as money, just as gold and silver were.

The Chinese invented paper money, some time in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), and used engraved wooden blocks to print it. They gradually became increasingly sophisticated in financial activities, developing credit mechanisms—merchants began to use promissory notes (credit notes) for long-distance trade. During the Song Dynasty (960-1276) merchants were invited to deposit their coins with the Government Treasury in exchange for “flying money” (Fey-thsian).

Curiously, the motivation for flying money wasn’t a desire to inflate the money supply. It was done because China was running out of coins. This is a money-supply problem we rarely hear of now, but it often plagued coin-based economies. Some merchants issued private drafts (banknotes in effect) that were backed by coins and salt, and later on by gold and silver. In 1024, the government took sole control of issuing these notes.

Then, during the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1367), paper money was declared to be the only legal tender. The paper money experiment began to go badly wrong during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). New notes were introduced into circulation without withdrawing older notes. Monetary inflation followed, as naturally as night follows day. In 1380, one Chinese guan was worth 1000 copper coins, by 1535, its value had reduced to 0.28 copper coins.

What Is Inflation?

It is worth pointing out here that the word “inflation” in a financial context is often misunderstood by people to mean “rising prices.” That is not its meaning. It means precisely “an increase in the supply of money.” Rising prices are a possible, but not guaranteed, result of inflating the money supply.

If you increase the supply of money, but that new money ends up with people who choose never to spend it, it will not cause prices to rise. Prices will rise only if the money circulates. And prices can rise for other reasons—a poor harvest will raise the price of grain without any help from an inflated money supply.

A Tale of Two Cities

Europe lagged China by centuries in the use of paper money, which didn’t get going until the printing press had been invented. The idea was tried in Sweden in 1661 by Stockholm’s Banco, linking banknotes directly to deposits of coins. The bank then foolishly printed more notes than there were deposits. It went bankrupt after three years. At about the same time, the goldsmith-bankers in London began creating notes linked to deposits, but they were conservative in issuing them. These proved to be a prototype for a national currency.

In 1694 the English government established the Bank of England, printing notes that guaranteed access to an amount of silver. But it wasn’t until 1745 that it issued fixed denomination notes from £20 to £1,000—the first true British banknotes.

While London moved slowly, Paris moved quickly, under the influence of the Scottish economist, John Law. He was an original economic thinker and a historically influential one. He invented the scarcity theory of value—a model for the interaction between supply and demand. He wrote the Real Bills Doctrine, which considers the required relationship between bank assets and liabilities and which set the foundation for modern banking. He believed that monetary inflation would stimulate an economy—and it does in the short term. But that opinion led to his downfall.

Law was also a successful gambler with a good understanding of probability. It was his gambling skills that brought him to the attention of the French aristocracy and his economic ideas that persuaded the Duke of Orleans to appoint him as Controller General of Finances of France.

When John Law took charge, France was in a financial mess. Louis XIV’s War of the Spanish Succession had left France in economic distress. The economy was stagnant and the national debt was crippling. A shortage of precious metals caused a shortage of coins in circulation.

Law’s solution was to replace gold with paper credit and then gradually increase the supply of credit. He believed this would stimulate commerce, and thus help to reduce the national debt. He intended to replace the national debt with shares in prosperous economic ventures.

To cut a long story short, Law issued bank notes based on gold coins combined in a 1 to 3 ratio with defunct government bonds, inflating the currency by a factor of 3 from the get-go. He then provoked a speculative bubble by founding the Mississippi Company, a monopoly trading company. The company’s stock rose by 60 times its initial value and then collapsed causing French citizens to dump their paper money for coins. When that happened, he was shown the door.

Real Paper Money: The Gold Standard

By the nineteenth century, the phenomenon of paper money inflation was better understood. John Law’s disastrous French experiment proved to be an object lesson and a highly effective deterrent. The faith in coinage (gold and silver) was even enshrined in the US constitution, where Article 1, Section 10 states:

“[No State shall] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;”

From 1837 to 1863, a period of 26 years, the US had no central banks, just heavily regulated state-chartered banks that issued banknotes against specie (precious-metal-based coinage). Then, with the National Banking Act of 1863, a system of national banks was established with the intent of creating a uniform national currency and paying for the Union’s civil war costs.

Wars are costly. The US issued “Greenback” dollars that were not backed by precious metals to pay for it. But in a series of legislative changes, which began in 1873, the US gradually moved to a gold standard with all bank notes backed by gold.

The British had been operating a gold standard since 1844, and much of the British Empire naturally fell in line. In 1873, Germany adopted the gold standard and France followed suit. Throughout the 19th-century, banknotes backed by gold gradually superseded gold and silver coinage.

A gold standard emerged. It prevented undisciplined and inflationary money-printing and it reduced the need for coins. It also enforced a fixed exchange rate between currencies, facilitating global trade. Because currency was exchangeable for gold, gold naturally migrated to the more successful economies, increasing the money supply in accordance with the national balance of trade.

What’s not to love?

Gold does not provide a perfect basis for a commodity-backed currency, but, historically, it has proved to be the best choice. Currently, the world’s above-ground gold stock grows by 1 to 2% annually. About half the gold in existence is used for jewelry, about 20% is owned by central banks, a further 20% by private investors, and the remainder is employed industrially. The neat thing about gold is that it isn’t destroyed by usage; almost all industrially used gold is recovered and recycled.

The glitches in gold-based currencies happen with discoveries of significant new deposits. But this is rare. It happened when Spain raided the Aztecs and the Incas for gold, and as a result of the California gold rush of 1849, the Australian gold rush of 1851, and the Witwatersrand gold rush of 1886. It would require a truly dramatic new gold find to increase the existing stock of gold significantly.

There are currently about 190,000 tonnes of mined gold, with an estimated 54,000 tonnes still below ground. Most of those 190,000 tonnes are more recent than you might imagine. Two-thirds of it has been mined since 1950.

The Rocky Road to Fiat Currency

The question is: why did the gold standard fail?

But it’s the wrong question. The gold standard didn’t fail; it worked. The intention with the gold standard was to prevent the debasement of paper currency by making it exchangeable with something that couldn’t be debased: gold. All the evidence suggests that it works, even allowing for the disruption imposed by the occasional major gold discovery.

Paper money that is linked directly to gold—something that cannot be inflated by fiat, is not fiat money. Paper money becomes fiat money when the link between the paper and the gold is cut.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the major economies of the world had moved their currencies to implement a gold standard. Then came the wars – without money, you cannot fight them. And the easiest way to pay for them is in fiat money because you can print it without it becoming immediately obvious to your citizens. The economists could not object—losing the war will be far worse economically than a dose of inflation.

After World War I, only the US truly remained on the gold standard. Other countries tried to go back to it, but the Great Depression foiled that.

In 1934, the US Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act, which nationalized all gold by ordering Federal Reserve banks to turn over their physical gold to the U.S. Treasury. In return, the banks received gold certificates to be used as reserves against deposits and Federal Reserve notes. The act authorized the president to devalue the gold-linked dollar, which he quickly did. This bumped the gold value of the dollar from $20.67 to $35 per ounce, a devaluation of over 40%.

The effect was to allow the Federal Reserve to print money in the hope of combatting rampant deflation. That’s right, deflation rather than inflation!!

The Force of Deflation

The money supply can expand as well as contract. If paper money is printed and it circulates, then in general prices will rise. However, when an economy goes into recession or a depression, many people and businesses are no longer able to pay their debts. An unpaid debt is money that disappears. The usual way to combat such a contraction of the money supply is to print money and make it available to the banks so that they remain solvent.

This is the other side of the coin, as regards fiat money. Not only does fiat money make inflation possible, it also makes deflation possible. Neither of those is good for the health of an economy.

At the end of World War II, another very expensive war, which only the US survived with its economy intact, a new international standard for currencies was implemented, that went by the name of Bretton Woods.

The idea was that countries would fix their exchange rate against the US dollar and would be able to exchange their dollar holdings for gold at the official exchange rate of $35 per ounce whenever they so wished. Neither businesses nor individuals were allowed to do that, so convertibility was highly constrained. Depriving individuals of owning gold (except for jewelry) removed a great deal of liquidity from the market and thus helped to stabilize the dollar price of gold.

So the US dollar then became the world’s primary reserve currency—the currency that countries and large businesses needed to hold to conduct international trade. They held dollars for the same reason that people and companies once held gold coins: as a common currency. The dollar was suitable because of its link to gold, and all countries could swap their dollar holdings for gold whenever they wished.

This worked very well until it didn’t.

Starting in 1959 and continuing for over a decade, France decided to continuously exchange its dollar reserves for gold at the official rate. In the latter part of the 1960s, the US was spending heavily on the Vietnam War and was running a persistent balance of payments deficit. Eventually, the US was obliged to cut the deficits or cut the link to gold.

President Nixon chose the latter—on August 15, 1971, the US abandoned the convertibility of the US dollar to gold.

And Then There Was Fiat

It is a remarkable fact that for the last 50 years no currencies in the world have had any intrinsic value. They are nothing more than paper, no matter which country you live in. And few people care.

The only thing that is backing the US dollar is faith that the US government will support it and maintain the current system of currency exchange across the markets of the world. However, this system favors the US. It remains to be seen whether the dominance of the dollar will be challenged.

What Could Challenge It?

Why, cryptocurrencies, of course. Currencies that can be designed to be proof against the twin systemic threats of inflation and deflation.

Between work, families, and what little time we have to give ourselves to relax, finding ways to squeeze in some extra cash can be a challenge. Part-time gigs aren’t always feasible, and people need ways to make extra cash both on-demand and passively.

Getting paid for searching the web is a good example of passive income. You won’t make a lot of money doing this, but by opting into a collection of services that pay you for actions you’re already doing, you can build up a nice pocket of cash to pay down debt, pad your Christmas shopping stash, or use as a savings buffer.

Before we dive into our favorite search engine reward programs, we’re going to cover a few important questions and thoughts about this world:

What Does It Mean to Get Paid for Searching the Web?

Getting paid to search the web or getting paid for browsing the internet is exactly what it sounds like. You use your preferred or specific search engines, and depending on the actions you take and the keywords you search, you can earn money or points for those actions.

Where Does the Money Come From?

That depends on the platform, but typically brands pay these companies to suggest actions for you to take, observe your behavior to sell to advertisers, or both.

For example, one platform is Qwee. Let’s say you were in a shopping mood and searched for “new toaster”. If you had the Qwee extension installed, not only would you see the normal search engine results, you would also see a list of vendor links with numeric cashback values listed. If you click one of those Qwee links, let’s say one that goes to Target to check out their toaster collection, then you would receive some cash for clicking to that site, and Qwee would too.

What Makes a Good Web Search Earner?

Because the earning potential is low across the board, the best search engine reward programs are the ones you will use with the least amount of effort. In other words, you’re aiming for the platforms that either already fit into your habits or can be easily added to your routine.

Next, you’re looking for platforms that aren’t overly restrictive, and that give you meaningful progress. If the actions to qualify for points or cash back are limited, then it will be difficult to engage in these actions passively. And, if you’re looking for something you can do to make active money, then paid surveys or more professional side gigs are a better way to spend your time.

Lastly, you want to have reliable progress. If it feels more like a distraction and cash doesn’t seem to be accruing on a reliable basis, then you should change platforms.

There are also some clever ways to combine some of these passive earners to maximize your cash. We cover those below!

Our Favorite Tools for Getting Paid to Browse the Internet

Without further ado, here are our favorite programs to make money by searching Google or using search engines. Have a specific suggestion or experience with the options below? Let us know.

1. Swagbucks Browser

What Is Swagbucks?

Swagbucks is a powerhouse free reward system backed by Yahoo and offers a diverse set of ways to earn online, including web searching, videos, surveys, and opting into paid offers with cash kickbacks.

How Does It Work?

Swagbucks operates on a points system. Once you create an account, you have a variety of different passive and active activities you can opt into to earn points. Once you earn enough, you can “cash-out” by either choosing gift cards or a PayPal cashout.

How Much Can I Make?

Swagbucks is widely variable, from $10-$20 with a pretty hands-off approach to reports of $300-$400/month. Your best bet for maximizing income is to make the Swagbucks browser your default browser, use the paid and discovery offers when you can, base your activities around the daily and monthly bonuses, and take the daily polls.

In the end, it really depends on how much time you put in and what offers come through that month, but you shouldn’t expect to make more than a small amount per month.

Pros of Swagbucks

1. Safe and reliable.
2. Diverse earning options.
3. Good paid offers.
4. Has its own browser that works well for passive search earnings.

Cons of Swagbucks

1. The surveys are a bit of a timesuck and usually aren’t worth the effort unless you’re trying to hit a certain bonus.
2. You may not qualify for some of the surveys.
3. Unless you really invest in understanding the platform, it can feel a bit overwhelming.

Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for Swagbucks here.

2. Qmee

What Is Qmee?

Qmee is a survey and browser extension company that gives cash rewards for clicking into relevant sites based on what you search for.

How Does It Work?

After you create a free account, you download their browser extension and can continue using your favorite browsers like Chrome. If you search a keyword that a Qmee brand partner has bid for, then a pop-up shows up on the left side of your browser, giving you the option to earn money by clicking into the brand’s site.

How Much Can I Make?

Qmee pays anywhere from a few cents to a dollar for clicking into certain links related to your search query, and surveys vary from a few cents to a few dollars.

Pros of Qmee

1. Easy to use and fits easily into your existing internet routine.
2. No minimum cash out.
3. Set up is super easy.
4. You can also cash out to charity, which is nice.

Cons of Qmee

1. Sometimes you will take a survey, spend time putting in questions, and then find out you’ve been declined due to demographic reasons.
2. The search engine feature only works on certain keywords, so this is firmly a passive earner. If you’re looking for a specific survey app, there are better options.

Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for Qmee here.

3. Microsoft Rewards

What Is Microsoft Rewards?

Previously known as Bing Rewards, Microsoft Rewards is an all-in-one, cross-platform rewards program based around Microsoft Products. From Bing to Xbox, to shopping at their online store, it all funnels into one reward account.

How Does It Work?

After you sign up for a free account, you can register all of your Microsoft devices. Level 1 Members start by earning up to 150 points per month from searches, and Level 2 Members earn up to 20 points a day and 600 a month from searches. The more points you earn, the higher levels, and the more perks you get.

You can earn points by searching, completing quizzes, playing certain games and completing actions on Xbox, buying from their online store, and more.

Once you have enough points, you can redeem them for sweepstakes or Microsoft products.

How Much Can I Make?

This platform is best for Microsoft power users. About 1,000 points are worth a dollar, and with search only you’re restricted to 150 points per month on Level 1 and 600 for level 2, resulting in <$1/month from search alone. If you combine your rewards account with Microsoft purchases and complete the occasional quiz, then it becomes a bit more lucrative!

Pro Tip: Combine Qmee with Microsoft Rewards to double your earning potential.

Pros of Microsoft Rewards

1. Sophisticated System.
2. Rewards Microsoft power users.
3. Has points you can earn through Xbox.

Cons of Microsoft Rewards

1. Low points to rewards ratio.
2. Can only redeem for sweepstakes or Microsoft products.

Where Do I Sign Up?

You can sign up for Microsoft Rewards by clicking here.

4. Nielsen Digital Voice

What Is Nielsen Digital Voice?

Nielsen Digital Voice is a passive application that pays you to record your behavior and uses that data to educate their research and trends reports.

How Does It Work?

First, you download their program on your computer. After it installs, you’ll run through a series of steps before getting the all-clear. Once everything is set up, you don’t have to do anything else! You will automatically be entered into their sweepstakes.

How Much Can I Make?

All of Nielsen Digital Voice rewards are sweepstakes-based, so your rewards will vary. They give away $120,000 a year, and each month 400 members are winners from a pool of $10,000. Your winning amount is random but will never exceed $1,000 in a month.

Pros of Nielsen Digital Voice

1. Created by a reputable company.
2. Good sweepstake rewards are possible if you win.
3. Completely passive earning potential.

Cons of Nielsen Digital Voice

1. It can be a bit of a pain to set up.
2. They are recording your behavior, so privacy cannot be a concern.
3. No direct earnings — only sweepstakes based.

Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for Nielsen Digital Voice here.

5. Wonder

What Is Wonder?

Wonder is a research-based platform where companies ask anonymous questions and Wonder researchers deliver detailed responses. Rather than being a passive search app, this offers higher pay for active research. If you’re looking for something a bit more hands-on, then this is for you.

How Does It Work?

The barrier of entry is much higher for researchers on Wonder, but if you pass, then you join the platform, choose the questions you’d like to answer, and get paid based on the values listed next to the questions.

How Much Can I Make?

Between $8-$35 an hour, but that depends on your proficiency and the questions available. Wonder is best for people adept at internet research — the ability to find legitimate sources and pull useful information from them is critical to making money on Wonder.

Pros of Wonder

1. Much higher pay than surveys and passive browsing.
2. Freedom to choose your own questions and work when you want.
3. Modern platform.

Cons of Wonder

1. The application process is much more rigorous than other platforms.
2. Wonder doesn’t accept applicants from all states.
3. Sometimes answers are removed for unknown reasons and you don’t get paid for that effort.
4. More mentally demanding.

Where Do I Sign Up?

Sign up for Wonder here.

Is Getting Paid to Search the Web Worth the Time?

That depends on you.

To be clear: getting paid to browse the internet is not a complete way to make a living.

But, if you can build these services into your lifestyle in a way that doesn’t subtract and only adds to your earning potential and you aren’t concerned with privacy and selling your data, then yes; they can be a good way to pad your bank account. The keys to achieving that are following the guidelines we listed above: making sure you fit them into your routine, stacking them when possible, etc.

The idea is to make them work for you and not the other way around.

What’s Next for Web Earnings?

As you can tell, the best way to get paid for searching the web is by using apps and services that work with your existing routine, but what if those services and routines didn’t have to be separate at all?

What if people could take back ownership of their data and only interact with brands when they choose to, earning passive income by permissioning their data to brands and engaging with personalized content, instead of being interrupted by annoying and bad-fitting ads or having to use specific search engines?

What if instead of search engines and eCommerce giants profiting from your data, financial value for your information was transferred back to you?

That future is possible with current blockchain and digital ID technology, and we’re building it. The Permission Browser Extension offers users cryptocurrency in return for their data. When users download the extension, they’re shown relevant ads as they browse the web, which they can choose to watch in return for crypto. With technology like this, why would you ever watch ads without being paid?

See how Permission is handing data ownership back to where it rightly belongs… in the hands of individuals.