​People will always look for ways to cheat the system. This has never changed and it is doubtful that it ever will. That is why exceptional security and scrutiny systems are put in place.
                                                     
Throughout time the act of counterfeiting money has been a prominent exploit of fiat cash. Even in contemporary Western countries where fiat currency is intricately crafted so as to prevent this, people still find ways of faking it. Technologies such as counterfeit money detectors offer a way of stopping this problem in its tracks, but these aren’t enough either. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology may provide the best system to turn counterfeiting money into a thing of the past, but this does come with its own problem which goes by the name of double spending.

As of January 10th 2018, the price of Ethereum (ETH) has reached an all time high of $1,417.38 according to CoinDesk, or $1,402.87 according to CoinMarketCap. This is a milestone achievement for the coin and the technology, and suggests that Ethereum has a bright future as we head into 2018. 

There is an elephant in the room, and the world of cryptocurrency isn’t talking about it enough. It goes by the name of Tether, a not-so-impressive coin. For those who do not know, Tether is a coin which has its price pegged (or tethered) to that of the US dollar. It shows this fact off by having its ticker (or initials) as USDT. It’s clear value is that it is meant to always be equal to the dollar. And looking through their price history shows that for the most part this is true. Whereas there have been fluctuations over the past thirty days it seems to still keep close to the 1USDT = $1 mark. After every price change its price quickly gets returned to the $1.00 per coin mark. The appeal of Tether comes from the fact that it is supposedly a safe coin to hold your savings in as it is never meant to rise or fall. For instance, say you make a $500 profit from XRP (Ripple) but don’t want to exactly withdraw it yet as you’d like to day-trade with your profits. The idea is that you would convert your $500 worth of XRP into Tether on an exchange so that you would have 500USDT which you could still easily trade with for other coins. It is a safe way to keep profits without withdrawing to fiat (real world money like USD/GBP/EUR). It is also a way of avoid taxation; although I am not encouraging this.

I attempt to offer clients a wide range of payment methods when they work with me as a means of giving them as much freedom as possible, but this does come with its pitfalls. One of the best and yet riskiest decisions I ever made was offering clients the ability to pay for work via Bitcoins.