Tech Talk Today

  Understanding Slippage in Trading Slippage is a common occurrence in financial markets that affects traders across various asset classes, including stocks, forex, and cryptocurrencies. It refers to the difference between the expected price of a trade and the actual price at which it is executed. This discrepancy arises due to market volatility, liquidity conditions, and order execution speed. When traders place market orders, they expect their trades to be executed at the prevailing bid or ask price. However, if the market moves quickly or there isn’t enough liquidity to fill the order at the expected price, slippage occurs. This can result in either a favorable or unfavorable price adjustment, depending on market conditions. While slippage is often seen as a negative aspect of trading, it is an inherent part of financial markets and can sometimes work in a trader’s favor. For example, if a trader places a market order to buy a stock at $100 but the order is executed at $100.5...

Understanding Hash Rate & Mining Difficulty: The Backbone of Blockchain Security 1. Hash Rate: Measuring Computational Power Hash rate refers to the total computational power used by miners to process transactions and secure a blockchain network. In simpler terms, it measures how many hashes — cryptographic calculations — a miner can complete per second. A hash is a fixed-length alphanumeric string generated from input data, and miners compete to find a hash that meets the network's criteria to validate new blocks. Hash rate is typically expressed in hashes per second (H/s), with larger units like kilohashes (KH/s), megahashes (MH/s), gigahashes (GH/s), and even terahashes (TH/s) or petahashes (PH/s) for massive networks like Bitcoin. A higher hash rate indicates more miners are contributing computational power to the network, which strengthens security. This is because an attacker would need to control over 50% of the network's hash rate to perform a 51% attack — an event ...