Tag: Crypto

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Cryptocurrencies

Breaking down ZCash

The first-ever blockchain, Bitcoin, is pretty much an open ledger where all and sundry can see your transactions, and those transactions can be traced back to you, if need be. While this level of transparency is partly what endeared many to Bitcoin, it is not amenable to the notions of privacy that are increasingly prevalent in today’s world.

The first-ever blockchain, Bitcoin, is pretty much an open ledger where all and sundry can see your transactions, and those transactions can be traced back to you, if need be. While this level of transparency is partly what endeared many to Bitcoin, it is not amenable to the notions of privacy that are increasingly prevalent in today’s world.

The first-ever blockchain, Bitcoin, is pretty much an open ledger where all and sundry can see your transactions, and those transactions can be traced back to you, if need be. While this level of transparency is partly what endeared many to Bitcoin, it is not amenable to the notions of privacy that are increasingly prevalent in today’s world.

Is there a way we can take advantage of blockchain technology without sacrificing privacy? Several cryptocurrencies intending to answer that very question have sprung up in recent years. Zcash, a crypto-based on the Bitcoin code base, is one of them.

This article scratches beneath the surface of this privacy coin to look at how it works, who created it, and how it stacks up against other cryptocurrencies in terms of performance.

What is Zcash?

Zcash is a decentralized, peer-to-peer, and privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It is based on the Bitcoin code and was launched in October 2016. It was first called the Zerocoin protocol, then the Zerocash system before finally going by the name Zcash.

Zooko Wilcox, the founder of Zcash, describes it as “another blockchain and cryptographic money which permits private exchanges (and by and large private information) in an open blockchain. This permits organizations, buyers, and new applications to control who gets the chance to see the points of interest of their exchanges, even while utilizing a worldwide, authorization-less blockchain.”

The Team behind Zcash

Zcash is the product of a mix of engineers, scientists, and designers around the world. In the team are graduates from some of the leading universities from around the world, including MIT, Johns Hopkins, and Tel Aviv University. The team’s leader and also founder OF Zcash is Zooko Wilcox, who has 20+ years of experience in open and decentralized systems as well as cryptography.

There’s also the Zcash Foundation, a non-profit whose mandate is maintaining and constantly improving the Zcash protocol to accurately represent the interests of current and future users as well as the community. The foundation was launched in 2017.

How Zcash Works and Its Privacy Model

Zcash works by encrypting transaction details via zk-SNARK – a zero-knowledge proof protocol. Before we talk about zk-SNARK, let’s first get an idea of what zero-knowledge proof is.

What is Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP)

 The concept of zero-knowledge proof harks back to the 1980s when 3 MIT researchers – Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, and Charles Rackoff were working on interactive proof systems, and they stumbled on the idea of having knowledge of proof without revealing that knowledge.

The zero-knowledge proof concept has two parties: the prover and the verifier. A prover can prove to the verifier that they possess certain information without revealing what that information is. A ZKP must possess the following parameters:

  • Completeness: The statement must be true so that a verifier can be convinced of it without proof
  • Soundness: The statement must be true in a way that a lie in its stead would not convince the verifier
  • Zero-knowledge: The verifier has no idea what the information is

What is Zk-Snarks?

Zk-Snark stands for “Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge.” Zk-Snarks are mathematical proof constructs that see to it that a transaction takes place without its details being divulged. These details include sender, recipient, and amount. Zk-Snarks also plays the role of preventing double-spending.

The Problem with Bitcoin’s Transparency

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency and one that a lot of cryptocurrencies are modeled after. On the Bitcoin blockchain, the world can see the details of transactions that took place, such as the public key. This transparency is a welcome idea, especially when preventing criminal activity from being conducted using the currency. But it’s also the crypto’s pitfall, especially in modern times when privacy is highly valued and protected.

Businesses also have the need to keep their most sensitive information away from the eyes of competitors and other interested parties. Companies also want to keep employee information, including salaries, from other employees and the public in general. Both these scenarios are not possible on the public Bitcoin blockchain.

Zcash’s Selective Disclosure

On the Zcash platform, transactions can either be “transparent” or “shielded.” Transparent transactions happen through the t-addr, or ‘transparent addresses while shielded addresses happen through the z-addr, or the zero-proof address. This is what’s referred to as “selective disclosure” of Zcash transactions. Users can choose whether to send funds using transparent or shielded addresses. Usually, a user can send funds publicly to a private address and vice versa.

This selective disclosure affords users the choice to comply with industry, tax, and legal obligations when and if required. For example, a user can prove that they own at least a thousand dollars without revealing the exact amount. As well, you can use this feature to comply with auditing requirements by providing payments.

Tokenomics of Zcash

Zcash is a fork of Bitcoin and has the same maximum supply of 21 million as Bitcoin. Zcash’s coins will all be mined by 2032, and block rewards get halved every four years as a deflationary measure. As of March 3, 2020, Zcash is trading at $51.85 with a market cap of $478, 526, 912, and #27 ranking. Its 24-hour volume is $370, 092, 058, and it has a circulating supply of 9, 228, 331, and a total supply of the same value. Zcash has an all-time high of $5, 942.80 on October 29, 2016, and an all-time low of $25.45 on November 25, 2019.

Where to Buy and Store Zcash (ZEC)

You can purchase ZEC from these exchanges, among other popular ones: Coinbase, Cointree, Gemini, Bithumb, Kraken, Huobi, YoBit.Net, Changelly, and etoro. Some exchanges will allow you to buy directly with fiat currency, while others will require you to first purchase Bitcoin or another crypto such as Ethereum to trade it for Zcash.

You can store your ZEC on the Linux command line client wallet known as zcashd. This option is good for you only if you know your way around computers or are sufficiently tech-savvy. There’s also a desktop wallet by the Cash foundation that supports Linux, Windows, and Mac. Other desktop options include Jaxx and Exodus.

If you’re more into hardware wallets – and you should – since they’re the safest option, you’re in luck because user favorites such as Ledger and Trezor both support the coin.

The Bottom Line

Zcash is a cryptocurrency that provides the decentralized, peer-to-peer model of transactions while keeping them private. Users, businesses, and organizations looking to combine the benefits of blockchain technology with privacy are right at home with Z-cash. They also get to comply with regulations without giving everything away. Zcash offers the world the benefits of blockchain without sacrificing their privacy. And with the world valuing privacy more than ever, Zcash is set to move only forward.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Crypto Lending The Superior Way Of HODLing Part 2 OF 5

https://youtu.be/dCZ5PqmY9RY

https://youtu.be/dCZ5PqmY9RY

Crypto Lending – Where to lend your crypto? (part 2/5)

 

This part of the Crypto Lending guide will cover Nexo and BlockFi, two of the three platforms that we will show as good examples of how a lending platform should operate.

Nexo is a company founded in 2017 and is backed by Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch. It has nearly 200,000 customers and even got covered by Forbes. The platform has back payments in 45 Fiat currencies.
Nexo Wallets are provided by BitGo. Therefore, users who borrow or lend Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency are insured for up to $100,000,000.00. The insurance is backed by Lloyd’s bank. This amount is, however, for the total company in case it gets hacked or goes bankrupt. NEX allows its lenders to have their earnings deposited every single day, rather than having to wait for a week, month or more. They have an interest rate of 8%, with the option to withdraw anytime.

When it comes to user experience, they are top-notch. On top of that, this company constantly strives to get better and makes new beneficial partnerships quite often. When it comes to cons, there aren’t many. However, one comes to mind. Even though borrowers can withdraw in any of the supported 45+ fiat currencies, lenders are allowed to deposit only stablecoins and fiat currencies. Nexo is currently working on supporting BTC and ETH deposits, but they didn’t make any projection regarding the time of realization of this project.

BlockFi is a company founded by Zac Prince and Flori Marquez. It has raised over $20 million of capital from various firms. The company is young and growing at a fast pace. The company offers a 6.2% interest rate on BTC lending and 3.3% on ETH lending, compounded. Granted, this rate is only for deposits under 10 BTC and 100 ETH. The rates for larger amounts of crypto drop severely. When it comes to borrowers, they get a 4.5% interest rate by using the platform.

There is no minimum deposit, and all your crypto holdings are stored with Gemini. Gemini acts as a 3rd party depository trust that is a licensed custodian with insurance. It has a perfect track record when it comes to preventing hacks and fund losses.

When it comes to cons, there are a couple we can think of. The first one only applies to people that want to lend larger amounts of crypto. BlockFi offers digressive interest rates, meaning that the rates decrease to 2.2% and 0.2% for deposits larger than 10 BTC and 100 ETH. BlockFi also offers fewer choices of cryptocurrencies people can earn interest on as it supports only BTC, ETH, and GUSD. The last con would be that the platform is not FDIC insured (though Gemini – which protects BlockFi user’s assets – has a strong track record for security).

Check out part 3 of our Cryptocurrency Lending series, where we will cover Celsius Network as the third good option for crypto lending.

 

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic

What Does It Take to become a Blockchain Developer? [Updated]

In the crypto world, blockchain technology is essentially a ledger system on which cryptocurrency transaction data is recorded. Every entry is permanent and immutable, meaning it can’t be altered in any way. The data is then verified through consensus by multiple nodes, which are basically computers, making the technology secure and reliable. 

In the crypto world, blockchain technology is essentially a ledger system on which cryptocurrency transaction data is recorded. Every entry is permanent and immutable, meaning it can’t be altered in any way. The data is then verified through consensus by multiple nodes, which are basically computers, making the technology secure and reliable. 

In the crypto world, blockchain technology is essentially a ledger system on which cryptocurrency transaction data is recorded. Every entry is permanent and immutable, meaning it can’t be altered in any way. The data is then verified through consensus by multiple nodes, which are basically computers, making the technology secure and reliable. 

Given its benefits, virtually all industries, from banking, real estate, health-care, music, to logistics, are working towards integrating blockchain technology into their framework. As technology permeates across industries, there is a rising demand for skilled blockchain developers to help optimize the protocol to suit the needs of a specific industry. 

Considering that the technology is still in its budding stage, starting a career as a blockchain developer places you at the front seat to drive its growth. For those working in the tech field, chances are, they have the necessary foundation required to start a career as a blockchain developer. However, if you have no tech skills whatsoever, it’s still possible to become a blockchain developer, but it’ll take a bit more work and dedication to learn the basics. A good place to start is first understanding the most common programming languages used in most cryptocurrency projects. These languages include; Java, Python, JavaScript, Swift, and Solidity. 

Regardless of your skills level here’s are the essential skills required to kick-start your career as a Bitcoin developer: 

Understand the Principles of Blockchain 

Since most of the developer’s work involves interacting with blockchain technology, it makes sense to have a good grasp of how the entire protocol works. You also need to understand the foundational concepts of blockchain architecture such as; cryptographic hash functions, consensus, and distributed ledger technology. 

To understand these concepts, it’s advised to read through the Bitcoin Whitepaper. However, you’ll need a little bit of guidance to direct your learning curve, which is signing up for short-term certification courses on the same will be helpful. 

Data Structures Proficiency 

Data structures are an integral part of development. In the case of blockchain development, it becomes even more important since blockchain relies on data structures to build scalable and tamper-proof records. 

Besides, as a blockchain developer, you’ll spend most of your time working with data structures such as Merkle trees and petricia trees, among others, as you try to configure the network to meet specific needs. 

Smart Contract Development 

Smart contracts are one of the key components of blockchain technology, especially in a business-focused environment. The concept came into the spotlight after Ethereum used it in its protocol. Since then, almost all upcoming blockchain projects are striving to incorporate smart contracts in their functionality. Solidity, Viper, and Chaincode; are among the top programming languages used to develop smart contracts. So, it pays to invest time in learning these languages. 

Cryptography 

In a blockchain network, cryptography and data structures complement each other, to establish the integrity of the network. Asymmetric cryptography, in particular, is used in blockchain to generate digital signatures for verifying transactions. Also, cryptography algorithms help secure data on the blockchain. 

Web Development 

The majority of blockchain developers end up working in designing decentralized applications. Additionally, blockchain technology uses a huge variety of web-based services and APIs. As a blockchain developer, this demands that you understand both front-end and back-end development, which involves creating an intuitive user interface, request handling for the decentralized apps, and API handling. 

Once you have a good understanding of the concepts above, you need to know that there are two main types of blockchain developers. These are core blockchain developers and blockchain software, developers. Let’s look at what each one of them entails: 

i) Core Blockchain Developers

Core blockchain developers focus on developing the blockchain technology itself, including designing the consensus protocols. They can also advise companies on how to structure their Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) as well as supervise and plan blockchain projects. 

ii) Blockchain Software Developers

Blockchain software developers use the blockchain protocol to build or design decentralized apps. As such, they can work together with the core developers to come up with unique software based on the protocol developed by the core developers. It is also the role of a blockchain software developer to design smart contracts and the other web development roles, as mentioned earlier.

Currently, most job opportunities lie in decentralized app development, as various industries and businesses strive to incorporate blockchain into their processes. 

Self-taught or Formal Education for Blockchain Developers 

Deciding to become a blockchain developer is one thing, choosing a mode of learning is a whole different thing. 

For starters, taking the self-taught route is appealing to those who already have a career in the tech industry. There are numerous online courses to guide you, so you only learn the required content. You can sign up for Coursera or Udemy courses or checkout GitHub repositories for guided content. Online learning platforms on the same, can also help sharpen your self-taught skills as you interact with other blockchain developers. 

If you are completely new to the tech world and possess no skills, formal education focused on basic concepts such as programming and software development is your best bet if you want to start a career as a blockchain developer. Some colleges these days even offer blockchain development courses as certification programs. So, once you enroll in such a college, you’ll not only learn the basic tech skills but also become a blockchain developer at the end of your program.

Nonetheless, you can as well learn the basic tech skills from online courses and other dedicated pages. Once you have mastered the concepts, including those mentioned above, you can then transition to become a blockchain developer by taking up courses on the same. 

Whether you sign up for online courses or enroll for formal education, remember the only way to perfect your skills and boost your resume is by getting hands-on experience. So, try working on solo projects or collaborating with like-minded developers. There are various online open-source projects you can contribute to sharpen your skills and get the much-needed experience. 

Conclusion

Blockchain is considered the next wave of tech innovation. This explains why well-established tech companies such as IBM, Microsoft, and Samsung are showing interest in this revolutionary technology, as they look to be at the forefront of the growing innovation. Moreover, as the technology is maturing and finding its roots across various industries, this is the best time to start your career as a blockchain developer. 

Categories
Forex Daily Topic

Adapt yourself to the FX Market!

From its very inception. the FX market was devised to guarantee that market insiders had an important advantage over retail traders. Because of the nature and lack of regulation, the FX market is, essentially, an unfair market for retail and non-pro players.

From its very inception. the FX market was devised to guarantee that market insiders had an important advantage over retail traders. Because of the nature and lack of regulation, the FX market is, essentially, an unfair market for retail and non-pro players.

From its very inception. the FX market was devised to guarantee that market insiders had an important advantage over retail traders. Because of the nature and lack of regulation, the FX market is, essentially, an unfair market for retail and non-pro players.

The Playing Field

Agustin Silvani, the author of Beat the Forex Dealer, explains in his book that since information is vital to succeeding in this market, “A player’s positioning on the FX food chain depends on his/her access to information and speed, and with no central clearing exchange, it can be difficult for nonprofessionals to gain access to this information and come up with an accurate view of the market.  

He also states that practices deemed illegal in traditional financial markets are regarded in the FX field as part of the game. Practices such as insider trading, front running, and price shading (adding pips to the current price if in an uptrend or subtracting them on a descending move) are commonly seen in FX with no legal repercussions.

There is no government or central trade book to compare trades, so large institutions are free to do whatever they want to their customers. An FX broker or dealer can quote any price it wishes.

The Dealers

If big banks were a car factory, an FX Dealer would be the salesman, selling the banks’ production. Hence, you need to understand how FX dealers make money to adapt and succeed. 

The dealer’s primary axiom is markets rarely move one-way only, especially in intraday timeframes, which are ranging 80 percent of the time. That means dealers, having bug pockets, will fade strong move, knowing that the price will eventually come back and make a profit. Sometimes they can lose money, but having deep pockets will help them stand considerably more than customers that are deep in the margin. That means that most of the time, the dealer takes the other side of its customer.

The Stones on the Road 

Non-transparent pricing

The FX market is not a centralized market on which the traders have direct access to a general order book. Therefore quotes are subject to manipulation, and traders trusting just the price shown on its MT4 chart cannot be sure if the price is fair or sharded.

Over-leveraging 

Many retail brokers boast about their leveraging ratios as if it were an advantage to traders. Instead, overleverage is the main reason for the blowoff of traders’ accounts.

 Trading against its clients

This practice is widespread among unscrupulous retail dealers. Retail trade sizes are small to be directly sent to the FX mainstream flow. Thus the broker takes the other side of the trade. The broker may wait for enough flow to send it out or simply hold the position and effectively trade against their customers. No dealing desks are the same, but dealers replaced by computers.

Unfair practices

Some retail brokers not only do sharding, encourage overleverage and trade against their customers, but also deny services, complicate trade executions, and finally throw our successful traders since they feel they lose money against them. Cases of denial of withdrawal after successful growth of an account were common on the binary options broker business, but also some examples of allegedly Australian-regulated FX brokers happened. Fortunately, these cases are not the general rule, and there are plenty of fair brokers to choose from.

How to Fight Back

Different price feeds

  • Use a backup feed service such as Tradingview, which is free, fast, and unbiased. Your second feed is like a second eye to the market that confirms your broker’s prices. 

Keep detailed records of your activity

If a trader finds the order is not rightly filled, it must show evidence to the broker. The lack of evidence can defeat a legitimate claim.

Take screenshots of all your trading actions, entries, exits, and any important market activity like strange price spikes not seen in your second data feed.

Check the costs of trading

Sometimes, in some trading pairs, the costs of trading are so high that it takes for hours of activity just to cover the costs. Be smart and don’t trade illiquid and high-spread pairs. 

Use your trading platform only to enter and exit your positions

  • Use limit orders and mental stop-loss levels. Do not give any information about your strategy away.

Money Management

Do not overleverage. We have already said it in our past articles. Don’t be impatient and limit your risk to a percent of your account. Start by 0.5 percent on each trade. After you have the feeling about what that means in terms of drawdown, move it up to 1 percent and, again, see what does it feel, especially on losing positions. If, after some time, you feel you can withstand more drawdown, go on and move it to 1.5 percent and repeat the process.

How much drawdown can be expected?

That depends very much on the percent of losers of your system and the risk size. As an example, if your system is right 60 percent of the time, it is wrong 40 percent of the trades. Typically, there is a 0.01 percent chance of ten consecutive losses. Thus, if we consider ten times the usual risk our max drawdown, we see that 0.5 percent risk on each trade would result in a 5 percent max drawdown, whereas, 1.5 percent risk would mean a trader will sometimes withstand 15 percent drawdown.

Overleveraging

Consider leverage as a tool to adjust your position, but also is the leading cause of failure on FX. Thus limit your trades to 5X leverage on any position.

Diversification

Trade multiple uncorrelated pairs, so losses in one lot can offset the risk in another one. 

Trading

Use technical charts as a guide to where the price goes, but take into account what we have said at the beginning of this article: learn how your broker makes money. Think. 80 percent of the time, the intraday market move in ranges, so look for overbought and oversold prices and fade.

Follow the flow of the market

Let the market tell you the way. Use mental stop points and follow the volatility direction, but don’t chase the trade. Let the price come to your desired levels.

Reward-to-risk of two or more

Use reward to risk ratios over 2 as a way to protect your system of a drop on the percent of winners. A RR higher than 2 guarantees you’re profitable if one over three trades succeed.

Further reading: Beat the Forex Dealer – Agustin Silvani 

 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Mar 10 – Crypto markets consolidating, Bitcoin still under $8,000

The cryptocurrency market spent the past 24 hours consolidating after a severe price drop. Bitcoin is currently trading for $7,898, which represents an 0.72% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 3.96 % on the day, while XRP lost 1.92%.

The cryptocurrency market spent the past 24 hours consolidating after a severe price drop. Bitcoin is currently trading for $7,898, which represents an 0.72% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 3.96 % on the day, while XRP lost 1.92%.

The cryptocurrency market spent the past 24 hours consolidating after a severe price drop. Bitcoin is currently trading for $7,898, which represents an 0.72% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 3.96 % on the day, while XRP lost 1.92%.

Loopring took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 16.05%. On the other side, Swipe lost 12.25% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance managed to increase slightly over the past 24 hours. Its value is now 64.56%, which represents a 0.37% difference to the upside when compared to yesterday’s value.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization maintained its levels over the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $225.53 billion, which represents a decrease of $7.18 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

The VIX volatility index, one of the stock market’s main risk indicators, showed a value of 55 on March 9. This is the highest level it was on since 2009. In the meantime, the international oil price went all the way down to $36.20, down 20% from the previous session.

The Dow Jones tanked 6.9% as it was heading for its biggest daily loss ever to be recorded. On the other side, the UK’s FTSE went down 7.7%. Japan’s Nikkei ended up 5.1% below Friday’s close.

Honorable mention

Libra

Marc Bhargava, the co-founder of Tagomi, a company that has recently joined the Libra Association, spoke about the current market cryptocurrency downturn. Since Tagomi is well connected with some of the biggest exchanges as well as some of the biggest crypto traders, he may see the market movement from another perspective.

Bhargava believes that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven asset. This goes against the beliefs of other analysts. “BTC as well as crypto are currently a risk-on asset, more alike tech and VC rather than gold.”

_______________________________________________________________________

Technical analysis

_______________________________________________________________________

Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s price got destroyed over the weekend. After falling to the $8,000 levels, many analysts thought that this price level would hold up. However, Bitcoin continued its drop and ended up stopping at the $7,760 support level. The price bounced there and Bitcoin is now trading in a range between the support of $7,760 and the $8,000 resistance level.


Bitcoin’s volume decreased as the price began to rise, while its RSI level is still in the oversold area.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $8,000                                           1: $7,760

2: $8,650                                           2: $7,420

3: $8,825                                            3: $7,085

Ethereum

Ethereum, just like Bitcoin, went into consolidation mode. Its price started to recover a bit earlier than Bitcoin’s but suffered another bear move, which ended at the $193.6 support level. Ethereum has recovered since and is currently trading above the $198 support level.


Ethereum’s volume decreased greatly since it stopped the downturn, while its RSI level left the oversold area.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $217.7                                             1: $198

2: $225.5                                            2: $193.6  

3: $240                                                3: $185

Ripple

XRP ended up consolidating and finding anchor points as well in the past 24 hours. The third-largest cryptocurrency found a bottom to the downturn at the $0.1985 level and quickly recovered to above $0.2 levels. It is currently stable and trading just above this support line.


XRP’s volume decreased greatly once the move to the downside stopped, while its RSI level just left the oversold area and is hovering around 34.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.221                                            1: $0.2

2: $0.227                                            2: $0.1985

3: $0.235                                             3: $0.19

Categories
Crypto Videos

Crypto Lending The Superior Way Of HODLing Part 1 OF 5

https://youtu.be/cJHnIJgfbIY

https://youtu.be/cJHnIJgfbIY

Crypto Lending – the superior way of HODLing cryptocurrency (part 1/5)

 


Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) loans are quickly becoming a hot topic. Crypto lending sites and crypto-backed loans are becoming a new way for the investors, hedge funds, miners, and even the unbanked to utilize and leverage their finances as well as to support their business ideas. The HODLers with their crypto bags can also earn interest on their holdings and gain more financial freedom through earning passive income.

The concept is actually quite simple:

For borrowers: If you need a loan to support your business idea or some other endeavor, you will have to put up a small amount of crypto as collateral. After that, you can get a fiat or a stablecoin to use. You will have to pay back the loan according to the agreement.
For lenders: If you want to lend cryptocurrency, you will put up a certain amount of crypto and earn a predetermined amount of interest from it.
From what we have established, we can see that lending crypto is a great way of utilizing funds when you want to hold rather than trade or sell. However, lending cryptocurrencies doesn’t come without risks. If a bank fails, a chunk of their customer’s funds is insured by the government. If it happens that they go down, their customers are at least partially safe. However, what happens with crypto lending platforms and their insurance? You need to consider things such as safety and insurance policy alongside the things you would usually look for in a lending platform (more talk on that later on in the series).

Crypto lending – introduction

Certain studies have shown that when you have passive income, your stress and anxiety levels are greatly reduced. You also spend more time with friends and family, and you are freer to pursue hobbies and interests.

This 5 part series will cover:
What is Bitcoin lending, and why you should take advantage of the best Bitcoin lending sites to earn passive income

What to look for in a lending platform (We will be covering Nexo, BlockFi and Celsius Network)
What NOT to look for in a lending platform (We will be covering XCOINS and SALT)
Security and insurance policy and the importance of these factors.

Check out part 2 of the Crypto Lending series, where we will talk about Nexo and BlockFI, their advantages and disadvantages, and why they are good lending platforms in general.

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic

Ether Futures: The Definitive Guide

Speaking at an interview late last year, the new chairman of the U.S Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Heath Tarbert, said that Ethereum Futures are likely to be launched sometime this year. 

Speaking at an interview late last year, the new chairman of the U.S Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Heath Tarbert, said that Ethereum Futures are likely to be launched sometime this year. 

Speaking at an interview late last year, the new chairman of the U.S Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Heath Tarbert, said that Ethereum Futures are likely to be launched sometime this year. 

Such a bold declaration, coming from the regulator of one of the largest derivatives markets in the world, will undoubtedly attract institutional investors who are looking to hedge losses in their fiat settled portfolios. 

But before we can examine the impact of ether futures on the crypto market, there is a good chance that the futures contract will not be launched as soon as expected. If at all it will even be possible to launch them in the first place. 

The Road to Launching Ether futures Contract

While CFCT is planning on launching Ethereum futures, the contracts have already been launched, and investors started to trade them on exchanges based outside the U.S. By extrapolating the market behavior on these exchanges, it’s safe to say that ether futures won’t trade in high volumes as anticipated.

On BitMEX, Huobi, and Deribit exchanges, where investors are actively trading ether futures, the contracts’ trading volume is less than 10% compared to that of bitcoin futures. It could be because Bitcoin futures were the first crypto derivatives to be launched, and have actually been in existence for quite some time now. As such, many investors view bitcoin futures as the crypto-asset of choice. Also, the difference in trading volume may be due to the fact that Ethereum is still maturing, and maybe it will eventually catch-up at its own time. 

Even without considering the trading volume, the launch of ether futures may not come to fruition due to the coin’s upcoming change in algorithm. The proposed change in algorithm will see Ethereum move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake algorithm, making the coin more of a security than a commodity. 

Unlike proof-of-work where holders receive coin rewards randomly, once Ether moves to proof-of-stake, the coin holders will receive annualized rewards. As such, since the returns will be more regular and predictable, the entire Ethereum network will fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Security Exchange Commission (SEC). As it is widely known, SEC hasn’t warmed up to the whole idea of crypto-assets. This will likely delay the launch of Ether futures for quite a long time.

More so, the change in algorithm, which will be executed via hard forking, makes investing in Ethereum network riskier now than it would be if hard forking was executed when the network was in its infancy stage.  

Effects on The Crypto-market

Assuming that all goes well and ether futures are launched, the most immediate impact will be on Ethereum prices. 

Going back in time, the launch of Bitcoin futures coincided with the coin’s all-time high prices in the year 2017. Bitcoin pessimists were, therefore, able to enter the market via the futures, leading to a fall of  Bitcoin demand in the spot market. The lower the demand, the lower the prices.

The change in Bitcoin’s price dynamics, prompted the pessimists, as well as the initial coin holders, to short-sell in an effort to make returns off the falling prices, making the prices to decline further. 

History may repeat itself in Ethereum’s case, especially considering that the crypto-market is driven mainly by speculative investors. Yet, the Ethereum blockchain platform has the potential to shift the ETH market prices from speculation demand to benefit-driven valuation. This is possible due to the smart contract feature of the coin’s underlying protocol that allows users to complete transactions such as making a purchase without employing a third-party to oversee the whole process.  

Simply put, ETH isn’t just focused on cashing in the chips; instead, it’s focused on having a real-world use. This way, it’ll stick around for a long time and derive value from its transactional benefits. 

As Wall Street continues to work hard towards embracing cryptocurrencies, the launch of ether futures is critical, as it will incentivize deep pocket investors to enter ETH trade without necessarily owning the underlying asset. This might spark off an aggressive short-selling spree, but it might be a healthy thing for the market since it’ll help shift the focus to the real value of Ether. 

Companies who had raised money through ETH tokens – ERC20 – will, however, be affected if eth futures end up triggering short-selling panic. To hedge against further losses, these companies may resort to selling their token’s value for BTC or fiat currencies. In any case, whatever the resultants effect will likely increase Ether’s trading volume. 

With the increasing trading volume, more tools will be developed for seamless trading. Transactions will be faster, and even the current problems in the crypto-market, such as scalability, may eventually be solved. 

Besides the trading volumes and increased investment, Ether futures will help stabilize prices of the coin itself and, to a certain degree, those of Bitcoin. See, futures are, essentially, contracts to buy or sell a certain amount of an asset at a specific day and time. This is particularly useful when the underlying asset is highly volatile, which is the case with Ether. The rationale is that futures enhance liquidity, which is inversely proportional to volatility. 

Conclusion 

There are lots of mixed reactions about the expected launch of Ether futures. With Bitcoin options also hitting the market in the first quarter of 2020, perhaps, it’s best that ether futures are put on hold. 

For ETH, it’s futures may not attract a significant number of investors, since they are not the first of their kind to be launched. Nonetheless, their market debut will signify the maturation of the crypto-market, earning it mainstream acceptance. If the futures turn out to be as successful as Bitcoin’s, it might open the way for ETH options and other sophisticated trading instruments. 

However, before that, Ether will have to first mitigate the regulatory handle brought about by its algorithm change. Currently, analysts fear that the ETH may start out as a commodity but end up having a tangible value as it gets more decentralized. 

 

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Mar 9 – Blood on the streets, BTC under $8,000

It is quite a good statement when we say that the crypto market is bleeding over the weekend. Cryptocurrencies dropped in price a great amount as bears took over the market. Bitcoin is currently trading for $7,953, which represents an 8.98% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 9.72 % on the day, while XRP lost 9.66%.

It is quite a good statement when we say that the crypto market is bleeding over the weekend. Cryptocurrencies dropped in price a great amount as bears took over the market. Bitcoin is currently trading for $7,953, which represents an 8.98% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 9.72 % on the day, while XRP lost 9.66%.

It is quite a good statement when we say that the crypto market is bleeding over the weekend. Cryptocurrencies dropped in price a great amount as bears took over the market. Bitcoin is currently trading for $7,953, which represents an 8.98% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 9.72 % on the day, while XRP lost 9.66%.

UNUS SED LEO took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 3.08%. On the other side, Swipe lost 26% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance managed to increase slightly over the weekend. Its value is now 64.19%, which represents a 0.4% difference to the upside when compared to yesterday’s value.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped severely over the weekend. It is currently valued at $232.71 billion, which represents a decrease of $26.49 billion when its value is compared to the value it had on Friday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

Boeing has partnered with a multinational aerospace conglomerate Honeywell in order to use its GoDirect blockchain-based platform to track and sell $1 billion worth of airplane parts that they don’t need.

The partnership got revealed at the Hyperledger Global Forum 2020, which took place in Arizona. All the airplane parts were uploaded to the GoDirect Trade marketplace over the last weekend.

Honorable mention

Bitcoin (start of the bear trend)

Bitcoin began its sudden crash (which, in turn, brought all other cryptos down as well) due to another giant selloff coming from the PlusToken pyramid scheme.

According to various online Blockchain data sources, participants in the $2.9 billion pyramid scheme are attempting to sell their BTC holdings again. Ergo, the Twitter account that tracks PlusToken’s activities, showed that 13,000 BTC or roughly $210 million were involved in this sale.

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Technical analysis

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s price got destroyed over the weekend. Many analysts said that the sharp move to the downside will end at above $8,000. However, BTC dropped under it and can not get above again. This price drop was, as we mentioned above, caused by a pyramid scheme PlusToken giant attempting to get rid of its Bitcoin holdings.


Bitcoin’s volume increased as the price-drop occurred. Its RSI level is currently deep into the oversold territory.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $8,000                                           1: $7,760

2: $8,650                                           2: $7,420

3: $8,825                                            3: $7,085

Ethereum

Ethereum also lost a great deal of its value but managed to spring back a bit (sooner and a bit more than Bitcoin). Its price went from $253 all the way down to $196.5. However, bulls took over and brought the price above the $198 support and slightly above (to around $208 at the moment of writing).


Ethereum’s volume increased greatly during this bear trend, while it is dropping at bulls took over. Its RSI level is just above the oversold territory on the 4-hour trading chart.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $217.7                                             1: $198

2: $225.5                                            2: $193.6  

3: $240                                                3: $185

Ripple

XRP was no exception to the bleeding market. Its price dropped severely as well. The third-largest cryptocurrency dropped from $0.2454 all the way down to $0.2, where bulls took over. The price is currently rising at a slow pace, with XRP being traded for around $0.211 at the time of writing.


XRP’s volume increased immensely during the selloff but dropped down closer to normal when the bulls took over. Its RSI level is currently just slightly in the oversold territory.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.221                                            1: $0.2

2: $0.227                                            2: $0.1985

3: $0.235                                             3: $0.19

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic

The Recent Bitcoin Surge: Is it a Mirror of the 2017 Bull Run? 

Towards the tail end of 2019, Bitcoin stagnated in the ranges of $7,000 to $8,000. However, at the beginning of this year, 2020, its price increased steadily to the highs of $9,443.96 and continued to show signs of strength. As the anticipation for even higher prices continues to grow, its quite clear that Bitcoin market was in a bull run, and perhaps will continue to be bullish for the better part of this year. 

Towards the tail end of 2019, Bitcoin stagnated in the ranges of $7,000 to $8,000. However, at the beginning of this year, 2020, its price increased steadily to the highs of $9,443.96 and continued to show signs of strength. As the anticipation for even higher prices continues to grow, its quite clear that Bitcoin market was in a bull run, and perhaps will continue to be bullish for the better part of this year. 

Towards the tail end of 2019, Bitcoin stagnated in the ranges of $7,000 to $8,000. However, at the beginning of this year, 2020, its price increased steadily to the highs of $9,443.96 and continued to show signs of strength. As the anticipation for even higher prices continues to grow, its quite clear that Bitcoin market was in a bull run, and perhaps will continue to be bullish for the better part of this year. 

The projected bull run can be linked to the fact that the digital coin’s daily entities are close to those leading up to the 2017 bull run. In this case, the daily entities suggest that an increasing number of people are using Bitcoin – a relevant milestone in launching a bull market. On top of it all, the bull may continue to reign for longer if the highly anticipated Bitcoin halving goes as expected.

But before we can ascertain that this year’s bull run is similar or different from that of 2017, we need to go back and look at the factors that led up to bull market in the first place. By doing so, it will enable us to point out the differences/ similarities between the year 2020 bull run and that of 2017

Factors that Stirred the Bitcoin Market in 2017 

Rising from the lows of less than $1,000 to as high as $20,000 all within a year, proved that Bitcoin could defy the traditional laws of asset valuation. However, the surge in price can be explained by several factors:

FOMO is Real

The 2017 bull run was mainly fueled by the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). Only a sizable number of retailers knew what bitcoin is or understood how it works. The majority of them were trading the digital currency since they saw it rise in value and made other traders rich overnight.

Consequently, there was spiked adoption of Bitcoin by the public leading to the high demand for the coin. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Yet, the coin itself wasn’t quite ready for the wide adoption, which explains the drastic reduction in price in the early beginning of 2018. 

Price Manipulation

According to a recent research, it is likely that a “whale” manipulated Bitcoin’s price in 2017, resulting in the bull run. In this context, a whale is an individual or institution that holds a significant amount of Bitcoin, which is higher than that of the average investor. 

The research reports that the “whale’s” transactions on the blockchain revealed that Tether was used to back up the price and manipulate the Bitcoin market. This report doesn’t seem far-fetched since large transactions of Bitcoin can be loosely interpreted as massive adoption of the coin, resulting in a bull market. 

Less Government Regulation

Looking behind the 2017 bull market, there were three other bitcoin bull cycles, though they weren’t as significant. However, the idea here is that in each of these bull cycles, including that of 2017, the government institutions hadn’t enforced strict measures against cryptocurrencies as they currently have. This provided an ideal atmosphere for increased bitcoin activities between miners and traders, resulting in increased trading volume. 

Nonetheless, since the 2017 bull cycle, Bitcoin and the crypto-market as a whole has evolved and is on its way to a more mature phase.

What has improved since 2017

i) Lower Fees

The most significant change since 2017 is the reduction in Bitcoin transaction fees. The adoption of Segwit, as well as the increase in the number of exchanges, have made the transaction faster and affordable for Bitcoin users. 

Of course, if Bitcoin goes into a full-blown bull run, the transaction fees will increase in equal measure. However, the fees will still remain lower compared to other years, incentivizing more investors to join the market. 

ii) Big Money Interests

In 2017, and years before that, blue-chip companies dissociated themselves from bitcoin and blockchain technology altogether. 

Years after, there have been a lot of big brand companies showing interest in the cryptocurrencies, with an aim for leveraging the underlying protocol – blockchain. A good example is Facebook Inc, whose CEO announced the launch of the company’s digital coin, Libra. Microsoft is also actively building on the Bitcoin blockchain, as other institutions such as JP Morgan continue to show interest in cryptocurrencies. This gives the whole crypto-market the validation it deserves, prompting mass adoption. Increased mass adoption will likely trigger an increase in Bitcoin prices since it’s the most held coin by crypto investors. 

iii) Better Liquidity

It is estimated that there are about 206 exchanges currently in operation. To investors, this means it is a whole lot easier to liquidate your investment than it was a few years ago when only a few exchanges were operational. 

What’s even better is that most of the exchanges accept fiat currency directly, in exchange for cryptocurrencies. Investors can buy cryptos using their debit cards at a lower cost and more efficiently than it was the case in 2017. With better liquidity, especially for BTC, the trading volume is bound to increase, which is an essential feature to complement this year’s bull run. 

iv) More Options

It was not until the near-end of the 2017 bull run that Cboe and CME launched bitcoin futures. Despite being launched a bit late, the derivatives are meant to offer a more stable trading alternative to BTC, making the futures attractive to institutional investors. 

Also, if bitcoin price continues to increase and even reach an all-time high, the derivatives provide an efficient way for investors looking to make returns, by shorting Bitcoin. 

This time it’s Different 

It is evident that the Bitcoin landscape has matured since the phenomenal 2017 bull run. More corporations are entering the market, bringing new infrastructure and technologies to improve not just Bitcoin trading, but also the entire cryptocurrency market. If these changes in the market fundamentals are anything to go with, it is safe to say that the 2020 bull run might surpass that of 2017. But even if it fails to do so, 2020 still remains the best year for Bitcoin in terms of the average price. Compared to 2017, when Bitcoin’s average price was $6,125, this year’s average price is, so far, at $9,120, an indication of better days ahead. 

 

Categories
Crypto Guides

Have You Heard of Mimblewimble Blockchain Protocol?

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

We have been discussing many basics of cryptocurrencies and the groundbreaking tech behind them – Blockchain Technology. By now, we know the properties, features, pros, and cons this revolutionary technology possesses. It is evident that more research is being done on continually improving the blockchain technology, which will eventually make the crypto space better. One such innovation in this space is the Mimblewimble protocol. In this guide, let’s briefly understand what this protocol is all about and its successful applications.

What is Mimblewimble?

Mimblewimble is a protocol that has the potential to improve the scalability and privacy of a blockchain. This tech was published in the mid of 2016, and the first successful application of it was in early 2019. This protocol is built on the principles of advanced cryptography known as Elliptic Curve. The main advantage of using this cryptography technique is that it uses relatively smaller keys. Also, a Mimblewimble network doesn’t have any addresses in them and hence taking lesser space in the block.

To put things in perspective, the maximum block size of the Bitcoin network is 4MB. But the block size of a network that runs on Mimblewimble protocol is a mere 400 KB, which is 10% of the Bitcoin block size. But the pros of this protocol are not just confined to the lesser storage capabilities. As the size of a block is small, the scalability of the network increases. Also, the anonymity factor is an additional advantage this protocol offers.

Working of the Mimblewimble Protocol

To clearly understand the working of this protocol and to know how it’s transactions are different from the rudimentary transactions, let’s understand the inputs and outputs involved in a single Bitcoin transaction. In a typical Bitcoin transaction, if you send ten Bitcoins to another person, the network won’t subtract those ten Bitcoins from your account and add those Bitcoins to another person’s account. Instead, the network considers multiple inputs from the older Bitcoin transactions in order to generate an output. This process doesn’t only consume more space but also reduces the transaction speed.

On the contrary, Mimblewimble protocol works more efficiently by eliminating these inputs and outputs. Instead, a multi-signature is used to replace all of the inputs and outputs. In this case, if you want to send 10 Bitcoins to someone, both of you will get a multi-signature key for verifying the transaction. Also, we have mentioned about the elimination of addresses in the Mimblewimble network. This is made possible by including a Blinding Factor. It is used in the encryption of both the inputs and outputs along with the public and private keys of both the parties.

This blinding factor will remain a secret between you and the person you want to send Bitcoin to. This increases the privacy of the transaction you are making as only you, and the receiver knows about the transactions you made.

Bottom Line

Grin and Beam are the two cryptocurrencies that have successfully implemented the Mimblewimble protocol to their respective networks. So we know that these cryptos are incredibly private and scalable as well. Please do your research to understand the properties of this coin better. Innovations like this bring a lot of hope for us and increase the usage of cryptocurrencies in real life.

Fun Fact: The anonymous inventor of the Mimblewimble technology portrayed himself with the name ‘Tom Elvis Judisor,’ which in French translates to ‘Voldemort,’ the famous Harry Potter character. Also, the name Mimblewimble is taken from the Harry Potter series, which means a tongue-tying curse.

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic

Is There a Looming Race for Digital Currency Supremacy?

Being the first of its kind, Bitcoin can be termed as the king of cryptocurrency – a position that can also be attributed to its large user base. 

Being the first of its kind, Bitcoin can be termed as the king of cryptocurrency – a position that can also be attributed to its large user base. 

Being the first of its kind, Bitcoin can be termed as the king of cryptocurrency – a position that can also be attributed to its large user base. 

Ever since its inception, this digital currency has inspired the launch of similar, or rather improved iterations, of new cryptos. As a result, the market is quite flooded with cryptocurrencies, each offering a unique utility point, in a bid to establish undisputed authority in the crypto-market. 

The race to dominating the crypto-space has grown exponentially to a point that it has attracted the attention of government institutions, who are seeking to regulate blockchain and all crypto assets. 

While most government institutions are playing catch-up, giant tech companies such as Facebook are laying plans on launching their own digital currency. So, the real question is, who is likely to win the digital currency race? Will it be a state or a private entity? 

The Case for Facebook’s Libra coin

Less than a year ago, Facebook announced that it would launch a digital coin called Libra. The coin is aimed at connecting thousands of people who don’t have immediate access to traditional banking systems. From the surface, Libra could indeed be a financial game-changer, as the giant tech company is banking on its massive international user base. This also translates to more profits for the company on top of its record high revenue generated from the advertisement.  

But the road to launching Libra, so far, has been nothing short of challenging. Lawmakers, especially in the U.S., were quick to grill Facebook’s plan on the basis of privacy concerns.

Unfortunately, the company hasn’t been in the good books as far as users’ privacy is concerned. As such, the U.S. Congress viewed its extension into the financial realm will likely result in more cases of consumers’ privacy violation. 

However, looking at what Libra can help users achieve, a good number of businesses will likely buy into it; despite Facebook’s disregard for privacy. For starters, the social media platform connects businesses to millions of potential customers. Put Libra into the picture, and Facebook transforms from just a social media platform to an e-commerce and financial marketplace, where customers can shop online using the built-in digital currency. This will be by far a great opportunity that many small businesses can’t resist. Also, Libra’s white paper outlines big brand partners such as MasterCard Inc, Visa Inc, and Uber Technologies, who’ve signed up to invest in the coin’s growth. 

But, for those who are unwilling to cede their personal details to a company that has always shown it can’t be trusted, the big-name partners can be seen as pathways for mitigating the regulatory measures and privacy criticism that Facebook faces. 

Central Banks Race

Sure, cryptocurrencies, in general, have been met with a lot of skepticism credit to their potential to disrupt global finance. Blockchain – the underlying cryptocurrency technology- is still in its infancy stage, which also attracts more speculation on digital currencies. 

Despite the backlash from finance regulators, a handful of countries are warming up to cryptocurrencies and its potential to revolutionize global finance. 

A good example is China, where the country’s central bank – People’s Bank of China (PBOC) – is closer than ever to digitizing the Yuan, China’s official currency. This move has been endorsed by President Xi Jinping, who believes blockchain is an integral part of China’s plan to become a high-tech superpower. 

Following closely behind is Japan, where the legislators are exploring the idea of issuing Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the form of a digital Yen. Apparently, the process of digitizing the national currency will be a joint venture between the Japanese Government and several private companies. Nonetheless, the goal is to give Japan an upper-hand in the cryptocurrency industry. 

Many believe that Japan’s plan to issue a CBDC is in response to the fear of competition from China, who are also digitizing the Yuan. Facebook’s Libra coin is also part of the reason why Japan is joining the race for digital currency supremacy. This is due to the fact that Libra is backed by different fiat currencies, making it hard to manage since it can’t be pegged to a single county’s politics. 

Western Countries Response

Western economic powers haven’t been as fast as expected, in adopting or promoting the use of digital currencies. In fact, since the birth of blockchain, some Western Countries have been actively inhibiting the growth of cryptocurrencies through strict regulatory laws. Case in point, the U.K. is determined to ban crypto derivatives in addition to planning on taxing crypto users. Things aren’t any better for crypto users in the U.S., where the IRS has managed to stub out several crypto start-ups. 

Recently, however, the western countries have realized the futility of blocking digital currencies. The European Central Bank (ECB), in particular, is working on a digital currency that could be an alternative to private providers. There have been notable moves by central banks in Canada, Switzerland, and Singapore, where they are looking at adopting a digital currency, as the use of fiat currencies decline. 

As countries and private entities try to establish their dominance in the crypto-market, the world’s largest central bank, Bank of International Settlements, aims at keeping the race co-ordinated and less chaotic. For this reason, the institution has appointed one of the ECB board members, to oversee the development of a digital currency model that other central banks can easily adopt. 

In the U.S., several Congress members expressed in writing to the Fed chairman – Jerome Powell – their interest in pushing for the digitization of the dollar. According to these Congress members, the current skepticism surrounding cryptos will jeopardize the widespread acceptance of digital currencies in the long haul. 

Conclusion

Clearly, the race to establishing a sovereign digital currency has taken root. China is expected to emerge victorious in this race, owing to the political back up blockchain has received in the country. 

Facebook and Japan could be the closest rivals to China as the two already have an established framework to support their digital currency. The former is only held back by legal setbacks, while the later is yet to materialize its plan in comparison to China’s concrete effort to digitize the Yuan. 

Western countries, however slow they might be, will soon catch-up at their own pace. But for now, only time will tell who will win the race. 

 

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Mar 6 – Bitcoin above $9,000; Steem performing a network takeover

The crypto market managed to push up once again, with Bitcoin leading the way as it crossed the $9,000 mark. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,061, which represents a 2.15% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 1.31% on the day, while XRP gained 1.92%.

The crypto market managed to push up once again, with Bitcoin leading the way as it crossed the $9,000 mark. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,061, which represents a 2.15% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 1.31% on the day, while XRP gained 1.92%.

The crypto market managed to push up once again, with Bitcoin leading the way as it crossed the $9,000 mark. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,061, which represents a 2.15% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 1.31% on the day, while XRP gained 1.92%.

ABBC coin took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 24.58%. On the other side, v.systems lost 7.02% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance managed to increase slightly over the past 24 hours. Its value is now 63.79%, which represents a 0.19% difference to the upside when compared to yesterday’s value.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization increased slightly in the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $259.2 billion, which represents an increase of $3.75 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

While multiple countries are testing and theorizing about the validity of a central bank digital currency, the US dollar remains physical and still sits in a place of dominance. However, how long will the dollar be so dominant if it doesn’t get digital? ING economist Carlo Cocuzzo said that “The dollar is the dominant currency today,” on a panel at London Blockchain Week, but added that “90% of forex turnover is in dollars, so the US stands to lose in this game.”

Honorable mention

Steem

The Steem blockchain experienced some problems recently, where the blockchain’s entire governance system had a couple of disturbances. Tron founder Justin Sun, who now owns the Steemit social network which is based on the Steem token, seems to have successfully executed a takeover of Steem tokens by leveraging not only the tokens that were directly controlled but also the tokens held on several major exchanges. If this is true, then the customers of these exchanges most likely had their funds used without their consent.

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Technical analysis

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin bulls managed to gather up for another push, which brought BTC above the $9,000 psychological mark. Bitcoin broke the $8,980 resistance without much effort, and continued to push up on the way to $9,115. However, the move ended with bulls getting exhausted at the $9,170 mark.


Bitcoin’s volume increased slightly when compared to yesterday, while it’s still considered average when compared to the rest of the week. Its RSI level is currently near the higher end of the value range on the 4-hour chart.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $9,115                                           1: $8,980

2: $9,250                                           2: $8,825

3: $9,580                                            3: $8,650

Ethereum

Ethereum gained some value as well in the past 24 hours but did not break any major resistance levels. Ethereum moved within the range bound by $225.5 to the downside and $240 to the upside. Its price did drop below $225.5 earlier during the day, but quickly got back above and increased to $235.


Ethereum’s volume is extremely low, while its RSI is near the middle of the value range, sitting at around 53 on the 4-hour chart. There were no changes in the upside or downside levels.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $240                                                1: $225.5

2: $251.3                                            2: $217.7  

3: $259.5                                             3: $198

Ripple

XRP also made some gains today. Its price went from right below $0.235 to almost breaking $0.2454 at one point in time. However, the bull pressure was not as strong, and the price could not pass this resistance level. XRP is now trading at around $0.24.


XRP’s volume is currently far below average, while its RSI level is slightly above the value range, sitting at around 57 on the 4-hour chart. There were no changes in the upside or downside levels.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.2454                                          1: $0.235

2: $0.266                                            2: $0.227

3: $0.285                                             3: $0.221

Categories
Crypto Guides

What Should You Know About Security Token Offering (STO)

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

In our previous guides, we have understood some of the most important fundraising methods like ICO and IEO. These are the ways through which a crypto start-up can raise funds to bring their idea to a reality. But these two methods have paved the way to the raise of one more offering known as STO. STO stands for Security Token Offering, and the entire process behind it resembles the working of an ICO. So in this article, let’s discuss what STO is, how different it is from an ICO, and the pros involved.

What is an STO?

Just like an ICO, a Security Token Offering is launched as a way to raise capital by selling tokens pegged to a firm. As we see, these tokens do not belong to any Crypto company selling their coins. Instead, STO tokens are related to common securities that are speculated by traders and investors across the world. Anything from Stocks and Bonds to Real-Estate Investment Trusts can be offered to the investors in STOs.

Mainly, when we invest in any security, we are investing in a portion of property or company behind that security. For instance, if we are investing in a stock, we are betting on the company behind it. If the company’s performance is better, our stock price will rise, and we make a profit. Using traditional methods, the purchases are documented on a piece of paper, but in STOs, the purchases are recorded in a blockchain.

STOs can be considered as a fusion between the crypto ICOs and the traditional IPOs as its overlays with both of these fundraising methods. It is important to know that SEOs are heavily regulated compared to the ICOs. This is because ICOs are considered utility tokens, and the essential purpose of these tokens is for the usage as an investment, as per the rules. So the ICO platforms do not have to follow most of the strict regulations while reaching out to a broader public.

On the other hand, STOs can only be offered to qualified investors with specific criteria. The fundamental intention to launch as STO is to offer investable asset contracts that are under the purview of securities law. Hence, compared to an ICO, launching an STO is very hard because of the regulations that are in place.

Pros Involved In SEO Participation

💰 Compliance – As discussed, the STO process is heavily regulated compared to ICOs. This will increase accountability and makes sure the entire process is extra transparent because of the transactions being recorded in a blockchain.

💰 Clarity – By now, we know that real-time companies and properties back the security token that has been purchased in an STO. So there is some clarity in the value of the purchase we have made. However, in an ICO, we won’t be sure of the value a token possesses as it is not backed by any asset.  

💰 Low Costs – Just like an ICO, there’s no question of middlemen while purchasing tokens in an STO. Since the transactions are executed in Smart Contracts, there’s no reliability on lawyers and complicated paperwork, which reduces the costs big time while increasing the execution speed.

💰 Increase in Liquidity – As the security tokens purchased in an STO can easily be traded all the time irrespective of the date, the liquidity of many illiquid assets increases.

That’s about STOs and the pros involved in purchasing these Security Tokens. Please make sure to do your due diligence of what STOs to participate in and what security tokens you must buy. All the best.

Categories
Crypto Videos

The God Formula! How To Make Money In Crypto Using Fibonacci Part 2

https://youtu.be/DqFukCzIIAE

https://youtu.be/DqFukCzIIAE

How to make money in crypto using Fibonacci retracements – part 2/2

What do Fibonacci levels represent?

The Fibonacci levels used within crypto trading are 23.6%, 38.2%, 50%, 61.8%, and 100%. They represent psychological barriers that repeatedly show up within the crypto markets.
Another interesting aspect of Fibonacci levels is (as with many indicators), the fact that they become more accurate with more people using and respecting them. This falls under the “self-fulfilling prophecy” paradigm.

How to use Fib retracements

The Fibonacci retracement levels consist of horizontal lines that highlight areas of expected support and resistance. To create these Fib levels, you’ll need to draw a line between the lowest and the highest price of a particular trading cycle.
It’s up to the trader to choose whether they will use wicks or candles.


Fib retracements are a very popular tool amongst technical traders, as it allows them to identify levels where they can place their entry or exit points. More times than not, the market tends to struggle near these Fib levels.
Whether it is nature or a self-fulfilling prophecy, these levels do seem to work, and there are many traders that utilize Fib levels to profit in the volatile crypto market.
One thing to note is that you will never know how far the price will retrace exactly. This means that you can’t predict which Fib level the price will respect. That’s why it’s better to carefully watch the markets and wait for a level reaction before entering a position.
Can Fibonacci retracements be used with other indicators and tools?
Yes, they can. In fact, it’s highly recommended to use Fib retracements with some other indicators. If other tools and indicators overlap with the results of the Fibonacci retracement levels, the expected result is that much more realistic.

An example of using Fib retracements

Fibonacci retracement levels are very efficient when it comes to predicting a bounce off of a big red candle, upon the completion of a quick rally. These (fairly) quick trades can generate some good profit if timed properly.

Conclusion

Many traders use the Fibonacci retracements to decide where to set their buy orders. However, most of these traders use indicators such as volume and some momentum indicators alongside Fib retracements to increase the overall security of their decision.

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic

Is Coinfirm Redefining Crypto Privacy with New Tool?

On top of the list of the features or advantages that made cryptocurrency really take off are the privacy and anonymity benefits that its users enjoy. Most people have come to view the anonymity that blockchain offers as synonymous with digital privacy.

On top of the list of the features or advantages that made cryptocurrency really take off are the privacy and anonymity benefits that its users enjoy. Most people have come to view the anonymity that blockchain offers as synonymous with digital privacy.

On top of the list of the features or advantages that made cryptocurrency really take off are the privacy and anonymity benefits that its users enjoy. Most people have come to view the anonymity that blockchain offers as synonymous with digital privacy.

Would you believe that there is a new piece of technology that could spell the end of anonymity in cryptocurrency without compromising the privacy it offers?

Coinfirm, a global leader in analytics and AML for blockchain and cryptocurrencies, is leading the new tech development after having just raised over $4 million to build it. The software is designed to help crypto exchanges meet the new legal regulations that are meant to curb money-laundering using cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

The FATF Regulations of 2019

According to Pawel Kuskowski, the CEO of Coinfirm, his company developed the software with the primary objective to help crypto exchanges comply with the ‘wire transfer rule,’ also known as ‘The Travel Rule’ issued by the Financial Action Task Force back in June 2019. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is a large international agency tasked with setting the standards for anti-money laundering regulations around the globe.

In the new regulations targeting virtual assets and related providers such as cryptocurrency exchanges, countries are expected to implement a comprehensive framework of measures meant to combat terrorist financing and money laundering. These include providing essential information about the originator and beneficiary in every digital asset or cryptocurrency transfer.

Other pieces of information that must be provided are the sender’s physical address and identification as well as the date and place of birth. In the new rules, exchanges are also expected to capture the name and account numbers of the recipient.

Anonymity vs. Privacy

While privacy and anonymity are two very different concepts, the FATF regulation has put many cryptocurrency exchanges in a difficult position. This is because they are now required to collect and disclose customer information, something that definitely does not bode well with cryptocurrency users and tends to undermine blockchain’s greatest feature: anonymity.

This requirement has also brought to the fore the need to differentiate between anonymity and privacy as far as digital payments go. Anonymity refers to a situation where a person does not wish to hide what they are doing or what they own, all they try to conceal is their identity. Privacy, on the other hand, is the power to keep various personal things to oneself, regardless of how it impacts society.

According to Kuskowski, if you use cryptocurrency, you need to get used to the idea that the age of anonymity is gone. With the new ‘Travel Rule’ regulation issued by FATF, your favorite exchange will be required to tie your crypto address to your real-world identity. The software that Coinfirm is developing is focused on helping exchanges keep private their users’ information despite the problems anti-anonymity rules seem to cause.

How Coinfirm’s crypto privacy tool works

The new technology that Coinfirm is working on to help crypto exchanges comply with FATF’s new regulations is focused on the customer’s privacy rather than the exchange’s ability to provide it. The software lets virtual asset service providers (VASPs) such as crypto exchanges share only the necessary customer information securely with other VASPs. It also generates detailed security reports that can be used to determine how risky it would be for one VASP to trade with another VASP with customer privacy in focus.

The service is all-rounded. It not only makes it possible for VASPs to trade securely, but it also makes it possible and safer for exchanges to transfer funds to non-VASP establishments and recipients such as anonymous digital wallets.

The FATF Travel Rule requirements may seem to prevent VASPs from transacting with non-VASPs that are not subject to the new rules, but Coinfirm’s secure platform has a solution to this problem. Once the new regulations are in effect, it may be riskier for exchanges to trade with non-VASPs, but the new system is built to make it easy for exchanges to send and receive digital assets to non-compliant users while remaining compliant.

Is this the future of privacy in the crypto world?

It is no secret that blockchain’s top feature – anonymity – was the technology’s most marketed feature that turned out to be a double-edged sword that could cause almost as much harm as its benefits. Criminals – mostly traders in illegal products and services and money launderers – have had a field day thanks to the anonymity and peer-to-peer transaction capability offered by blockchain digital assets. FATF’s regulations have come at the right time just as global governments are grappling with how to deal with the surge in financial crimes brought about by the new digital currency.

Coinfirm’s CEO Kuskowski, is himself experienced in this field, having headed the anti-money laundering department of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He says that the future of financial privacy should be defined solely by how an individual or a business can keep snooping eyes out of their details, and not try to hide it from the system altogether. His company’s technology, if adopted by crypto exchanges, is more of a regulatory compliance system that aims to keep the exchanges in business while helping them protect their customers’ data.

Coinfirm is an established blockchain services company that already works with top exchanges, including Binance and even corporate investigations firm Kroll. They are best placed to provide a solution to the privacy and anonymity issue that exchanges have to explain to their customers because of the expertise it has in the industry and the influence it has on the global financial market.

Regulation is inevitable

Many people mistakenly believed that it is completely impossible to regulate the digital assets market, especially considering how governments and banks have tried and failed to kill blockchain products. Ultimately, they have had to embrace it. This new regulation is not just necessary; it is good for both the privacy of the users and the crypto economy into which the world is headed, according to Kuskowski.

“Coinfirm is focused on providing a solution to a glaring problem with no current solution. Our Solution will be available for the wider market, and not just specially developed for exchanges. Coinfirm is going to kill the market,” he said.

The future of privacy in the digital world will depend on how well the market will receive solutions such as the one developed by Coinfirm. While there is a risk that the new regulations will challenge crypto companies in every industry, it is likely to drag traffic off low-quality exchanges. 

Closing remarks

Kukowski and Coinfirm are very optimistic about the prospects and capability of their new tool. If they get it right, there is a high chance that the company will pioneer the next phase of cryptocurrency adoption with the new regulations. Exchanges that are compliant with the new regulations will be operating on the level of banks, and Coinfirm will be at the center of helping them manage their user data.

“Exchanges will soon be going head to head against banks, the financial field will be leveled,” Kuskowski said, “we will have the best seats in the house to see which financial industry is more effective as far as technology, costs, and user privacy goes. I believe that crypto and crypto exchanges will win hands down!”

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Mar 5 – Bitcoin uncertainty leading to a lack of buying or selling pressure

The crypto market had a green day, with only a few cryptocurrencies ending up in the red. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,882, which represents a 0.95% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 0.53% on the day, while XRP lost 0.05%.

The crypto market had a green day, with only a few cryptocurrencies ending up in the red. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,882, which represents a 0.95% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 0.53% on the day, while XRP lost 0.05%.

The crypto market had a green day, with only a few cryptocurrencies ending up in the red. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,882, which represents a 0.95% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 0.53% on the day, while XRP lost 0.05%.

Energi took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 27.96%. On the other side, Bitcoin SV lost 4.56% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance managed to increase quite a lot over the past 24 hours. Its value is now 63.6%, which represents a 0.98% difference to the upside when compared to the value from when we last reported.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization increased slightly in the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $255.45 billion, which represents an increase of $2.45 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

Andrew Bailey, the next governor of Bank of England, expressed his sentiment towards crypto yesterday in London. He argued that anyone putting money into Bitcoin should prepare to lose everything.

Bailey shared his thoughts on Bitcoin to members of the U.K. Parliament at a Treasury Select Committee hearing, which happened on Mar 4. Bailey expressed his dislike towards Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a whole before saying that:

“If you want to buy Bitcoin, be prepared to lose all your money… [Bitcoin] has no intrinsic value.”

Honorable mention

Cardano

The legal leader at Big Four’s PwC, Gunther Dobrauz, recently expressed his opinion about Cardano and showed open support to the people responsible for Cardano’s development.

Dobrauz claimed that decentralization is the future, and that the Cardano Foundation and the team surrounding the IOHK CEO and founder Charles Hoskinson are certainly a “huge part of this” future in a tweet on Mar 3. IOHK is the blockchain company behind Cardano as well as Ethereum Classic.

_______________________________________________________________________

Technical analysis

_______________________________________________________________________

Bitcoin

Bitcoin had a slow day with quite predictable price movements. Buyers and sellers bound its price between $8,400 and $9,000. Bitcoin has been staying in this range for some time now with no real pressure to go up or down. When compared to the yesterday’s price, Bitcoin did manage to gain some value, breaking the $8,825 line, but quickly stopping at the $8,980 one.


Bitcoin’s volume is slightly below average when compared to this week, while its RSI level is starting to increase slightly. It is currently sitting at a value of 58.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $8,980                                           1: $8,825

2: $9,115                                           2: $$8,650

3: $9,250                                            3: $8,535

Ethereum

Ethereum is in the same position as Bitcoin, as its price has been ranging for some time now, as well. There has been no sign of pressure towards any side. Ethereum is currently trading above the $225.5 line, bound by it to the downside and the $240 resistance to the upside. However, all pressure to the upside seems to fade far before Ethereum’s price reaches $240.


Ethereum’s volume is quite low, while its RSI is near the middle of the value range, sitting at around 52.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $240                                                1: $225.5

2: $251.3                                            2: $217.7  

3: $259.5                                             3: $198

Ripple

XRP is the only crypto out of the top3 that ended up in the red. Its price is also bound in a range, sitting between $227 and $2454. XRP’s price is not pressured to any side and is trading freely within this range. However, with fading volume, the volatility is fading as well, and the up and down movements seem smaller and smaller. XRP is now trading slightly above the $0.235 support line.


XRP’s volume is currently below average, while its RSI level is near the middle of the value range, sitting at around 53.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.2454                                          1: $0.235

2: $0.266                                            2: $0.227

3: $0.285                                             3: $0.221

Categories
Crypto Videos

How To Make Money In Crypto Using Fibonacci Part 1

https://youtu.be/33z23M83wlI

https://youtu.be/33z23M83wlI

How to make money in crypto using Fibonacci retracements – part 1/2

The Fibonacci retracement level tool is one of the most popular and most effective tools in crypto trading (and trading in general). This tool is associated with helping traders determine the key levels to place buy and sell orders.
Traders who properly know how to utilize this tool can determine crucial levels of support and resistance with ease. However, to fully understand how and why this tool works, we have to go over how the Fib retracement tool has been created.

About Fibonacci


Leonardo Bonacci, widely known as Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician born in 1170. Besides being a brilliant mathematician, Leonardo was also an avid traveler.
While traveling, he discovered a Hindu-Arabic numerical system that he explored. He saw that this system had some advantages over the current European system (at that time).
Bonacci published a book called “Liber Abaci.” The book included examples on how to use these calculations in every day uses such as bookkeeping, weight and measurement conversions, and human interest calculations, among other things.

Fibonacci Levels

An interesting proposal within Bonacci’s book was based on an observation of how the population of rabbits grew in ideal conditions. The solution to the rabbit problem was found within a mathematical sequence, which we now know as Fibonacci numbers.
What’s even more strange is that this was not the first time that this sequence of numbers was recorded. In fact, there were many more.
The ratio of numbers, which we know today as the Golden Ratio, was discovered by a Greek architect called Phidias between the years of 500BC and 432BC.
So, why are these levels important in trading?
The history and the research of many people showed that the Fibonacci sequence is found all over the geometry of nature. This sequence can be found in things like animal skin, DNA structure even spirals within a seashell.


Most financial markets (and the cryptocurrency market is no exception) will reveal this Golden Ratio on its time and price periods, where a retracement of 61.8% is typically found after a 100% gain or loss.

Conclusion

So to sum it up, Fibonacci retracement levels are referring to simple areas of support and resistance, and that is derived from the way nature works. These retracement levels are often used by traders to determine how much a move to one side will retrace once it stops. This way, they can have a better grasp on support and resistance levels as well as possible entry and exit points.

Check out part 2 of making money using Fibonacci retracements to see examples of how these levels work in real trading.

Categories
Cryptocurrencies

Centralized Vs Decentralized Storage: How Blockchain is Redefining Data Storage

Today, data is more valuable than ever before. Whether it’s individual or company data, we treasure our data because it contains memories, sensitive information, transaction records, and financial records, and so on. In some ways, data is more valuable than money itself. And everyone wants fast and secure access to their data.

Today, data is more valuable than ever before. Whether it’s individual or company data, we treasure our data because it contains memories, sensitive information, transaction records, and financial records, and so on. In some ways, data is more valuable than money itself. And everyone wants fast and secure access to their data.

Today, data is more valuable than ever before. Whether it’s individual or company data, we treasure our data because it contains memories, sensitive information, transaction records, and financial records, and so on. In some ways, data is more valuable than money itself. And everyone wants fast and secure access to their data.

Data storage is the recording of information in a medium such as a computer or another sort of an electronic system. And decentralized storage is the storage of data in multiple servers or computers where files are protected with blockchain and cryptography. Since data is stored across a network of multiple computers, no one authority can regulate or control it.

Centralized storage represents the existing model of storing data where your data is stored on third-party servers. While the centralized storage solution has served us well since the age of the internet, it has inherent weaknesses that make it less than ideal for fast-changing customer preferences on how and when they want their data.

This article prods a little on the evolution of the internet and how it changed the storage function and explores the fallibility of centralized storage in juxtaposition with decentralized storage. We’ll also look at some of the exciting decentralized storage projects that are using blockchain technology to offer more secure, effective, and easy-to-access storage services.

The Evolution of the Internet

In the early days of data storage, we stored and shared data thorough rather rudimentary devices such as floppy disks. Over the years, we progressed to CDs, hard disk drives, and so on. These had a larger space for storage, but the core concept didn’t change. You still had to move around with the data storage device, rendering your data susceptible to loss and damage.

Upon the advent of the internet, the storage and sharing of data got a new form. We can now connect with computers from all over the world and access information, pictures, and data and more anywhere and anytime. We’ve come far from the days when you had to own and maintain your own server to the current pay-as-you-use model, and then to cloud services like Amazon’s S3 that provide better scalability, security, and performance. However, despite all this progress, the current iteration of the internet is still problematic in a number of ways.

The Problems with Traditional Internet

Censorship

The current centralized model of the internet renders it vulnerable to the whims of authoritarianism. An example is China, in which the online encyclopedia – Wikipedia, is blocked. Or when governments of tyrannical countries shut down the internet during an uprising. With decentralized platforms, people from such countries can still access information.

Relinquishing Control of Data

With centralized storage, companies and users usually hand over data to third party services. From then on, the data is beyond their control, as are the privacy settings protecting that data. Also, the party that you’re entrusting to store your data is more than likely only incentivized by profit. As such, they’ll make decisions that advance their bottom-line without much regard for your business model. A good example is Google’s change in the algorithm, which has put many marketing companies out of business.

Mismanaging of Data

Everyone knows about the Facebook and Cambridge Analytical scandal. Due to negligence by the social media giant, the Cambridge Analytica was able to put its hands on the data of millions of Facebook users and use that data to manipulate elections in several countries. The data was so eerily detailed that the psychographic profiles the company created could accurately suggest what kind of advertisement would be persuasive enough for an individual in a given location for a certain political end.

Another mismanagement debacle is the Deep Roots Analytics case in which the data firm stored details of 198 million Americans on a cloud server for almost two weeks without password protection. The data included names, email, and telephone contacts, home addresses, voter IDs, etc.

Expensive

To put it mildly, centralized data storage is expensive. To begin with, renting cloud storage is expensive on its own. And when you access it over and over again, the bills pile on. Also, costs are arbitrarily determined by the hosting company with little or no say from clients, or no incentive to use the service at all.

Advantages of Centralized Storage

Advanced Security

With decentralized storage, users’ files are split across multiple nodes in the network. Since the data is stored in all those nodes, it’s more secure as there’s no single point of failure. 

Higher Liveness

Liveness is a computing term to describe the ability of a system to stay up and running, even if certain parts of that system are not functioning optimally. In a centralized system, once the server fails for any reason, it brings down the entire system with it.

Decentralized Storage Projects

Rootstock (RSK)

Rootstock is a smart contract platform connected to the bitcoin blockchain through a sidechain. It features a technology stack called Rootstock Infrastructure Framework Open Standard (RIFOS). RIFOS is currently working on a storage application called ‘RIF Storage.’ RIF will improve storage in the following ways:

  • It will feature a unified interface that will allow for the encrypted and decentralized storage and streaming of information
  • It will offer a variety of options for users – from decentralized swarm storage to cloud and physical storage

On the RIF platform, you will also access several decentralized storage services such as IPFS and Swarm.

The partnership between RIF and Swarm, a distributed storage platform and content distribution infrastructure, will see to the following:

  • An incentivization system for users, combined with  a settlement and payment mechanism
  • The building of accounting functionalities between nodes
  • Enhance interoperability and antifragility to strengthen Swarm as a multi-blockchain decentralized storage platform.

Sia

Sia is a decentralized, blockchain-based cloud storage platform. Here, users can interact with each other in a peer-to-peer (P2P), secure and censorship-resistant environment. The Sia model works this way: individuals with extra hard drive space can rent it out and earn money from it, and individuals who need storage space can lease it at little cost.

And unlike centralized storage platforms where you pay more when you access your files for more than a preset frequency, the Sia platform allows you to upload and download files however much you want, as long as the contract funds remain in place. Also, renters are protected from fraud thanks to Sia’s proof-of-storage concept that ensures hosts only receive payment when they present proof of storage.

In this peer-to-peer model, the hosts have the right to advertise their services and also turn down storage requests for data that’s too sensitive, ethically ambiguous, or illegal. On their part, renters have the right to split up their files between various hosts, increasing their safety. They can also pay extra to receive special treatment, such as faster upload speeds and other preferential treatment.

Storj

Storj is an open-source, decentralized storage solution built on Ethereum. It features a suite of decentralized applications that allow you to store and share data in a secure environment thanks to encryption, sharding, and a distributed hash table.

Sharding is a process that fragments the files so that they are shared between users in the network. Anytime you want to access a file, Storj locates all the shards and pieces them together using the hash tables. The files are encrypted before they are shared, and only the owner can access or view them. And even if one of the nodes sharing the files goes down, you can still access the file.

Concluding Thoughts

Decentralized storage could turn upside down the storage function as we know it, thanks to a P2P, a highly secure model, and the freedom to access info and data anywhere and anytime. These projects are some of the trailblazers in this space, and we can be assured of other projects with more amazing and user-interactive features. It will be fascinating to see how this space evolves in the coming years.

 

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Mar 4 – Bitcoin and Altcoins Recover, Look for Further Strength

The crypto market had a pretty quiet but effective day. Most cryptos that were going down yesterday ended that move and gained some value. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,808, which represents a 0.24% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.47% on the day, while XRP gained 0.84%.

The crypto market had a pretty quiet but effective day. Most cryptos that were going down yesterday ended that move and gained some value. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,808, which represents a 0.24% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.47% on the day, while XRP gained 0.84%.

The crypto market had a pretty quiet but effective day. Most cryptos that were going down yesterday ended that move and gained some value. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,808, which represents a 0.24% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.47% on the day, while XRP gained 0.84%.

Matic Network took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 21.46%. On the other side, Kyber Network lost 9% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance managed to decrease slightly over the past 24 hours. Its value is now 62.62%, which represents a 1.12% difference to the downside when compared to the value from when we last reported.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization stayed at the pretty much same spot from when we last reported. It is currently valued at $253 billion, which represents a decrease of $1.43 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

The tax bureau of Beijing made an official announcement that it will start implementing invoicing via blockchain within the city on March 2. Beijing wants to bring transparency, traceability as well as immutability by using blockchain invoicing.

The Beijing tax bureau will slowly and gradually carry out the promotion of the blockchain invoicing service throughout the city.

Honorable mention

MakerDAO

Major decentralized finance (or DeFi for short) player MakerDAO established a partnership with the payment processor Simplex. This partnership came to life to create a fiat on-ramp for MakerDAO’s Dai decentralized stablecoin.

The partnership allows people to buy Dai with the credit and debit cards that Simplex’s partner firms issued.

_______________________________________________________________________

Technical analysis

_______________________________________________________________________

Bitcoin

Bitcoin had a pretty slow day. However, the downtrend price movement that happened yesterday ended and Bitcoin moved up slightly. After the whole day of price going down, BTC bounced off of its $8,650 support and changed direction. Bitcoin is now right below the $8,825 which is did not manage to pass yet.


Bitcoin’s volume is slightly below average when compared to this week, while its RSI level is in the middle of the value range, sitting at around 51.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $8,825                                           1: $8,650

2: $9,115                                           2: $$8,535

3: $9,250                                            3: $8,250

Ethereum

Ethereum had a slow day as well. However, its price movement did not make it to the green side when compared to the price of 24 hours ago. The slight downwards-facing move seems to have ended, and Ethereum stabilized right above the $225.5 support level.


Ethereum’s volume is quite low, while its RSI is in the middle of the value range, sitting at around 49.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $240                                                1: $225.5

2: $251.3                                            2: $217.7  

3: $259.5                                             3: $198

Ripple

XRP also made a similar move as Bitcoin and Ethereum did. Once the bear pressure was weakened, bulls took over and brought the price above $0.235. XRP is now consolidating in the middle of the range, bound by $0.235 level to the downside and $0.2454 level to the upside.


XRP’s volume is slightly below average, while its RSI level is in the middle of the value range, sitting at around 50.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.2454                                          1: $0.235

2: $0.266                                            2: $0.227

3: $0.285                                             3: $0.221

Categories
Cryptocurrencies

Is Celer Network the Most Advanced Layer-2 Scaling Platform?

While the first generation of blockchains inspired us with dazzling qualities such as decentralization, immutability, and radical transparency, it has also proven to have scaling issues as interest in cryptocurrency surges. For this reason, many cryptos have sprung up to address the scaling issue and even do even more. 

While the first generation of blockchains inspired us with dazzling qualities such as decentralization, immutability, and radical transparency, it has also proven to have scaling issues as interest in cryptocurrency surges. For this reason, many cryptos have sprung up to address the scaling issue and even do even more. 

While the first generation of blockchains inspired us with dazzling qualities such as decentralization, immutability, and radical transparency, it has also proven to have scaling issues as interest in cryptocurrency surges. For this reason, many cryptos have sprung up to address the scaling issue and even do even more. 

The Celer Network is one such crypto project, and it promises to provide a new blockchain experience for users through interactivity, topnotch security, and low or zero fees to create and interact with decentralized applications and smart contracts.  

The Celer Network is the brainchild of a team with PhDs from some of the most prestigious universities in the world, including MIT, UC Berkeley, Princeton, and experience from tech giants like Google, Amazon, Cisco, HP, and more.

In this article, we go deeper into the Celer Network and discover what makes it stand out from other crypto projects.

Crypto’s Scalability Problem

As cryptocurrency has become more popular in recent years, it has become clear that the traditional architecture of blockchain cannot really support millions of users. Nothing has made this clearer than Cryptokitties, a game atop Ethereum’s blockchain that allows users to buy, breed, and sell virtual cats. 

This game became so popular, with a massive surge in users, that the Ethereum blockchain couldn’t support it optimally anymore. As such, transactions took days to be completed. The developing team had to increase transaction fees to reduce the traffic on the blockchain. 

The Celer Network

Breaking down Celer

At its very core, the Celer Network comprises two components: 

  • cStack – Celer’s off-chain architecture that can be integrated on different blockchains
  • cEconomy – the network’s cryptoeconomics (combination of cryptography and economics) model. 

cStack

cStack features these layers: 

  1. cChannel: A generalized state channel and a side chain suite that maximizes utilization of liquidity
  2. cRoute: An optimal transfer route with high throughput 
  3. cOS: A developed framework that supports off-chain enabled applications
What is cChannel? 

As an off-chain solution, cChannel utilizes the two underlying components of off-chain platforms: state channel and sidechains. 

A state channel is one that allows two-way communication between participants, allowing them to conduct transactions outside of the blockchain. A state channel has these characteristics: 

  • A segment of the blockchain is locked up via a smart contract arrangement
  • Participants in a transaction sign off transactions among each other without involving miners at all 
  • After the channel closes, the final state is added on the main chain  

Some state channels deal with payments only. Celer’s state channel tracks all the programs that may occur between the parties, including payments. 

Why Are State Channels Important? 

To understand why state channels are useful, think of the blockchain. As an example, on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, users have to wait until a supermajority of nodes in the network vote for transactions to go through. Also, as more users interact with the network, this voting process takes longer. As you can see, this process is slow and unideal.

This is where state channels come in. Since transactions are taking place between two parties instead of passing through the mining verification process, they are simple, direct, and quick.

State channels also provide strong privacy. Blockchain transactions are available on a public ledger, and thus, anyone can see them. But state channel transactions are only known between the two transacting parties.

Celer network hopes to create a ‘state channel network,’ which is a network of individual state channels designed such that they can route state changes through each other. Via such a network, users may not have open channels with each other, but they can open a virtual channel between themselves.  

What is cRoute?

To understand the Celer network’s cRoute, let’s do a quick run-through of the problems with existing state channels, mainly the Lightning Network and the Raiden network. 

State channels depend on state routing, which determines the speed and volume of transactions on a state channel, which is why it needs to be designed efficiently.

The Lightning Network uses “Flare,” a type of Landmark Protocol, while the Raiden Network utilizes the A* tree search, a mechanism designed to look for the shortest routing path. 

Both these mechanisms are scrambling to find the “shortest route between two points.” While this mechanism helps put out a good throughput, it changes network topology (arrangement of the elements in a communication network) and, as such, interferes with the overall balance of the network. 

Distributed Balanced Routing 

Celer hopes to remedy this using the Distributed Balanced Routing (DBR). DBR provides for transparency and network balancing in the routing process. DBR is akin to a river flowing downhill. It doesn’t know its final destination. It just follows gravity. Here are the benefits of the DBR algorithm:

  • Provably optimal: It tracks the most optimal route for transfer requests
  • Channel balancing: Each state channel is built to maintain balanced transfers for the network’s topology
  • Complete decentralization: Its decentralized algorithm provides for each node to only need to communicate with its neighbors.
  • Failure-resistant: the DBR algorithm can detect and adapt to unresponsive nodes ultra-fast. If some nodes fail, the remaining nodes will pick the slack and still deliver the maximum possible throughput.
  • Privacy: Thanks to DBR’s multi-channels, transactions are accorded a high level of privacy without the need for additional privacy settings or tools. It can also integrate Tor-like routing to ensure anonymity.

cOS

coS is a framework that aims to help developers build decentralized applications (DApps) of a high level of abstraction. (Abstraction means creating a system such that the average person can use without the need to know the complex technology behind the scenes.)

Via cOS, developers will be able to create two categories of DApps:

  • Simple pay-per-use applications: These applications will allow users to receive small payments from the real world and stream them through the payment network.
  • Complex multi-party applications: These applications will improve the current smart contract models with new techniques such as metaprogramming and annotation processing.

cEconomy

cEconomy is the second most important value proposition of Celer. This cryptoeconomic model aims to ensure that the network’s ecosystem remains stable and functional at all times. It plans to achieve these trade-offs via these mechanisms:

Proof of Liquidity Commitment (PoLC), which is a virtual mining process tasked with acquiring liquidity for the off-chain ecosystem. The Celer Network has members known as “Network Liquidity Backers” who commit their liquidity (like ETH) to the Collateral Commitment for a certain time, after which are rewarded with CELR tokens as a reward. This is what maintains liquidity in the network.

Liquidity Backing Auction (LiBA), which helps off-chain service providers obtain liquidity through a crowdlending model. A lender’s priority status is determined based on the amount of solicited liquidity and the size of the stake in CELR.

State Guardian Network, a special side-chain that protects off-chain states when users are offline to ensure the availability of the network. To become state guardians, CELR token holders need to stake their CELR with the SGN, upon which they become eligible guardians.

What is CelerX? 

CelerX is a Celer app and the only layer-2 application available on Android and iOS. Through the app, users can: 

  1. Use Celer Pay to instantly money with zero costs
  2. Play a variety of games with zero or ‘millisecond’ latency and stand a chance to win prizes

Since its launch, CelerX has reached $1.4m+ in total prizes awarded, 11,000 players, and 300,000 matches from 88 countries. 

Funds deposited on Celer Pay are in your complete control at all times. CelerX uses the ERC-20 Game Token (GT) through which users can practice games like Solitaire Win, Fishjump, Diamond Break, Frog Jump, Fruit Punch, etc. in the app. 

The app provides competitions for approximately 80% of the world and 38 US states. As of February 25, 2020, users from these US states are not eligible for the games due to gaming restrictions in the states: Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Lousiana, Maryland, Montana, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Users from Maine and Indiana are prohibited from card games.  

Crypto-based games have proved to be a hit with the masses (cue Cryptokitties), and CelerX hopes to capitalize on this by providing a platform for skill-based gaming mobile-based e-sports. Through the app, users can buy cryptocurrencies through credit cards, Paypal, and ApplePay – a first not only in blockchain-based gaming but the mobile gaming industry itself.  

Tokenomics of Celer

The Celer token helps keep the network’s liquidity stable while also acting as a medium for payments and transaction fees.

These are the Celer token values as of February 25, 2020. The token is trading at $0.003660 at a market rank of #289. Its market cap is $13, 262, 362, and its 24-hour volume is 4, 825, 975, with a circulating supply of 3, 624, 044, 542. It has a total supply of 10 billion and a maximum supply of the same value. Its all-time high is $0.0302469 on March 25, 2019, while its all-time low was $0.003150 on January 24, 2020.

Closing Thoughts

Celer Network is not another run-of-the-mill crypto scalability project. It utilizes clever layer-2 solutions that put security and privacy at the forefront, always. Its CelerX app model is peerless, as is its cStack and cEconomy components. The project shows a lot of promise, and it will be interesting to see how it pans out in the future. 

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Mar 3 – Cryptocurrencies back to bear cycle? Argentina suspending its blockchain registering system

The crypto market ended its one-day uptrend and backtracked a bit from the gains it made over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,761, which represents a 1.7% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 3.02% on the day, while XRP gained 1.7%.

The crypto market ended its one-day uptrend and backtracked a bit from the gains it made over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,761, which represents a 1.7% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 3.02% on the day, while XRP gained 1.7%.

The crypto market ended its one-day uptrend and backtracked a bit from the gains it made over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,761, which represents a 1.7% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 3.02% on the day, while XRP gained 1.7%.

Aragon took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 17.41%. On the other side, Aragon lost 7.56% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance managed to increase slightly over the past 24 hours. Its value is now 63.8%, which represents a 0.15% difference to the upside when compared to the value from when we last reported.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization stayed at the same spot from when we last reported. It is currently valued at $251.57 billion, which represents a decrease of $0.36 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

The government of Argentina made an announcement that its national blockchain-based mechanism for registering new companies will be suspended for a period of 180 days.

This measure, according to the statements made by the head of General Inspectorate of Justice Ricardo Nissen to La Nación, is made so Argentina could reorder the registration of new companies so that the inspectorate could also participate in the entire process.

Honorable mention

EOS 

Block.one released EOSIO 2.0 in January 2020 as an upgrade to the protocol. Some cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase announced that there was trouble with the performance of the network once the new set of protocol improvements was installed. This implementation slowed down or even stopped deposits and withdrawals.

In the meantime, the EOS community voted to slash the network inflation from 5% down to 1%, which marked this event as the blockchain’s second massive token burn event ever since Q2 of 2019.

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Technical analysis

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin ended its one day long upswing which managed to reach all the way to $8980 before crashing slightly. The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap broke the $8,825 resistance and rushed towards price levels of above $9,000 but failed as bears kicked in. Bitcoin’s price is now dropping, currently trading just around the levels that BTC has when we last reported.


Bitcoin’s volume is quite average when compared to the past and this week, while its RSI level is just below the middle of the value range, sitting at around 48.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $8,825                                           1: $8,650

2: $9,115                                           2: $$8,535

3: $9,250                                            3: $8,250

Ethereum

Ethereum more or less mirrored the actions of Bitcoin in the past couple of days. Its upswing also ended after price not being able to push above $235. ETH is now slowly dropping in price, possibly testing the support level of $225.5. However, so far, the price is safe above this support level.


Ethereum’s volume is quite low, while its RSI is just below the middle of the value range, sitting at around 48.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $240                                                1: $225.5

2: $251.3                                            2: $217.7  

3: $259.5                                             3: $198

Ripple

XRP also moved in the same direction and played out the same patterns as Bitcoin and Ethereum. After its upswing ended, XRP started to move to the downside. However, the bear presence was strong, and XRP is now testing the $0.235 support. It is still unknown whether the price will end up above or below it as the fight for the level is continuing. However, there is a good probability that XRP will continue its path to the downside in the short term.


XRP’s volume is slightly below average, while its RSI level is just below the middle of the value range, sitting at around 46.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.2454                                          1: $0.235

2: $0.266                                            2: $0.227

3: $0.285                                             3: $0.221

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Mar 2 – Cryptos regaining pre-weekend prices; Watch out for crypto-stealing Trojans

The crypto market had a pretty slow weekend, with prices at almost the same place as they were on Friday. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,773, which represents a 2.58% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 3.07% on the day, while XRP gained 1.99%.

The crypto market had a pretty slow weekend, with prices at almost the same place as they were on Friday. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,773, which represents a 2.58% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 3.07% on the day, while XRP gained 1.99%.

The crypto market had a pretty slow weekend, with prices at almost the same place as they were on Friday. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,773, which represents a 2.58% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 3.07% on the day, while XRP gained 1.99%.

Bytecoin took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 22.74%. On the other side, Kyber Network lost 9.66% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance decreased slightly over the weekend. Its value is now 63.65%, which represents a 0.88% difference to the downside when compared to the value from when we last reported.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization gained some value on the daily chart, while it stayed at almost the same spot from when we last reported. It is currently valued at $251.93 billion, which represents an increase of $2.84 billion when its value is compared to the value it had on Friday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

ThreatFabric, an Amsterdam-based firm specializing in cybersecurity and threats to the financial industry, managed to identify “Cerberus” Trojan that is able to steal 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) codes that are generated by the Google Authenticator app.

Coinbase, which is one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, is one of the cryptocurrency platforms listed in Cerberus’ list of targets.

Honorable mention

IOTA 

Iota began its seed migration on Feb 29, while they will open the network around Mar 10. Although many have criticized the decision to close the Coordinator verifier, it may have saved quite a lot of funds from being stolen from users.

The Iota network got shut down on Feb 12, shortly after their team received multiple reports of breached and drained user wallets. This was all possible thanks to the presence of the Coordinator, which is a centralized transaction verifier that is used to operate the network.

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Technical analysis

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin spent the past 24 hours gaining some value after the yesterday’s drop to $8,400. The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap managed to bounce off this price level and reach the price it had on Friday. Bitcoin bulls also attempted an upswing above $8,825, which failed.


Bitcoin’s volume is average when compared to the past week, while its RSI level is rising above the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $8,825                                           1: $8,650

2: $9,115                                           2: $$8,535

3: $9,250                                            3: $8,250

Ethereum

Ethereum’s also gained some value in the past 24 hours. This price gain made up for the price drop, which happened yesterday, and brought the price to $212. Ethereum reached over $225.5 and regained its pre-weekend levels. It also broke the descending trend line that it formed right before the weekend.


Ethereum’s volume is average when compared to the previous week, with its RSI level right in the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $240                                                1: $225.5

2: $251.3                                            2: $217.7  

3: $259.5                                             3: $198

Ripple

XRP performed almost exactly the same as Ethereum. Its price dropped to lows of $0.224 but recovered to levels above $0.235 in the past 24 hours. The third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap broke the descending trend line as well, confirming that it will stay above it (at least in the short term).


XRP’s volume is slightly below average while its RSI level is in the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.2454                                          1: $0.235

2: $0.266                                            2: $0.227

3: $0.285                                             3: $0.221

Categories
Cryptocurrencies

A Comprehensive Guide To Siacoin 

Blockchain’s first case was Bitcoin – which hoped to solve the problem of double-spending and the centralization of finance. Since then, thousands of cryptos have mushroomed, each with a promise to solve a problem that we may have not even known existed before, but whose solution we truly need.

Blockchain’s first case was Bitcoin – which hoped to solve the problem of double-spending and the centralization of finance. Since then, thousands of cryptos have mushroomed, each with a promise to solve a problem that we may have not even known existed before, but whose solution we truly need.

Blockchain’s first case was Bitcoin – which hoped to solve the problem of double-spending and the centralization of finance. Since then, thousands of cryptos have mushroomed, each with a promise to solve a problem that we may have not even known existed before, but whose solution we truly need.

Not many people know they can rent that extra space in their hard drive and get paid, and not many know they can buy storage space from someone on the other side of the world, and very affordably for that matter.

This is what Sia promises to do – provide a decentralized, peer-to-peer marketplace that people can sell and buy cloud storage services. Simply put, if you have idle hard drive space, you can rent it via Sia, and if you need cloud storage space, you can purchase it at a fraction of the cost that you would have spent via a centralized platform.

This article breaks down everything you need to know about Sia, including what the platform is all about, the creative forces behind it, how it works, and how to grab Siacoins.

The Team behind Sia

Sia is a brainchild of David Vorick and Luke Champine of Nebuolus Inc, a Boston-based startup. Both developers are graduates of Rensselaer Polytechnic. The two first presented the idea at HackMIT 2013, where it received positive feedback.

The idea was simple – what if all the idle space in hard drives all over the world could be brought together in an affordable, decentralized cloud storage platform?

The Problem with Centralized Cloud Storage

Before we see why Sia is special, let’s see why the existing cloud storage model is fundamentally flawed:

Giving Over Control of Data

When companies hand over their data to third party companies, they also give over control over that data. Not only are privacy protocols beyond their control, but they may also accidentally share data they never meant to in the first place.

Vulnerability to Hacking

Centralized systems usually have a single point of failure and hence susceptible to hacking. A good illustration of this is the 2017 Equifax hack in which the data of more than 145 million Americans was stolen from the credit report service. Another is the Apple iCloud attack in 2014 that saw private images of famous people posted on sites like 4chan, Imgur and Reddit.

Misuse of User Data

Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal illustrates best how third parties can mismanage their users’ data. Facebook’s design allowed the company to get its hands on more than 87 million users’ data, including public profile, city of residence, page likes, and even news feed, timeline and private messages. They then used this information to create psychographic profiles that were used by politicians to sway elections in several countries.

Bring Your Own Device

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is another problem with third-party cloud storage. This is the case when companies tell employees to bring their own devices for work. Companies do this because either they don’t have the resources to buy IT equipment or employee devices’ specs are more powerful than the companies’.  The problem is, BYOD poses certain security risks. For instance, when these devices get lost, it puts clients’ privacy at risk. And in the case of security breaches, it’s difficult to identify the point of failure amongst all the employee devices.

How Sia’s Storage Procedure Works

The Siacoin storage procedure features its peer-to-peer storage model, ‘file contract’ system, and ‘proof of storage.’

File Contracts

File contracts are Sia’s version of smart contracts. Through these contracts, renters (clients) and hosts (providers) can conduct business within the context of a predetermined and well-defined set of rules.  If two parties wish to work together, they draft a file contract. The file contract contains the term of storage agreement and is meant to ensure each party meets its obligations. As the contract is stored in a public ledger, the terms set therein are immutable (unalterable) and hence verifiable by both parties at any time.

  • The client pays a certain amount (‘allowance’) of Siacoins that will finance the storage and bandwidth for the contract period. A contract’s default length is 13 weeks. 
  • The allowance is set up within the wallet, after which the renter’s software instantly identifies 50 optimal hosts for them, based on their scoring.
  • The host takes up a fraction of s Siacoins and sets it as collateral. The higher the collateral, the higher the score during a host’s selection process.
  • The client plus the identified 50 hosts sign the file contract, upon which it is submitted to the blockchain.
  • 3.9% of the total funds of the contract is paid as commission to Siafund holders.

P2P Storage System

The Sia ecosystem comprises of two main components – the renters (clients) and hosts (providers). Renters pay hosts with Siacoins for storage space. They can also negotiate the storage fee with hosts directly.

Hosts play a huge and important role in the Sia ecosystem, and as such, it’s within their purview to:

  • Advertise and promote their storage resources
  • Reject a client’s request if they deem the data in question to be especially sensitive, ethically wrong, or illegal

And on their part, renters have the freedom to:

  • Protect their files by splitting them up and sharing them between two different providers – for an added layer of protection
  • Pay more than the stated fees to providers to receive special treatment such as faster upload speeds

Proof of Storage

Sia has a ‘proof of storage’ concept that’s meant to protect clients from bad actors. Before a host receives payment, they must present to the network proof within the time set in the file contract. If they fail to provide the proof of storage within that specified time, the payment goes to a ‘missed proof address’ until they present proof. Depending on the circumstances, the host can even be fined for negligence. And when they miss too many proofs of storage mandates, the contract may be terminated for good.

However, when a host successfully presents proof of storage, they are awarded payment, which is sent to a valid proof of address. But they have to meet certain ‘spend’ conditions, e.g., time locks and network signatures before they can access the funds. 

Tokenomics of Sia

As of Feb 25, 2020, Siacoin registered the following values. A price of $0. 002452, while placing at #58 in market rank. It had a market cap of $192, 546, 342, and a 24-hour volume of $4, 606, 191. Its total supply was 41, 817, 047, 634 SC, with an all-time high of $0.111708 on Jan 06, 2018, and an all-time low of 0.000011 on Dec 01, 2015.

Siacoin and Siafund

Sia’s platform operates on a dual-token system: Siacoin (SC) and Siafunds (SF). Siacoin functions as the utility token, while Siafunds are to help the development of the project without relying on external donations. Siacoin’s supply is not capped, and all the tokens must eventually be mined. In the beginning, miners got 300,000 coins Siacoins as block rewards, but this reward will decrease up to 30,000 coins.

On the other hand, there are 10,000 SF in existence, all pre-mined. The company behind Sia holds 8835 of these coins, while the rest have been distributed in a crowdfund to help fund the project.

Sia Coin Mining

Siacoin uses the proof of work consensus mechanism. This means they have miners mining Siacoins using specialized mining computers called ASICS (application-specific integrated circuit). The history of Siacoin mining has a bit of controversy.

In 2017, David Vorick, lead developer for Sia, announced that Nebulous would launch a company called Obelisk to manufacture ASICS specifically for mining Sia. Members of the community supported the ASIC project by pre-ordering and contributing millions of dollars.

At the same time, ASIC manufacturing behemoths Bitmain and Innosilicon were already in the process of developing Sia ASICS. Some in the Sia community did not want a future where miners monopolized Sia mining. As such, they demanded a hard fork to prevent this. But the hard fork proposition was also opposed by a significant chunk of the Sia community. Ultimately, the hard fork faction won as Sia’s core developers implemented a hard fork.

The hard fork was conducted on Oct 31. 2018. The goal was to lock out Bitmain miners and only allow Obelisk miners to support the network. Vorick stated that the hard fork was a result of the community’s distrust towards Bitmain, as well as Innosilicon’s dominance over Siacoin, which controlled up to 37.5% of Sia’s mining hash rate. 

A large section of the community was content with the results, but others, especially those who had invested in Innosilicon, dissented. This is the group that stuck with the old Sia chain, which they called SiaClassic.

Why Sia?

Sia offers several advantages over existing cloud storage services.

Privacy: All data that passes through Sia is encrypted, meaning you’re always in control over your data. This is unlike current cloud services where the host has access to any data that you commit to them.

Security: The encryption of data means it’s insured from the pitfalls of the traditional model, such as vulnerability to hacking. Also, the ability to split your data between multiple providers boosts its security.

Affordability: Sia’s storage services are way more pocket-friendly than the traditional model. As an example, storing one terabyte of data via Sia can cost you just $200, while the same amount will cost $2300 on Amazon’s cloud storage service.

Where to Buy and Store Siacoin

You can acquire SC by trading Bitcoin for it in several exchanges, including Binance, Bittrex, Kraken, Cointree, Coinswitch, Poloniex, Huobi, and so on.

You can also get SC via mining from Luxor or SiaMining.

The Sia team has customized two wallets for SC: Sia Daemon and Sia UI. Sia Daemon is offered on Github and can be used per a user’s preferred Command Line Interface (CLI). This wallet supports Mac, Linux, and Windows. Sia UI is for the less than tech-savvy and comes with more user-friendly features.

Final Thoughts

In a space full of unfulfilled promises, Siacoin stands out as a service that you can actually access today. It’s a win for everyone involved: hosts can earn from the extra space in their hard drive, while renters can buy space in a decentralized, highly-secure environment for very little cost. What’s there not to like?

 

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 28 – CFTC approaching stablecoin projects; Crypto market preparing for a move

The crypto market pretty much stayed at the same place price-wise in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,758, which represents a 0.41% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.77% on the day, while XRP lost 0.11%.

The crypto market pretty much stayed at the same place price-wise in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,758, which represents a 0.41% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.77% on the day, while XRP lost 0.11%.

The crypto market pretty much stayed at the same place price-wise in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin is currently trading for $8,758, which represents a 0.41% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.77% on the day, while XRP lost 0.11%.

Swipe took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 19.28%. On the other side, DxChain Token lost 9.85% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance increased in the past 24 hours as some altcoins dropped in price more than it did. Its value is now 64.53%, which represents a 0.45 difference to the upside when compared to the value from when we last reported.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization stayed in pretty much the same place in the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $249.09 billion, which represents a decrease of $0.92 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

One of Switzerland’s biggest stock exchanges, SIX Swiss Exchange, announced a partnership with Omniex, a US-based firm that specializes in developing trading platforms for institutional investors, mainly targeting the cryptocurrency market.

The partnership will provide SIX and its clients with a way to include crypto to their business.

Honorable mention

Stablecoins 

American financial regulators had a sitdown with three major stablecoin projects in an effort for them to better understand the industry.

The CFTC Advisory Committee organized and held a public meeting in hopes of learning more about stablecoins, crypto insurance, custody practices as well as cybersecurity. JPM Coin, MarkerDao and Paxo had their representatives attend the event, discussing different aspects of stablecoins.

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Technical analysis

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin spent the past 24 hours trading at pretty much the same level. However, while there was seemingly not much price movement, Bitcoin made one attempt of breaking $8,825, which it did for a while. However, the price quickly pulled back and Bitcoin is almost exactly where it’s at 24 hours ago.


Bitcoin’s volume dropped to average levels after yesterday’s spike. It’s RSI level is currently on the line the oversold territory and regular value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $8,825                                           1: $8,650

2: $9,115                                           2: $$8,535

3: $9,250                                            3: $8,250

Ethereum

Ethereum’s was also pretty stagnant over the past 24 hours. Its price attempted to reach the $240 mark but did not manage to get to it before bears took over again and put an end to the move. Ethereum fell to its previous prices and even attempted to break $225.5 to the downside. While its price is currently above this support level, it is unknown how long that will hold.


Ethereum’s volume is extremely low at the moment, while its RSI level is in the lower part of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $240                                                1: $225.5

2: $251.3                                            2: $217.7  

3: $259.5                                             3: $198

Ripple

XRP performed the best out of the three biggest cryptos once again. However, this time, it was not by much. Its price tried to move above the $2454 level but failed to do so. As a result, XRP started dropping in price and pulled back to the $0.235 support. It is currently trading just above this support level.


XRP’s volume is slightly elevated, but nothing compared to yesterday’s volume. Its RSI level is in the lower part of the value spectrum.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.2454                                          1: $0.235

2: $0.266                                            2: $0.227

3: $0.285                                             3: $0.221

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic

An Investor Loses $45m worth of Crypto via a SIM Attack 

The crypto community is still reeling from the news of an alleged theft of $45 million worth of crypto from an investor through a SIM-swap attack. The attack is thought to have been a $30M Bitcoin Cash Attack and a $15m Bitcoin attack.

The crypto community is still reeling from the news of an alleged theft of $45 million worth of crypto from an investor through a SIM-swap attack. The attack is thought to have been a $30M Bitcoin Cash Attack and a $15m Bitcoin attack.

The crypto community is still reeling from the news of an alleged theft of $45 million worth of crypto from an investor through a SIM-swap attack. The attack is thought to have been a $30M Bitcoin Cash Attack and a $15m Bitcoin attack.

Using the username zhoujianfu, the alleged victim of the attack posted a link to the transaction history of Bitcoin Cash on Reddit’s Bitcoin community platform, adding: “is my address, goddamnit. It only had three confirmations, if any miners/the community can help somehow, I’ve got the private keys. Help help help…big reward, obviously.” He added, “Also for what it’s worth, they got $15m in BTC too…” The first post has since been deleted. The Reddit account appears to belong to Dreamhost founder, Josh Jones.

Due to the sheer magnitude of the attack, many community members had trouble believing its legitimacy. Some believed it was a troll attempt while others thought it was negligent to entrust crypto holdings in a SIM company.

What is a Crypto Sim Hack?

A crypto SIM attack happens when someone pretends to be you and convinces your mobile service provider that you have to transfer your phone number into a new phone. In reality, they’re taking your phone number and associating it with a different SIM card in their possession.  

You’ll know a SIM attack is successful when your phone stops registering the four network bars, and you can’t call or receive a call. Once a hacker gains control of your number, any information tied to it is now in their hands, including data, phone calls, text messages, passwords,  email, social media, bank accounts, and crypto holdings information. Not to mention that your 2-factor SMS authentication with your wallet is now in their hands. A hacker looking to steal cryptocurrency will usually scour for proof of crypto holdings and use your passwords to steal your crypto.

How to Protect Your Crypto from a SIM Attack?

Note that crypto transactions are irreversible, which makes a case for securing your assets even stronger. Storing your crypto information makes them susceptible to attacks – SIM swaps are an unsophisticated but effective method of transferring somebody’s information.

The first thing to know is that you should always store large amounts of crypto holdings in a secure location. Such a location and the safest thus far for crypto is a cold storage wallet. Cold storage wallets are those that when signing in or transacting, you don’t need to interact with an online server, i.e., your private key is stored offline. As such, a hacker can’t gain control of your crypto account through hacking, impersonation, phishing attacks, and so on.

With cold wallets, you can store keys in devices such as a CD, a paper, hard drive, and so on. A paper wallet is a paper document that has your public and private keys written on it. It has a QR code that will be scanned when you want to make transactions. Remember that you need to protect your paper document from damage from fire, water, and wear and tear.

Also, beware that hacking paper-wallet generator pages is likely to happen. A better procedure is to download a paper wallet app, copy it to a computer not connected to the internet or to a virtual machine, blocked from an internet connection, and create the keys there. For more on pitfalls of paper wallets, read this thread.

A hardware wallet uses an offline device to generate your private keys offline. These wallets look and function a lot like a USB device. When looking for a good hardware wallet, go for popular and time-tested wallets such as Ledger Nano, TREZOR, KeepKey, ColdWallet, ColdCard, OpenDime, and so on.

 

Categories
Cryptocurrencies

Private, Public and Consortium Blockchains

Bitcoin brought with it blockchain technology – the technology that allows digital information to be distributed but not edited or copied. After it became a hit with Bitcoin, eager innovators from all over the world have made it their mission to replicate it in nearly every conceivable industry. From finance to healthcare to supply chains, industries are experimenting with blockchain to improve efficiency, transparency, and accountability in their systems.

Bitcoin brought with it blockchain technology – the technology that allows digital information to be distributed but not edited or copied. After it became a hit with Bitcoin, eager innovators from all over the world have made it their mission to replicate it in nearly every conceivable industry. From finance to healthcare to supply chains, industries are experimenting with blockchain to improve efficiency, transparency, and accountability in their systems.

Bitcoin brought with it blockchain technology – the technology that allows digital information to be distributed but not edited or copied. After it became a hit with Bitcoin, eager innovators from all over the world have made it their mission to replicate it in nearly every conceivable industry. From finance to healthcare to supply chains, industries are experimenting with blockchain to improve efficiency, transparency, and accountability in their systems.

What is Blockchain? 

A blockchain is a database whose entries cannot be deleted or edited but only distributed. It’s a time-stamped series of transactions that are immutable and whose data is managed by a network of computers.

Cryptocurrency, a form of digital money that prevents double-spending, is so far the dominant application of blockchain. Blockchain as a concept had been floated around the computer science space from as early as 1991, but only materialized 18 years later when Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, employed it as the underlying technology of Bitcoin. 

Now, as its appeal has increased in recent years, it has been borrowed for use in all kinds of digital information.

Today, there are three kinds of blockchains: private, public, and consortium chains. This article sets to exploring each of these. Before that, let’s point out three characteristics all three share. 

☑️ An append-only ledger – this means that on a blockchain, you can’t modify or alter what’s already recorded – you can only add to the last block. This procedure greatly reduces the chances of fraud.

☑️ A network of peers – all network participants (called nodes) hold a copy of the database. This setup promotes fairness and autonomy. 

☑️ A consensus mechanism – a blockchain network must have a mechanism through which nodes can agree upon the authenticity of a transaction. This feature promotes a democratic – everyone-has-a-say – process.

What is a Public Blockchain?

A public blockchain is an open-source blockchain. That means it’s open to the public. Anyone and everyone of every age, nationality, or social status is welcome to join the network, have a say, and take part in core activities. Public blockchains are also called ‘permissionless’ since you don’t need permission from anyone to interact with the protocol.

The idea behind public blockchains is self-governance and autonomy. No one dictates the rules, and anyone can join and leave as they wish. As well, all transactions that take place on a public blockchain are entirely open for anyone to see.

Public blockchains are ‘censorship-resistant’ in that they are run by users all over the world, making it hard for any authority or government to control or shut them down.

Also, public blockchains have a token that incentivizes various participants of the network to keep the network active.

The Good

Public blockchains are highly secure, courtesy of being run by computers from all over the world.

They ensure privacy for users in that you don’t leave your personally-identifying details on the chain, but rather transaction information like wallet number, time, and amount.

Transactions are peer-to-peer, meaning users are in complete control of their money with no one capable of freezing their funds

The Bad

Public blockchains like Bitcoin consume a lot of energy, which is expensive and bad for the environment

The majority of public blockchains are pseudonymous, meaning users do not have absolute and inviolable privacy or anonymity.

Some users of the network might have malicious intent, including hacking, stealing of tokens, or network clogging.

Public Blockchain Use Case

Bitcoin is the first-ever and the most well-known application of a public blockchain. 

Bitcoin transactions can be examined by anyone on the Blockchain Explorer. Other public blockchains are Ethereum, Litecoin, ZCash, Monero, Dash, and so on.

What is a Private Blockchain?

A private blockchain is one in which you need authentic and verified credentials to gain access. A private blockchain differs from a public one in that you need permission, depending on your position in the system’s hierarchy, to contribute and maintain the network. People at the top of the hierarchy or those with express access can also override processes as they deem necessary.

A private blockchain makes sense in a business context where managers want to improve efficiency but don’t want to put company data on the public blockchain. As well, a business has the right to amp up privacy restrictions any time they deem fit.

In a private blockchain, there’s the question of who enters entries, who can see updated transactions, who can begin a process, and so on.

The Good

Since only specific users can control the network, there’s no waiting times or periods of high demand which would slow down the network.

Entities that use private blockchains can keep sensitive data from the public while also realizing improved levels of efficiency.

Private blockchains do not have to provide any incentives to participants; neither do they consume massive amounts of energy. 

There is no possibility of downtimes arising from a spike in demand.

The Bad

Without support from computer users all over the world, a private blockchain is prone to stunted growth. It can also be slow to scale up and meet changing customer needs. 

Since they are centralized, public blockchains are susceptible to human error, manipulation, abuse, and other unfair dealings.

Use Case of a Private Blockchain

The best use case of a private blockchain is Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned blockchain that businesses can deploy on their platform. The blockchain is also available in a plug and play mode, allowing businesses to set it up anytime and plug off when they don’t need to use it.

Walmart is a well-known user of Hyperledger Fabric. The retail giant can now trace the origin of more than 25 food products, from farm to store, to ensure quality levels and food safety.

What is a Consortium Blockchain?

The consortium blockchain is a type of blockchain that combines elements of both public and private blockchains. This is the distinction between a consortium blockchain and either of the two other types:  in a public blockchain, anyone can contribute to the network by inputting entries, validating blocks, etc. In a private blockchain, only a few entities have access to the chain and have the authority to initiate processes, enter entries, and so on. On a consortium blockchain, it’s a handful of equally powerful participants that can access the chain.

After that distinction, the rules of the system are not cast in stone. Some selected individuals may be the only ones who can view the chain, or it can be everyone in the consortium. As long as decisions are arrived at by consensus, they can be rolled out to the satisfaction of all parties.

Consortium blockchains rely significantly on the integrity of the validators. Provided a certain threshold of the validators can act with integrity, the network will work without issue.

Consortium blockchains make sense in the context where multiple organizations operate in the same industry and see it fit to collaborate on certain aspects of their business. This way, they can save on costs and function better individually and collectively. An organization would be motivated to join such a consortium courtesy of information and insights into the industry that they’d gain from other industry players. Sometimes the organizations involved can be termed “frenemies” since they are working together but also competing against each other.

Use Cases of Consortium Blockchains

There are currently many consortium blockchains that exist all over the world. Let’s briefly look at a few below:

☑️BankChain, a platform for banks whose goal is to explore, build, and implement blockchain software. Members of the BankChain community include Deutsche Bank, Bank of Baroda, Lulu Exchange, Kotak Bank, etc. 

☑️B3i, a community of insurers and reinsurers that attempts to improve industry efficiency through blockchain. Members include Liberty Mutual, Swiss Re, SBI Group, Tokio Marine, Allianz, and so on.

☑️Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), a consortium that aims to promote Enterprise Ethereum, an organization that delivers both public and private Ethereum blockchain for businesses.

Final Words

Blockchain has evolved a lot from the days when it was associated with Bitcoin only. It’s definitely exciting to see it as the new and hot technology that industries of all types are scrambling to get a piece of. And understandably so, because it embodies features that are a first, and which have the potential to revolutionize not just how we do business but also society itself. 

Companies need to choose what type of blockchain they want to get involved with, depending on their end goal and overall objective. Meanwhile, blockchain enthusiasts will be watching for new developments in this thrilling space.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Hedging Your Cryptocurrency Portfolio Part 3 – The Best Methods Explained

https://youtu.be/K5uCj5rSQ7M

https://youtu.be/K5uCj5rSQ7M

Hedging your cryptocurrency portfolio – part 3/4

 

Options
Options are a fairly new and limited concept in the cryptocurrency space. The only exchanges that actually offer it are Deribit and Bitmex.
Hedging using options can be pretty complicated. There are multiple ways you can build exactly what you want. We will show one of the most straightforward ways you can hedge out downside risk.


Why You Would Use This Method

One of the main benefits of hedging by using options is the difference in the payout. Hedging by buying put options can turn your existing options into a call option payout (which have limited downside with unlimited upside). The caveat to the method is that options, especially in the cryptocurrency market, are quite expensive.

Another great thing is that the margin does not need to be monitored as we are purchasing options to construct the hedge. These pros make it a fairly good method for investors that:
Are looking to hedge their positions but cannot, or don’t want to monitor their margin requirements Want the downside protection while still maintaining the potential upside gains.

How to Construct it

You will need:
An account with Deribit (they are the only exchange that offers crypto options)
The steps to constructing this method are similar to using futures:
Based on the current price of Bitcoin and your expected hedging time frame, check for the closest in the money (ITM) put option.
As an example, if BTC is at 6432 and you would like to hold it until the end of the quarter, look for the 6500 put option pricing for the end of the current quarter.
Check the current price of your chosen ITM put option and calculate how much funds you would need to deposit so you could make a 1:1 coverage of your BTC holdings.
Deposit the predetermined funds into the exchange.
Purchase the put option and simply hold it until expiration.

Summary

Hedging with options can be quite a complex task. However, this also means that it can be better tailored to your needs. If you want to use options to hedge and you want to hedge frequently, learning all there is about options is certainly a no-brainer.
Options hedging, as any type of hedging, has its Pros and Cons:


Check out our final part of the Hedging your crypto portfolio, where we will talk about hedging by using Perpetual Swaps.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Hedging Your Cryptocurrency Portfolio Part 2 – The Best Methods Explained

https://youtu.be/EjzGIQ47IZA

https://youtu.be/EjzGIQ47IZA

Hedging your cryptocurrency portfolio – part 2/4


Futures

Futures represent financial contracts that obligate the buyer to purchase a certain asset (or the seller to sell a certain asset) at a predetermined future date and a predetermined price.
Just like in traditional finance, cryptocurrencies have futures contracts that you can use to hedge out your position. Crypto market comes with two types of futures:
Futures that trade in USD and settle in USD, such as CME Bitcoin Futures and CBOE Bitcoin

Futures
Inverse Futures that trade in USD pricing, but settle in BTC, such as Bitmex Quarterly Contract Futures
The profit and loss calculations work slightly differently for these two methods. However, they can both come to the same result.
An example of the investment is (if you wish to hedge your position fully):

Calculation explained:
As Bitmex offers only BTCUSD and ETHBTC futures, we need to convert ETH to BTC first. As the contracts are denominated in ETH, we will:
Short 10 ETHBTC futures
Factor this into our BTCUSD hedge. The total short of the BTCUSD position = $6,500 x 10 + $200 x 10 = $6,700
By using this method, your portfolio will be fully hedged (as long as you make sure to maintain your hedge).

Why Would You Use This?

Futures contracts are a fairly cost-efficient way of hedging out your risk. This is because:
You have a lower capital requirement due to the leverage you can use.
You can profit from the hedge over time if the market goes in your favor.
You know the full cost of your hedge the moment you place the hedge on, unlike some other methods of hedging.
How You Construct The Hedge
In order to start hedging by utilizing futures, you will need:

An account with a crypto futures exchange.
To construct this hedged portfolio:
Choose which future contract you will use. Your decision should depend on which currency you wish to settle in and fund the exchange.
If you are settling in USD, you can sell some crypto to fund the account. However, keep in mind that withdrawals and deposits could take some time to process.
Based upon your holdings and what is available on the exchange, you need to calculate which combination of futures contracts you need as well as how many contracts.
Monitor your short positions profit and loss so that if you are getting close to your margin call, you will need to deposit more USD or cryptocurrency into the exchange to maintain your short position.

Depositing into the exchanges can take some time, and since crypto markets are very volatile, make sure to do everything in time.
Close out the short position when you think there is no reason to hedge anymore.

Summary


Hedging by using futures is best suited for cryptocurrency investors that carry the standard coins and are not overly diversified into altcoins. Hedging by using futures is very efficient but requires knowledge of the market as well as futures themselves.

Categories
Crypto Guides

What Are IEOs & How Are They Better Than ICOs?

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

In our previous guide, we learned about what an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is all about. We also discussed that 2017-18 was the golden era of ICOs, where some of the biggest ever ICOs like EOS, Telegram, and Dragon Coin happened. But what happened after that? ICOs took a hard hit after the Chinese government banned them. Also, there was a lot of negativity in this space after many large ICOs turned out to be scams. So it has been challenging for the Crypto startups to raise funds for their companies ever since the downfall of ICOs. This necessity resulted in the invention of a fantastic solution – Initial Exchange Offering (IEO)

Understanding IEO

In an IEO, any crypto company willing to raise funds for their project will approach a credible cryptocurrency exchange. The crypto tokens sales of that particular company will happen on that exchange, and the companies will have to pay a certain amount of fee and a percentage of tokens that got sold during an IEO. The exchange here is acting as a platform for the companies to sell their tokens.

So basically, Initial Exchange Offering works just like how Initial Coin Offering works without the decentralization part. That means, there is Smart Contract functionality in this process. All the transactions are centralized as they are authorized by the exchange in which the tokens are being sold. This is a win-win situation where the crypto companies can have a smooth fundraising process, and the exchanges can make profits by listing new crypto tokens in their platform.

Working of an IEO

In an ICO, people who are interested in purchasing tokens must send their funds to a given smart contract. But since IEO is a centralized process, interested participants must create an account with the exchange that is undertaking an IEO and complete their respective KYC procedures. Then they must deposit their funds in the exchange wallet and purchase the newly issued tokens using those funds. Most of the deposits are accepted in cryptocurrency only.

Top IEOs Till Now

Unless you are absolutely new to the crypto world, you must have heard about the Binance exchange. This exchange is one of the first ones to start the IEO revolution by designing a platform known as Binance Launchpad. The first successful IEO was of BitTorrent, a popular torrent service provider, and it was launched on the Binance Launchpad. BTT (BitTorrent Token) sales created a record in the world of IEOs by raising more than seven million dollars in a mere fifteen minutes. This company was backed by TRON, so this success isn’t a surprise.

If not for IEOs, it would be impossible for a new crypto startup to raise this amount of funds in hours or minutes. One more notable success story of an IEO is also from the Binance Launchpad only. A crypto company known as Fetch has raised about six million dollars and met the target in less than half a minute. After seeing the massive success of Binance Launchpad, many other exchanges have shown keen interest in this space. Let’s see what those exchanges are in the below section.

Top Exchanges That Embrace IEOs

As discussed, it is a potential business for any exchange for conducting IEOs using their platform. So many exchanges have shown great interest in the recent past to conduct IEOs and increase their visibility as well. Some of the top exchanges include Binance (Binance Launchpad), BitMax (BitMax Launchpad), Bittrex (Bittrex Int. IEO), KuCoin (KuCoin Spotlight) and Huobi (Huobi Prime).

IEOs have many pros over ICOs in terms of legality, security, and ease of access. That’s about IEOs; in our upcoming article, let’s discuss another fundraising method known as STO.

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 27 – “Craig Wright is a disgrace”; $150 million worth of BTC positions liquidated

The crypto market dropped severely as bear pressure continued throughout the day. Bitcoin is currently trading for $793, which represents a 4.45% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 5.76% on the day, while XRP lost 3.07%.

The crypto market dropped severely as bear pressure continued throughout the day. Bitcoin is currently trading for $793, which represents a 4.45% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 5.76% on the day, while XRP lost 3.07%.

The crypto market dropped severely as bear pressure continued throughout the day. Bitcoin is currently trading for $793, which represents a 4.45% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 5.76% on the day, while XRP lost 3.07%.

Aion took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 17.23%. On the other side, Swipe lost 16.79% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance remained in the same place in the past 24 hours. Its value is now 64.08%, which represents a 0.03 difference to the downside when compared to the value from when we last reported.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization a lot of its value over the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $250.01 billion, which represents a decrease of $11.61 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao recently tweeted about Craig Wright, the Bitcoin SV (BSV) founder. He made it clear that he did not trust the self-proclaimed Bitcoin (BTC) creator, and called him a fraud.

Zhao said that Wright is not only hurting his own reputation, but rather the reputation of the cryptocurrency industry as a whole. “He claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, which is a lie. He hurts the credibility of Bitcoin and is a disgrace to our entire industry.”

Honorable mention

Bitcoin 

According to the data provided by the analytics website Skew, over $150 million worth of Bitcoin got liquidated on the trading exchange BitMEX on Feb 26. This is the biggest liquidation in 2020.

_______________________________________________________________________

Technical analysis

_______________________________________________________________________

Bitcoin

Bitcoin spent the past 24 hours spiraling down below $9,000. The largest cryptocurrency dropped in price fast and decisively as the bear pressure was high and many longs liquidated. However, ever since the bounce off of the $8,650 support, Bitcoin seems to have been going up slightly.


Bitcoin’s volume was increased during the price drop, during its normal or slightly lower than that at the time of writing. It’s RSI level is currently in the oversold territory.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $8,825                                           1: $8,650

2: $9,115                                           2: $$8,535

3: $9,250                                            3: $8,250

Ethereum

Ethereum’s price took a dive, just like Bitcoin’s price did. Its price broke many support levels along the way, but the $217.7 one held up quite strong and managed to bounce ETH’s price back up. Ethereum looks like it’s gaining some value now, as it managed to even pass the next resistance level, which is standing at $225.5.


Ethereum’s volume is elevated, while its RSI level has just recently left the oversold territory.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $240                                                1: $225.5

2: $251.3                                            2: $217.7  

3: $259.5                                             3: $198

Ripple

When Bitcoin drops in price, it is common that Ethereum falls a bit more in price, while XRP does either better than Bitcoin or worse than almost every other coin in the industry. This time, XRP did better than both Bitcoin and Ethereum price-wise as it did not drop as much over the past 24 hours. The downwards moving trend seems to have stopped at the $0.227 and XRP turned slightly bullish from there as its price started to increase. The move was strong enough to even break the $0.235 resistance, which is where XRP is currently at.


XRP’s volume is elevated, while its RSI level is just above the oversold territory.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.2454                                          1: $0.235

2: $0.266                                            2: $0.227

3: $0.285                                             3: $0.221

Categories
Crypto Guides

What Is An ICO and What Were The Biggest ICOs Ever?

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

We have discussed many things cryptocurrencies in our recent guides, which talk about their evolution, properties, pros & cons, etc. We also learned a lot about Bitcoin and some of the other major altcoins. As of Feb 2020, more than five thousand cryptos are prevailing in the market. Have you ever wondered how these cryptos come into existence? The answer to this question is ICO. To understand what ICO, AKA, Initial Coin Offering

Irrespective of its size, every company needs sufficient funds to bring an idea to a reality. In the case of conventional companies, there is a concept known as IPO, which translates to Initial Public Offering. Here, a company would go public after they establish their brand name in the market. ‘Going public’ essentially means selling a part of their company to raise more funds and expand its business across the markets to gain more profits.

What Is An ICO?

Like how IPO is for traditional companies, ICO is for the companies who are willing to raise funds to build a cryptocurrency. There might be various agendas for crypto companies, which we will be discussing in the later parts of this article. But not every random crypto company can have an ICO and raise funds. Companies must make their whitepaper public that has all the technicalities of the coin they are going to launch. They must also mention the amount of money they are willing to raise through this ICO.  Along with this, the complete business plan and the acceptable Fiat or Cryptos should also be clearly mentioned.

Once they release the duration of the ICO, interested people can go through the whitepaper of that company and understand the problem they are willing to solve. If that is making sense, and all the other technicalities interest them, they can participate in the ICO by purchasing tokens of that company. Most of the companies accept both Bitcoin and Ethereum to purchase their tokens. The ultimate goal here is to bet on a company that has enormous growth potential in the cryptocurrency space. If that happens, the money they have invested here can have exponential growth and yield huge profits in the future.

If the funds that are raised meets the goal set by the company, the ICO can be considered to be successful. The companies can use these funds and bring their whitepaper to an actual cryptocurrency. But, if the funds raised don’t meet the goal, we can say that the ICO is a failed attempt, and the collected funds will be returned to the investors. Returning the collected funds is a seamless process because all of these transactions are executed through Smart Contracts. So the entire process of an ICO is decentralized and is not regulated by any central authority.

Notable ICO Success Stories

In the year 2013, the first-ever ICO took place where Mastercoin raised around 500k worth of Bitcoin. Then, the ICO of Ethereum took place, which changed the face of the crypto world forever. Without this particular ICO, the crypto world wouldn’t have been the way we are seeing it today. This record-breaking ICO took place in 2014, where the company has raised $18 million worth of funds. This ICO’s massive success enabled the amazing Ethereum platform to transform from an idea on a paper to reality.

Once the Ethereum platform was live with the revolutionary smart contract feature, ICO token sales have been extremely simplified. This resulted in the formation of some of the biggest ICOs to date. One such ICO which is conducted on the Ethereum platform is DAO. If you are a crypto enthusiast, you must have heard about this crypto. DAO has raised about $150 million worth of Ether in just four weeks.

Some of the biggest ICOs we have ever witnessed include EOS ($4 Billion), Telegram ($1.7 Billion), Dragon Coin ($320 Million) & Huobi ($320 Million). Most of the biggest ICOs like the ones mentioned above, happened in 2017-18. This is considered as a golden age of ICOs. The number of ICOs has reduced significantly, and there could be many reasons for that. Some of them include the fall of the crypto market, regulations from the US Securities Exchange Commission, frauds and scams occurred, etc.

Bottom Line

That’s about ICOs and some of the biggest ICOs ever to take place. We must be extremely cautious while participating in an ICO. Getting to know the founders well, analyzing the whitepaper, understanding the feasibility of the project, etc. is crucial before making your investments. Market experts believe that the ICOs are almost dead, but there are a few promising ICOs that are going to take place in 2020, and most of them can be found here. In the upcoming articles, let’s understand what IEOs and STOs are and how different are from ICOs. Cheers!  

Categories
Crypto Videos

Hedging Your Cryptocurrency Portfolio Part 1 – The Best Methods Explained

https://youtu.be/LDJ0E8i3JDQ

https://youtu.be/LDJ0E8i3JDQ

Hedging your cryptocurrency portfolio – part 1/4

If you are looking for ways to hedge out your crypto investment exposure, this guide will cover four different methods that you can use:

Short Selling
Futures
Perpetual Swaps
Options

Selling vs. Hedging

The first question that should be asked is, why is there a need to hedge when you can just sell. This point will be covered in each hedge method section individually to avoid any misunderstandings.

Short Selling

This is the most straightforward method of hedging out your investments. All you need to do is to short sell the cryptocurrencies so that your portfolio will look like shown on the picture (assuming you want to hedge your exposure fully).

Why Would You Use This?

Long-term investors say that you are better off just selling your cryptos as the cost of short selling is higher for the amount of margin funding cost. However, hedging is good for reducing risk in the short-term.
There are several reasons why hedging crypto in the short term is better than selling:
Once you sell your cryptocurrencies on the exchange, the proceeds of the sale remain on the exchange until withdrawal (which isn’t always that easy). This makes your funds subject to default risk. Short selling requires you to have fewer funds on the exchange (which is not the best to store your cryptos on). If your hedge period is short, the process of selling, withdrawing, and then depositing and buying back could be too slow.

How To Construct This

For this method, you are required to have:
An account with any exchange that provides the option to short sell (Optional) USD for maintaining margin in your account
We will be using BTC as an example of constructing a short-sell hedge:

1. Deposit your USD into the exchange that provides the option to short sell. If you do not have any USD available, you can deposit some cryptocurrency and sell a fraction of it
2. The amount of USD that should be on the account will depend on the margin requirements of the exchange
3. Put on a short position on the cryptocurrency that you want to hedge against at a 1:1 ratio. As an example, hedging 10 BTC at a 1:1 ratio will require a short position of 10 BTC
4. Monitor your short positions to avoid reaching the margin call.
6. Close out your short position when you decide to close out your hedge.
Summary
Short selling as a hedge method is best suited for investors that are already diversified, and that want to hedge as selling parts of their portfolio would take too long.
There are quite a few pros as well as cons to using short selling for hedging. This table shows some of them:


Check out the next part of the Hedging your cryptocurrency portfolio, where we will talk about using futures as a hedge.

Categories
Cryptocurrencies

Decred Review: Is It the Ideal Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency represents freedom of finance. Decentralized, censorship-resistant, and peer-to-peer are some of the words that we ascribe to it. But whether the vast majority of cryptocurrencies meet these criteria is a grey area.

Cryptocurrency represents freedom of finance. Decentralized, censorship-resistant, and peer-to-peer are some of the words that we ascribe to it. But whether the vast majority of cryptocurrencies meet these criteria is a grey area.

Cryptocurrency represents freedom of finance. Decentralized, censorship-resistant, and peer-to-peer are some of the words that we ascribe to it. But whether the vast majority of cryptocurrencies meet these criteria is a grey area.

Decred is a cryptocurrency launched in February 2016 that attempts to live up to these ideals. Its team of founding developers comprises of former developers of the notable btcsuite, a version of Bitcoin programmed in the Go language.

In this article, we’ll cover the exciting highlights of the Decred project and leave you to decide whether it’s the optimal currency or not. 

The Principles of Decred

Decred endeavors to live by these principles:

☑️ Free and Open Software – All software developed as part of Decred shall be free and open software

☑️ Free Speech and Consideration – Every member has the right to communicate opinions and ideas without fear of censorship, as long as it’s based on fact and reason. 

☑️ Multi-Stakeholder Inclusivity – A diverse set of views and users shall be represented and encouraged.

☑️ Incremental Privacy and Security – Privacy and security are priorities, and they shall be treated as such, and shall be incrementally implemented and on a continuing basis, both proactively and in direct response to attacks.

☑️ Fixed Finite Supply – Issuance of coins is finite, and the total issuance shall not exceed 20, 999,999.99800912 DCR, with a block subsidy that adjusts every 21.33 days by a reducing factor of 100/101.

☑️ Universal Fungibility – Universal fungibility is central to Decred as a store of value, and any attacks against it shall be met with countermeasures.

Breaking down Decred

Decred has a maximum supply of 21 million. The project never held an ICO, but an airdrop of 282.64 DCR was awarded to 2972 selected participants during the launch. Its all-time high was $99.74 on April 25, 2018, and its all-time low at $0. 394796 on December 28, 2016.

As of February 21 21, 2020, the price of Decred is $20.53 at a market rank of #37. Its 24-hour volume is $28, 260, 170, with a circulating supply of 10, 786, 831.

Each time DCR is mined, 60% is awarded to the PoW miner, 30% to PoS voters, and 10% held by Decred for future development.

How to Get Involved With Decred

Decred designates three ways through which you can interact with the platform:

The Wallet – Through the wallet, you can send and receive funds as well as take part in PoS voting.

Proof-of-Work Mining – You can use your computing power to validate transactions on the network and generate new tokens.

Proof-of-Stake Mining – Through ownership OF Decred tokens, you can vote on network development issues and validate transactions. 

All you need to send or receive Decred tokens is an address that you can easily generate from any Decred wallet. Once you own Decred, you’re eligible to join a staking pool and participate in PoS voting and earn rewards while at it.

What Problems Does Decred Intend to Solve?

Decred developers are huge blockchain and Bitcoin fans. However, they identified problems with how Bitcoin operates. As Bitcoin’s popularity has surged, the decision-making process seems to get more centralized by the day. This is evidenced by, for instance, the concentrated power in the hands of powerful mining companies.

In addition, almost any major upgrades to the Bitcoin software have to take place via a hard fork. This is what happened in 2017 when one section of the community proposed the SegWit2x hard fork on the chain. The two opposing sides got involved in hostile debates, peppered with name-calling and threats. The hard fork was finally called off, but not before leaving sharp divides in the Bitcoin community.

According to Decred, such divisions and the power that a particular section of the community might have over the cryptocurrency is counterproductive to the ideals, spirit, and the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency.

We’ve all seen what happens when two opposing sides do not arrive at a consensus. Factions can decide at any time to create a hard fork off the open-source Bitcoin code. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision, and Bitcoin Diamond are all offshoots of the original Bitcoin blockchain.

The Problem with Hard Forks

Forking is never the ideal outcome for cryptocurrency. Let’s see below why:

Repeated hard forks are bad for investor sentiment. After the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, Bitcoin prices took a tumble.

Hard forks fracture the Bitcoin community. The flared up tensions, and hard-line stances do no good for the community and the cryptocurrency sphere as a whole.

New hard forks are susceptible to attacks. So far, the biggest public blockchain to succumb to a 51% attack is, you guessed it, a hard fork. This blockchain is Bitcoin gold, and the attack happened in May 2018. The attacker made away with roughly 388,000 BTG worth $17.8 million then.

Hard forking undercuts the economic aspect of cryptocurrencies. For instance, the Bitcoin hard forks are confusing to users and undermine Bitcoin’s principle of a capped supply.

Decred presents a vision and cryptocurrency that’s free of hard forks, especially ones that fracture the community. While a hard fork is possible on Decred, its voting protocol is designed so that users can democratically vote on changes before activation.

Let’s look at the various mechanisms that Decred employ that will help it realize fair, smooth, and efficient governance.

Decred’s Hybrid PoS and PoW System

Decred’s voting system utilizes a hybrid of the two best-known consensus mechanisms: proof of work and proof of stake. 

These are the basics of how these two interact:

  • Miners mine for a block using PoW
  • Five token holders are randomly chosen to verify the block
  • If three of these validators confirm the validity of the block, it is recorded on the blockchain
  • 60% of the block rewards go to the miners, 30% to the validators, and 10% to the Decred project for future development.

With PoS, anyone who holds Decred tokens can participate in the staking system in this way:

  • DCR holders can purchase tickets with their tokens. The tickets give them pass to be part of the system
  • Only 20 tickets can go to any one block at any time. You may have to wait to get mined, but if you wish to get mined faster, you’ll need to pay some fees.
  • Once mined, your ticket is “immature” and will be held outside the random draw pool until 256 blocks have been mined, which is in approximately 20 hours.
  • After your ticket enters the draw pool, you will have to hold out for your chance to be chosen as one of the five validators that are randomly picked to verify the block
  • Your ticket has a 50% chance of being selected within 28 days and a 99.5% chance of being selected before it expires (after around four months).
  • Once your ticket’s chosen, you’ll help validate a block and be rewarded with a price for the ticket and also a staking reward.

The Decred system is also fair in that validators can participate in staking pools. As such, if a validator can’t make it to be part of the validation process, they can simply have their pool validate a block on their behalf.  

So far, you can see that Decred gives the power of participation to both users and miners. Unlike the Bitcoin system, miners do not possess disproportionate power over the network. If, for instance, a miner decides to mine a malicious block i.e., a transaction unrelated to the chain, validators can simply decline to verify the block. As you know already, PoW takes a lot of computational power, and for that, miners have very little incentive to do something that won’t pass with the validators.

How Safe Is the PoW/PoS Hybrid?

Just HOW safe is the PoW/PoS hybrid mechanism? A crypto analyst named Zubair Zia made it his mission to test the security of Decred’s chain vs. Bitcoin’s or a PoW/PoS model vs. a pure PoW model. He wanted to see which chain would more easily succumb to a 51% attack.

He used BITMAIN’s Antminer s9i’s, which has a rate of 14 tera-hashes per second. His calculations demonstrated that it was 22 times as expensive to hit Decred as compared to Bitcoin as of June 2, 2018.

In short, the hybrid system is 22 times more secure than a purely PoW system.

Lightning Network for Transactions

Decred has also implemented the Lightning Network.  The Lightning Network (LN) is an off-chain technology that has been explored by multiple cryptocurrencies to improve scalability. LN helps to settle payments outside of the blockchain so as to reduce traffic and backlog on the main chain.

LN works by having two users set up a payment channel on the network and depositing an equal amount of funds. Any time one user wishes to transact, they simply send a promissory note to the other user indicating a change of the total sum in the shared channel.

Since transactions happen off the chain, users also pay fewer fees since there’s no queue. Transactions are also instant, and there’s even added privacy thanks to a Tor-like routing algorithm for transactions. 

Decred’s Politeia

Thanks to a decision-making system called Politeia, Decred has managed to achieve decentralization more than any other existing cryptocurrency project.

Politeia is an ancient Greek word employed in Greek political writings, especially that of Plato and Aristotle. The term has many senses, from meaning “rights of citizens” to “form of government.”

Decred’s Politeia is designed to be the ultimate form of self-governance and community autonomy over a cryptocurrency project. Users can vote to accept or reject proposals, including budgets, software upgrades, marketing plans, constitutional amendments, and so on. When launching the system, project lead Jake Yocom-Piatt noted: “The direction of Decred now lies with the collective intelligence and creativity of its stakeholders.

We look forward to the exciting projects our community will propose.”

Where to Buy and Store DCR

You can purchase DCR from several exchanges, including Binance, Bittrex, Coinswitch, Changelly, Kucoin, Huobi, and so on by trading Bitcoin for it.

As for storage, the best wallet so far is the Decrediton wallet that’s available for Mac, Linux, Windows, and so on.

Great third party options also include Exodus, Coinomi, Atomic, Ledger Nano, etc.

Final Words

Decred has undoubtedly broken the mold, especially with its first of the kind governance system. Even though not as well-known as of yet, it’s one that has modeled cryptocurrency ideals better than perhaps the whole cryptocurrency pool right now.

The team behind it is also very well-regarded in the blockchain and crypto space, which is just the icing on the cake. With such a sound philosophy and a fantastic team, Decred is poised for success. But this will depend on the community. One can only hope it will mobilize for better and more exciting features for the platform before newer projects arrive and overtake the platform. 

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic

The Two ‘Flash Loan’ Attacks That Shook DeFi

Two attacks took the DeFi world by storm recently in what is the first DeFi major security incident. bZx, a decentralized finance protocol on Ethereum’s blockchain, endured two separate attacks after unknown persons manipulated “flash loans” and managed to drain nearly hundreds of thousands of Ether.

Two attacks took the DeFi world by storm recently in what is the first DeFi major security incident. bZx, a decentralized finance protocol on Ethereum’s blockchain, endured two separate attacks after unknown persons manipulated “flash loans” and managed to drain nearly hundreds of thousands of Ether.

Two attacks took the DeFi world by storm recently in what is the first DeFi major security incident. bZx, a decentralized finance protocol on Ethereum’s blockchain, endured two separate attacks after unknown persons manipulated “flash loans” and managed to drain nearly hundreds of thousands of Ether.

The First Attack

The first attack took place on Valentine’s night when the bZx team was attending ETHDenver – an Ethereum conference that brings together minds across the blockchain and DeFi space annually. The attacker took out $350,000 worth of ETH from Fulcrum, bZx’s lending platform by playing together several other DeFi protocols; Compound, Uniswap, and dYdX.

The attack happened this way:

The person borrowed 10,000 ETH from dYdX and then posted half the amount to DeFi protocol Compound and the other half to bZx. They then borrowed 112 wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC, which are ERC-20 tokens backed on a 1:1 ratio by Bitcoin.) With the amount on bZx, they entered into a short position for 112 WBTC, after which they sold the 112 WBTC from Compound on Uniswap. This move made the bZx sale very profitable. The attacker then repaid their dYdX loan and kept the proceeds from the short sale – 1,300 ETH. All this happened in a single transaction.

bZx admits the attack was “one of the most sophisticated” they’ve ever seen, which is big. Whoever pulled the attack must’ve had a very in-depth knowledge of all the protocols involved, together with their various tools. It also demonstrates the high levels of interoperability possible among various DeFi protocols – which is ideal, except when that interoperability can be maliciously manipulated. The attack had no precedent in DeFi, prompting the DeFi space to ask hard questions about the security future of DeFi.

In response to the attack, bZx in a slightly controversial move shut down Fulcrum.  Users and analysts noted bZx shut down the platform using a non-decentralized master key. But the firm defended the move, arguing, “the core of the debate here is whether we should be ruled by machines or economics. When you have an immutable contract that can’t be upgraded, you are ruled by machines. When the power to exist is distributed among representative stakeholders, you are ruled by economics. Both are valid methods for implementing decentralization.”

The Second Attack

And just when trading had resumed over the weekend and operations back to normal, attackers targeted bZx again, this time netting $633,000. This one took place just after 03:00 UTC Tuesday. The person(s) took out a flash loan of 7,500 ETH using 3, 518 ETH to purchase the stablecoin sUSD stablecoin from the issuer, which they then deposited as collateral for a bZx loan.

They then used 900 ETH to bid up the value of sUSD through Uniswap/Kyber then borrowed another 6,796 of ETH from bZx, using it to repay the 7,500 ETH loan and then pocketed the remaining value: 2, 378 ETH.

What’s shocking but also impressive is that the entire attack took place in just over a minute.

What are Flash Loans?

Flash loans are loans that users take and pay back in the same transaction so as to amplify their payouts. With a flash loan, a borrower loses nothing. The network can usually see whether or not a flash loan will be instantly repaid, and if not, it can reject all transactions associated with it. If it goes through, however, the lender gets a small fee, and the trader gains a profit, and everybody is happy.

But things aren’t always as simple as demonstrated by the bZx scenario. A flash loan carries great risk, especially with exploitable bugs in a platform’s code, or unreliable price feeds. In this case, the attacker(s) did not intend to simply buy low or sell high, but to deliberately manipulate vulnerable price markets.

Aftermath

Shortly after the first attack, investors started jumping from the bZx ship, but things seemed to get back to normal after the firm released a statement acknowledging the issue and addressing the way forward. 

As for the future of DeFi security, DeFi experts agree that this is a new territory; hence mistakes are bound to occur. Speaking to CoinDesk, Staked CEO asserted: “These are big risks. It’s a new category, it’s moving fast, and some things are going to break.”

The bZx team is now focused on securing the network and deterring future attacks. The firm already implemented a check that will disallow even overcollateralized loans in the future and has already put a cap on maximum trade sizes so as to limit the scope of potential attacks. It will also be implementing a Chainlink oracle to supplement Kyber’s price feed to be able to get time-weighted price info at any given time.

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 26 – Crypto market continuing the downtrend; BTC to retest $9,000?

The crypto market continued its path down and lost some value as a whole. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,170, which represents a 3.78% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 6.59% on the day, while XRP lost 7.89%.

The crypto market continued its path down and lost some value as a whole. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,170, which represents a 3.78% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 6.59% on the day, while XRP lost 7.89%.

The crypto market continued its path down and lost some value as a whole. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,170, which represents a 3.78% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 6.59% on the day, while XRP lost 7.89%.

Dragon Coins took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 22.16%. On the other side, Decentraland lost 16.54% on the day, making it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s gained some dominance in the past 24 hours. Its value is now 64.11%, which represents a 0.73 difference to the upside when compared to the value from when we last reported.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization a lot of its value over the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $261.62 billion, which represents a decrease of $13.63 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

Coinbase announced that the company became a principal member of Visa on Feb 19. Coinbase, which is one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, is now able to issue their own debit cards without involving any third parties.

While Coinbase didn’t share what it would do in the future, its new status grants it the possibility to issue debit cards to other cryptocurrency firms. This development certainly marks an important milestone for the cryptocurrency payments sector.

Honorable mention

Chainlink 

Polkadot is preparing for its upcoming network launch after the reveal that they will be integrating with Chainlink. The integration of Chainlink oracles could be crucial for the development of DeFi (Polkadot decentralized finance) as well as other advanced smart contracts.

Chainlink has completed its initial integration on Kusama, which is a canary network for Polkadot (similar to a testnet).

_______________________________________________________________________

Technical analysis

_______________________________________________________________________

Bitcoin

Bitcoin continued to move downwards as a prolonged Feb 24 bearish move. The largest cryptocurrency fell under the $9,255 support, which could not hold the bear pressure for long. The RSI finally entered the oversold area where the bear move stopped (for now) and BTC started consolidating.


Bitcoin’s volume is average for this week. It’s RSI level is currently in the oversold territory.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $9,255                                           1: $9,120

2: $9,580                                           2: $9,070

3: $9,735                                            3: $8,915

Ethereum

Ethereum’s price took an even bigger hit than Bitcoin’s. The second-largest cryptocurrency continued its move down and dropped under the $251.3 support as well as under the $240 one. However, bulls came to the market and pushed the price slightly above the $240 support, which is where ETH’s price is at right now.


Ethereum’s volume average when compared to volumes from this week, while its RSI level is currently just above the oversold territory on the 4-hour chart.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $251.3                                             1: $240

2: $259.5                                            2: $225.5  

3: $279                                                3: $217.7

Ripple

XRP performed the worst out of the top3 cryptos in the past 24 hours. After its price fell below the $0.266 major support (now resistance), the outlook quickly became bearish. However, the drop did not end there, as XRP managed to break $0.2454 to the downside as well. Its price is now right under this level.


XRP’s volume quite low, with the exception of one candlestick, which brought its price below $0.2454. Its RSI level is currently sitting in oversold territory.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.2454                                          1: $0.235

2: $0.266                                            2: $0.227

3: $0.285                                             3: $0.221

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 25 – Crypto market continuing its move down; First crypto bank in the US?

The crypto market dropped some value as Bitcoin, and the other cryptos failed to reach new highs. This move is a continuation of the small downtrend that started on Feb 24. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,527, which represents a 2.29% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 4.03% on the day, while XRP lost 3.96%.

The crypto market dropped some value as Bitcoin, and the other cryptos failed to reach new highs. This move is a continuation of the small downtrend that started on Feb 24. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,527, which represents a 2.29% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 4.03% on the day, while XRP lost 3.96%.

The crypto market dropped some value as Bitcoin, and the other cryptos failed to reach new highs. This move is a continuation of the small downtrend that started on Feb 24. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,527, which represents a 2.29% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 4.03% on the day, while XRP lost 3.96%.

DxChain Token took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 5.46%. On the other side, Wayki Chain lost 22.69% on the day, which made it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance increased slightly in the past 24 hours. Its value is now 63.38%, which represents a 0.53 difference to the upside when compared to the value from when we last reported.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization increased slightly over the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $275.25 billion, which represents a decrease of $7.28 billion when its value is compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

Former Wall Street executive Caitlin Long is taking advantage of Wyoming legislature to establish the first crypto-native bank in the United States. The bank’s name will be Avanti, meaning “forward” in Italian.

Long announced the news in a series of 29 tweets. She believes that a critical piece of US market infrastructure is missing, with her bank being the solution.

Honorable mention

EOS troubles? 

One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase, said that the EOS has degraded its performance, with sends and receives possibly suffering from delays.

The exchange later stated that the EOS network is still suffering from degraded performance. However, EOS Nation responded that the EOS main net is “currently extremely reliable.”

The tweet that EOS Nation posted included a chart that was showing a slight blip on Feb 20, with 192 blocks missing due to the micro-forking issue. However, the chart also indicated a stable mainnet performance for the past two weeks.

_______________________________________________________________________

Technical analysis

_______________________________________________________________________

Bitcoin

Bitcoin continued to move down as a prolonged Feb 24 move to the downside. The largest cryptocurrency is now under the $9,580 support, and it looks like it will drop some more. With RSI still not reaching oversold and plenty of leeway to the next support, Bitcoin certainly has a big chance of pulling back even further.


Bitcoin’s volume is lower when compared to the past week. It’s RSI level is approaching lower values of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $9,580                                           1: $9,255

2: $9,735                                           2: $9,120

3: $9,870                                            3: $9,070

Ethereum

Ethereum followed in Bitcoin’s footsteps and lost some value as well. In fact, Ethereum managed to drop more in price than Bitcoin over the past 24 hours. While going down in price, Ethereum broke its $259.5 support.


Ethereum’s volume is on the lower side of the spectrum, while its RSI level is slightly below the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $259.5                                             1: $251.3

2: $279                                               2: $240  

3: $289                                                3: $225.5

Ripple

XRP made pretty much the same move as Ethereum. Its price continued to move down, breaking one of the biggest support levels to the downside. XRP broke $0.266 and is slowly moving below it. However, the 4-hour candle did not close below the support (now resistance) yet.


XRP’s volume is extremely low, while its RSI level is approaching oversold.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.266                                            1: $0.2454

2: $0.285                                            2: $0.235

3: $0.31                                               3: $0.227

Categories
Crypto Videos

Five Of The Best Trading Strategies For Trading Part 2

https://youtu.be/nY-e_vjYt3I

https://youtu.be/nY-e_vjYt3I

Five proper trading strategies for trading crypto during turbulent periods – part 2/2

This video will touch upon three more ways of dealing with turbulent periods of the crypto market.

Following the Trend

If you did your research and concluded that trend would continue for a while, or if it is too hard to predict when the price will change its direction, following the trend is a more risk-averse strategy. With this strategy, you should trade with the trend rather than trading with the swings. If the market is trending up, open only long trades. If the market is dropping, open only short trades. Trend followers start trading only after a trend has been established, while they exit when the trend changes. This trading method is also called “Position Trading.”
There is quite a number of tools that you can use to maximize profits as well as to minimize risks. These include margin trading, leverage, and stop-loss orders.

Advantages: Strategy such as following the trend is more of a risk-averse strategy. It works if the market, whether the market is going up or down.
Downsides: Crypto markets are unpredictable, so you will need good mechanisms put in place to protect against sudden changes in price direction.

Investing in Staking Coins

Employing this strategy will require doing some serious research.
Staking coins and tokens are the assets that perfectly align with the diversification goal an investor might have, as they generate staking profits over time. All you have to do is to buy them, lock them and stake, therefore becoming a validator node in their network. Validator nodes receive rewards for generating new blocks and securing blockchain networks. There are many staking coins and tokens out there, such as DASH, NEO, Lisk, Qtum, etc.
Advantages: This investment strategy doesn’t require any additional maintenance from you.
Downsides: You are still exposed, to some degree, to the ups and downs of the market.

Investing in a Tokenized Crypto Fund

If you want to collect some form of profit from all of the strategies mentioned above, you should opt for tokenized crypto funds.
These funds are pools of investor capital that are managed by a team of professional investors. Fund managers use a range of strategies to earn returns on all of the capital within the fund. Investors that join the pool benefit from having access to the skills professional traders have, while the professional traders benefit from having much more capital to work with.
Tokenized crypto funds examples
There are some examples of tokenized crypto funds available to the public. Crypto20 is an autonomously organized crypto fund that functions as an index fund for, but for cryptocurrencies. This is not the only crypto fund available, as there are quite a few nowadays.

Conclusion

In times of panic and market downfall, experienced investors usually come out on top. By using the right strategies and having a cool head, it’s possible to be profitable during all market conditions.

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 24 – New Jersey regulating crypto?

The crypto market is currently at the same price level as when we last reported. However, that does not mean that the markets were stagnant over the weekend. Many cryptos attempted to reclaim previous highs but failed and started consolidating or losing a bit of value. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,736, which represents a 1.41% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 1.39% on the day, while XRP lost 3.29%.

The crypto market is currently at the same price level as when we last reported. However, that does not mean that the markets were stagnant over the weekend. Many cryptos attempted to reclaim previous highs but failed and started consolidating or losing a bit of value. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,736, which represents a 1.41% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 1.39% on the day, while XRP lost 3.29%.

The crypto market is currently at the same price level as when we last reported. However, that does not mean that the markets were stagnant over the weekend. Many cryptos attempted to reclaim previous highs but failed and started consolidating or losing a bit of value. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,736, which represents a 1.41% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 1.39% on the day, while XRP lost 3.29%.

WaykiChain took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 62.30%. On the other side, Swipe lost 9.58% on the day, which made it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance remained at exactly the same place as before the weekend. It is now at 62.85%, which represents a decrease of 0.03% when compared to the value it had on Friday.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization increased slightly over the weekend. It is currently valued at $282.53 billion, which represents an increase of $1.78 billion when its value is compared to the value it had on Friday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

The New Jersey state legislature is considering a new bill to regulate cryptocurrency. If passed, every cryptocurrency businesses would have to obtain a proper license in order to operate in their state.

This bill is called the Digital Asset and Blockchain Technology Act, which was proposed by assemblywoman Yvonne Lopez on Feb 20.

Honorable mention

Monero 

Italy’s crypto-powered debit card supplier Bitsa is continuing with its expansion. Its prepaid card expanded by adding support to the privacy-focused altcoin Monero (XMR).

By enabling support for Monero on its Bitsa Card, this company unclocks the ability to use all Monero-based card transactions in both physical stores and online.

_______________________________________________________________________

Technical analysis

_______________________________________________________________________

Bitcoin

Bitcoin had a turbulent weekend, though its current price doesn’t show it (if compared to our last report on Friday). The largers cryptocurrency by market cap attempted to break $10,000 over the weekend on two ocasions. however, the $10,015 resistance held up nicely and the bulls could not reach above. The price fell sharply after the second failed attempt, which brought BTC to the support of $9,580. However, the bulls did not allow it to drop further and BTC is now consolidating just above the $9,735 support level.


Bitcoin’s volume is slightly lower when compared to the past week. It’s RSI level is in the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $9,870                                           1: $9,735

2: $10,015                                         2: $9,580

3: $10,360                                          3: $9,255

Ethereum

Ethereum had a nice upwards-moving trend that started on Feb 20. However, the most recent failed attempt to break $279 made bears take over and bring the price down to lower levels. Ethereum is now consolidating at $268, which is in the middle of the range between $279 to the upside and $259.5 to the downside.


Ethereum’s is slightly lower when compared to the past week, while its RSI level is slightly above the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $279                                                1: $259.5

2: $289                                               2: $251.3  

3: $302                                                3: $240

Ripple

XRP was, unlike ETH and BTC, extremely stagnant over the weekend. In fact, its price has been moving within the range bound by $0.285 to the upside and $0.266 to the downside since Feb 19. XRP made one attempt to break this range to the upside over the weekend but failed. Its price is now consolidating in the middle of the range.


XRP’s volume is quite low at the moment, while its RSI level is in the lower part of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.285                                            1: $0.266

2: $0.31                                              2: $0.2454

3: $0.324                                             3: $0.235

Categories
Crypto Videos

Five Of The Best Trading Strategies For Trading Part 1

https://youtu.be/YVrJOWf6M6g

https://youtu.be/YVrJOWf6M6g

Five trading strategies for trading crypto during turbulent periods – part 1/2

The cryptocurrency market is known to be quite volatile. Volatility brings a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of risk to the traders. These are five of the best ways to make a profit when markets are turbulent.


Scalping

Scalping is a well-known strategy amongst traders. This strategy takes advantage of small market movements and requires precision and decisiveness. Traders are quickly entering and exiting positions during an hour, a minute, or even just a few seconds. The key to this strategy is making many small trades. There is no need for high returns per trade, as there are many opportunities for scalpers. You should rather be aiming to maintain or increase your win/loss ratio. With this strategy, the size of winning and losing trades is almost the same as there is no opportunity to maintain a high reward-to-risk trade setup. Therefore, in order to profit, you need to win more often than to lose.
Scalper traders usually want to avoid high volatility because this trading strategy does not cope well with unpredictable moves. The best time for a scalper to trade is during a ranging market bound by strict support and resistance levels.
While scalping is considered relatively safe, it requires patience and discipline as well as some experience in reading the charts. Scalpers may utilize trading algorithms and bots to make trades for them, therefore avoiding any emotion-based trades.


Buying the Dips

This strategy may seem counterintuitive to some people, but a drop in any asset’s price is a great time to buy it, as long as the asset is known for being volatile. Assuming we are talking about a strong asset, the price will revert and reach the previous highs as soon as the market regains its confidence.

When taking a quick look at the Bitcoin price over the past decade, we can see a strong upward trend, but also times when the price was over and undervalued. As most buyers and sellers are just regular people and not professional traders and investors, the crypto market is extremely sensitive to news stories and media hype. When the good news gets published, people rush to buy already overvalued cryptocurrencies. On the other hand, when something bad happens, people panic and sell their holdings at below their true value.
Times such as these are the perfect opportunity for investors to buy the undervalued cryptocurrencies. Using their expertise to assess the market conditions and fundamentals, they predict when the market is most undervalued. When they determine that the market is likely to make a recovery, they buy.

As an opposite strategy to scalping, buying the price dips doesn’t require much precision, but rather expertise and “feel” in order to recognize when an asset is undervalued. You only need to make a single trade and wait for the profit from the upward trajectory to kick in. However, you probably won’t see any quick profits. On top of that, perfect market timing is everything with this strategy as you need to recognize market reversals.

Check out part 2 of our trading strategies to find out more about how to trade during volatile periods of the crypto market.

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic Cryptocurrencies

What is Bumo Blockchain?

Before we say a single thing about Bumo blockchain, we need to talk about blockchain. Blockchain is a publicly distributed ledger that records transactions between parties permanently, transparently, and in a peer-to-peer manner.  

Before we say a single thing about Bumo blockchain, we need to talk about blockchain. Blockchain is a publicly distributed ledger that records transactions between parties permanently, transparently, and in a peer-to-peer manner.  

Before we say a single thing about Bumo blockchain, we need to talk about blockchain. Blockchain is a publicly distributed ledger that records transactions between parties permanently, transparently, and in a peer-to-peer manner.  

The concept of blockchain existed in the developer community for years. Still, it only came to life in 2008 when a person/people under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto created a blockchain to serve as the underlying technology under the world’s first cryptocurrency – Bitcoin.

Since then, numerous cryptocurrencies have been created by developers all over the world – either running on their own blockchains or other cryptocurrencies’ blockchains.  The technology has also broken out of the cryptocurrency application and has been adopted in other industries – from finance to healthcare to supply chain and so on. These applications represent the private, enterprise side, of blockchain.

What is Bumo?

Bumo is a next-generation enterprise-grade public blockchain that hopes to host what it calls a ‘ubiquitous’ value transfer, smart contracts, and decentralized applications platform. The Bumo project is still in beta, i.e., still in development. 

Let’s look at some of Bumo’s unique selling points right off the park:

  • Two or more users can create an account together, thanks to what the platform calls “individual account weightage”
  • A Merkle-Patricia Tree to help store data efficiently
  • A “trailer” system that helps segregate on-chain and off-chain data
  • An ‘Orbit’ infrastructure helping support Bumo’s 2-layer multiform architecture
  • A 2-layer multi-chain consensus structure that’ll enable up to 10,000 transactions per second
  • A “Canal” system to facilitate interoperability
  • A robust and friendly toolkit for developers to create smart contracts
  • The ability for developers to build apps that aren’t necessarily backed by a smart contract

In this guide, we’ll look at these features in greater detail and see what Bumo hopes to do differently for the blockchain ecosystem. To do that, we first need to talk about the inherent problems with blockchain right now.  

Problems with the Blockchain

Scalability

The first and second-generation blockchain’s scalability issue refers to their inability to handle high-volume transactions within a short period of time – hence they can’t be used to serve millions of people all over the world.

One reason for this is the mining-based verification mechanism that requires miners to verify transactions and then record the verified transactions in the blockchain. This creates a backlog of transactions and a slow, overloaded network since a miner can only mine a certain number of transactions at any time.

The other reason is the 1MB sized blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain, which severely limits how much data any one block can hold. This means your transactions have to wait in a queue for roughly 10 minutes. On the Ethereum blockchain, there are no block size limits, but transactions may take an average of 15 seconds before verification. 

Lack of Interoperability

Interoperability, or lack of it, is another issue with existing blockchains. Existing blockchains e.g., Bitcoin and Ethereum, are not built to be able to interact with each other. This is why crypto exchanges have the power that they do since they provide a much-needed portal on which different cryptos can interact with each other.

But exchanges are centralized entities, which goes against the decentralization principle of cryptocurrencies. Besides, centralization makes cryptocurrencies vulnerable to hacking and blackouts, which can stall services.

The lack of interoperability also means mainstream adoption of the blockchain is impossible. This is because, for blockchain technology to be integrated into the mainstream, it needs to be able to interact with existing systems.

BUMO is a next-generation blockchain that’s going to be catering to businesses. It comprises of two-layer chains that will help streamline transactions on the blockchain. The Bumo system will also be interoperable with both heterogeneous and homogeneous blockchain.  

The Team behind Bumo

Bumo is a vision of four core people: Steven Li, Steven Guo, John Zhao, and Yuliang Zheng. This team has between them a wealth of experience in Physics, blockchain, cryptography, and hashing technology.

Core Features of Bumo

Let’s dive deeper into the core features the Bumo blockchain that makes it stand out: 

A Multisig account

A multisig (multi-signature) is an account owned and controlled by more than one party. The Bumo blockchain uses something known as ‘account weightage’ to give more power of access to some signature holders over others. For example, if three people own a business and they have an account on the Bumo blockchain, the CEO’s approval, for instance, will count more than the other two’s.  This is an approach that the Bumo team hopes will appeal to big companies.

The Merkle Patricia Trie (MPT)

The Merkle Patricia Trie is a tool that combines the technologies of Merkle Tree and Patricia (Practical Algorithm to Retrieve Information Coded in Alphanumeric) Tree. This combination makes it easier to find particular transactions by reducing the time that would be taken to ascertain if that transaction belongs to a particular block or not.

Trailer System for Off-Chain and On-Chain Data

Depending on the characteristics of the data, the Bumo blockchain will differentiate data into off-chain and on-chain data, providing a streamlined system for handling heavy and complex data. This differentiation will help reduce the burden on the blockchain and save on hardware costs because the node network will experience less strain.

Interoperability Feature of the Bumo Blockchain

The Bumo blockchain has the Canal system, which is two-layered – with main chains and cross chains. The main chains comprise collection and validation nodes. The validation nodes provide “high-level” consensus for transactions on the cross-chain.

Cross chains are akin to the routers in a traditional network system. They route data from various blockchains towards the target blockchain. 

BUMO and Smart Contracts

BUMO hopes to be the best destination for smart contracts. The platform will feature these properties which are specifically geared to help it achieve this purpose:

i) Turing complete, or ‘computationally universal,’ which means a contract can solve any problem with the right tools

ii) Fast deployment 

iii) Flexible calls

iv) Reliable execution of smart contracts

v) The Bumo platform features a virtual machine called the BuVM (Bumo Virtual Machine). BuVM has the following properties to enable what Bumo calls “Eco-Friendly Smart Contracts.”

  • More advanced smart contract performance
  • Increased security for smart contracts
  • Multi-language support for smart contracts
  • Developer-friendly tools and environment

Also, the Bumo platform will provide a unique space for app developers, thanks to the following features:

  • Native application programming interface tools
  • WebSocket-like features
  • Ability to create an app or tokenize assets without the need for a smart contract. This is what Bumo calls “Account-based Tokenization Protocol,” in which users will be able to issue tokens by the mere virtue of having an account on the Bumo blockchain.

Benefits of Bumo

☑️The ability to tokenize assets quickly, safely and reliably

☑️A friendly environment for developers to create decentralized applications

☑️The ability to handle up to 10,000 transactions per second

☑️Reduce the costs of operation, maintenance, and exchange of data in the blockchain

☑️It will allow the connection of Internet of Things devices that will create value for thousands of people

☑️It is user-friendly

☑️People can exchange smart contract values faster and safely

☑️It promotes the free flow of digital assets

Final Thoughts

The Bumo blockchain is poised to reinvent several aspects of blockchain and stir the crypto space for the better. If Bumo succeeds, it’s very likely the blockchain world will bid goodbye problems like scalability issues, lack of interoperability, and the need to be well-versed in programing language so as to create applications. Will the Bumo team deliver, or is it another overhyped blockchain project? As with many things in blockchain tech, only time will tell. 

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 21 – Morgan Stanley dipping its toes into crypto? Analysts still confused by the price drop

The crypto market seems to have taken the day off, as there were no significant price movements. Meanwhile, analysts are still trying to pinpoint the cause of the fifth-largest single-hour drop since 2017. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,677, which represents a 0.77% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.01% on the day, while XRP lost 0.38%.

The crypto market seems to have taken the day off, as there were no significant price movements. Meanwhile, analysts are still trying to pinpoint the cause of the fifth-largest single-hour drop since 2017. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,677, which represents a 0.77% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.01% on the day, while XRP lost 0.38%.

The crypto market seems to have taken the day off, as there were no significant price movements. Meanwhile, analysts are still trying to pinpoint the cause of the fifth-largest single-hour drop since 2017. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,677, which represents a 0.77% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 0.01% on the day, while XRP lost 0.38%.

Algorand took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 15.96%. On the other side, ABBC Coin lost 11.94% on the day, which made it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance increased slightly as altcoins fell just a bit more than BTC did in the past 24 hours. It is now at 62.85%, which represents an increase of 0.11% when compared to the value it had yesterday.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization increased slightly in the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $280.75 billion, which represents an increase of $1.85 billion when compared to yesterday’s value.

What happened in the past 24 hours

Morgan Stanley, one of the biggest investment banks, is buying an online trading firm called E*Trade Financial Group. This $13 billion deal will be Morgan Stanley’s largest takeover since the economic breakdown of 2008. Morgan Stanley will bring E*Trade’s five million clients as well as $360 billion in assets.

E*Trade is planning to offer digital currency trading on its platform. The company is preparing to offer BTC and ETH trading.

Honorable mention

Cardano 

The Cardano network is scheduled to perform a network upgrade on Feb 20. This upgrade will introduce Ouroboros BFT to its users. Ouroboros BFT is an improved consensus mechanism, which will allow for staking.

The upgrade will be executed on Thursday at exactly 9:44 PM UTC, or 4:44 PM EST. The network will undergo a hard fork.

_______________________________________________________________________

Technical analysis

_______________________________________________________________________

Bitcoin

Bitcoin didn’t move much price-wise in the past 24 hours. Bulls attempted to make a run and take over the $9,735 resistance level, but failed to do so. This put Bitcoin in the same spot as yesterday, bound between the $9,735 resistance and $9,580 support levels.


Bitcoin’s volume fell in the past 24 hours, while its RSI level is just below the middle of the value range. All key levels stayed the same as the largest cryptocurrency did not break any supports or resistances.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $9,735                                           1: $9,580

2: $9,870                                           2: $9,255

3: $10,015                                          3: $9,120

Ethereum

Ethereum didn’t move much either. In fact, most of the market had quite a low volume, so the volatility was low as well. The second-largest cryptocurrency fell below the $259.5 support level at one point but managed to reach back above it. It is currently hovering at around $260.


Ethereum’s volume dropped slightly, just like Bitcoin’s. It’s RSI level is also at nearly the same level, which is just under the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $279                                                1: $259.5

2: $289                                               2: $251.3  

3: $302                                                3: $240

Ripple

XRP suffered from the same fate as the top3 cryptocurrencies in the past 24 hours. However, its price movement was more alike to Ethereum’s than to Bitcoin’s. The third-largest cryptocurrency attempted to break the $0.266 support line but failed to do so. The price has increased since and XRP is now trading at $0.275, which is almost exactly where it was during our last report.


XRP’s volume is quite low at the moment, while its RSI level is in the lower parts of the value range. No key levels have been broken in the past 24 hours.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.285                                            1: $0.266

2: $0.31                                              2: $0.2454

3: $0.324                                             3: $0.235

Categories
Crypto Guides

Top 4 Ways To Earn Cryptocurrency For Free

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

Cryptocurrencies have been one of the most spoken topics in the last decade. That too, in the last three years, the interest in investing or trading cryptos has been the maximum. We have also been discussing a lot about cryptocurrency lately in our detailed guides. We understood the various properties of cryptos and what makes this currency truly amazing. So, if you are a novice trader or investor or just a reader, we believe that you have at least a little interest in owning some of the top cryptos in the market.

One can buy cryptos easily in different ways, such as purchasing them in an exchange or using services like localbitcoin.com, etc. While these are some of the easiest ways to purchase cryptos, all of them involve investing your own money. But what if we say there are various ways in the market where you can earn cryptos for free? Yes. Many people are already grabbing these opportunities and earning a good amount of cryptos without having to invest their hard-earned money.

We have listed four of the most efficient ways to earn crypto for free. Please note that earning these cryptos does involve some amount of work from your side because nothing on this planet is truly free. However, you are not required to put any of your funds or take a full-time job for a crypto company. So let’s see the different possible ways to earn free cryptos.

💸 Through Airdrops

This is by far the most popular way of earning free cryptos. Airdrops work just like giveaways. Any crypto startup would prefer giving their coins for free in order to spread their name. It’s a marketing strategy where the participants of the airdrop get to avail free cryptos. There is a minimum amount of work involved in this process, like follow the company’s Twitter account, joining their telegram page, etc.

Anyone with an active ERC-20 compatible Ethereum Wallet can participate in these airdrops. Make sure to do your research to find the airdrops offered by some of the most potential crypto companies; because the free cryptos that you have earned in airdrops must increase in value later to make a profit out of them.

As we can see below, the last Stellar’s airdrop involved an offering of close to 375 million Stellar coins.

Picture Taken From – Blockchain.com

💸 Coinbase Earn Programme

Users of one of the very well-known crypto exchange – Coinbase, can earn free cryptocurrencies by completing some of the interesting courses provided by them. These courses include lessons about the basics of how certain cryptocurrencies work. The point here is that this exchange offers free coins of crypto to their users by educating them and creating exposure to that crypto.

Picture Taken From – Coinbase

We can currently earn cryptos worth $186 (as of Feb 2020) by just signing up with Coinbase and completing the courses offered by them. Dai, EOS, Stellar, and Zcash are some of the familiar cryptos that can be earned through this program. You can follow this link to start with the courses.

💸 Participating In the Bounty Programs

Free cryptocurrencies can be earned through participating in various bounty programs offered by the crypto/blockchain companies. There are different types of bounties, such as Bug bounties, Content bounties, Social bounties, and Signature bounties. In bug bounties, cryptos are offered to the people who help the companies in finding bugs in their code. The rest of the bounties involve creating content and exposure for both crypto start-ups and well-established companies in different forums. So these programs are not just for tech-savvy individuals but also for promotors.

Recently, Coinbase has offered about $30,000 worth of cryptos to an ethical hacker who founds potential bugs in their system.

Picture Taken From – Hackerone

💸 Through Affiliate Marketing

Many of the cryptocurrency companies have their own affiliate marketing programs for individuals or companies who are willing to promote and generate sales for them. For instance, companies like Trezor, Ledger, Binance, and LocalBitcoins offer 10% – 40% of commissions to their referrals. Details about each of these affiliate marketing programs can be found in their corresponding websites.

Bottom line

There are many other ways through which free cryptocurrency can be earned, but these seemed to the most effective ones. Not every company that offer free cryptos have the best interest for their customers. So please do thorough research about the authenticity of any program you are willing to take part in. All the best.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Five Tips For Entering The Cryptocurrency Bull Market – Avoiding Common Mistakes

https://youtu.be/OzwDYX_LzbU

https://youtu.be/OzwDYX_LzbU

Five tips for entering the cryptocurrency bull market

 

With the cryptocurrency market being on the verge of a bull market, it is good to know what to do when that happens.

1. Withdraw from the crypto exchange after you’ve finished trading!


Exchanges are notoriously insecure, and with all the security breaches, mismanaging of the user funds, exit scams, or a surprise AML/KYC to seize the investors’ funds, you’re always at risk with your holdings being held by the exchange. There are many valid reasons why “Not your keys, not your Bitcoin,” became a mantra among traders. Many traders lost substantial amounts of money to hacks, unethical exchanges, and exit scams.
When it comes to surprise AML/KYC seizures, it could be possible to recover funds by doxxing yourself, which is not ideal. However, some platforms simply make the demands for personal information that are so appalling that you may never get your cryptos back.

2. Stop talking about your portfolio!

Operational security is the king in the land of cryptocurrencies. During the last bull market, some people that were talking about their outrageous gains got kidnapped, become victims of home invaders trying to find their crypto-keys and devices. All this because they wanted to brag about their portfolio gains on social media. Advertising your gains on social media (or anywhere for that matter) is like painting a red dot on your forehead.

3. Keep your holdings on a hardware wallet!


Another security consideration should be to store your holdings offline on a hardware wallet. Preferably, it would help if you kept the hardware wallet and recovery seed in different and secure locations. Hacking, as well as ransomware, is, sadly, an epidemic online. Therefore, keeping your coins off your laptop or mobile phone is an easy way to sidestep the risk of losing your holdings this way.

4. Don’t use trading signal services!


Countless trading coaches popped up on the internet during the last bull run. They offered courses, trading signals, and paid trading signal groups without any testimonials of what they did prior to being coaches. While it is obvious that these trading coaches are scam artists, many people fell for their scam and lost quite a lot of money.

There are many ways to learn how to trade safely. Taking free courses or reading free ebooks about trading, as well as practicing on a demo account, all fall into this category.

5. Perform in-depth research before investing!

The cryptocurrency industry is young and full of scammers, as most of the retail investors are young and have never tried themselves in the traditional markets. This attracts the most unscrupulous scammers that are trying to take the funds away from the investors in any way possible. During the bull market and the ICO craze of 2017, many scams and terrible investment opportunities started popping up.
The scammers in the crypto field basically forced the world’s regulatory agencies to step in and put an end to the “scammer’s free for all.” As a fun fact, there was even an ICO that used a picture of the famous actor Ryan Gosling as their supposed “graphic designer.”
Even if the projects are not scams, it is important to do the research in order to gauge whether it is worth your money or not. Do your due diligence and always make sure you are fully aware of what you’re actually investing in.

Categories
Crypto Videos

Surviving a Bear Market! – Crypto Money Making Strategies Part 2

https://youtu.be/UKIf7hxe7Y8

https://youtu.be/UKIf7hxe7Y8

Cryptos in a bear market – what to do? – part 2/2

This article is picking up where the first one left off, which is explaining various things a trader can do while the cryptocurrency market is in a bearish trend.


Holding

The second strategy would be holding, or “HODLing.” This is often a confusing term for a lot of newcomers, as most of them think that it is a misspelling. Interestingly enough, “HODL” became an acronym for “Hold On for Dear Life,” which means that investors will not sell their holdings even if the market goes into a deep downtrend.

The term represents a trading strategy, if it may be called a strategy, that is used by those who are willing to wait for greener pastures. Holding is a long-term strategy but also a philosophy of numerous investors. Since the crypto market is still young and new, it is widely believed that the current volatility, prices, and market crashes are just regular occurrences that happen on the path to stabilization and maturity. HODLers often think that the key to making a profit with cryptos is to stick to their holdings and endure the pressure. When the market stabilizes, and cryptos reach widespread adoption, it is expected that the HODLers will be rewarded for trusting in their cryptocurrencies.
HODLing is a huge part of the crypto culture nowadays. This strategy has gained a lot of support from investors all over the globe. As the overall opinion is that cryptocurrencies are here to stay, HODLing has a big potential in the long run. This strategy, just like short-selling, did not get created by crypto traders. The best example of failing to HODL, as well as the true testament of HODLing working, is Ronald Wayne’s sale of Apple shares in 1970. Back then, he made $800 from selling the shares. If he had waited a few decades, his $800 gain would have become $100 billion.

Everyone knows that predicting the future is impossible. However, popular investors such as Jay Smith think that holding is always the best option if you trust in the asset. He is convinced that cryptocurrencies will replace the old stock markets. He also said that they would power machines, the Internet of Things, governance, and voting systems, maybe even the internet itself. While he understands that it might take years, maybe even decades before this prediction comes true, he is convinced that cryptos are the future and that there is no better way to invest in crypto than by buying and holding.

Buy Low – Sell High

Naturally, investors always want to make a profit. For that reason, when the value of cryptocurrencies goes down, many investors decide to cut their losses. Only a rare few are willing to risk it and keep buying, even if their prices are going down. Most of the people tend to buy near the top and sell near the bottom of the move. This occurrence is not limited only to crypto; it is rather the human nature of risk-aversion.

While many investors panic-sell their holdings that they have bought near the top, some others are trying to average down the price of their holdings. As always, any and every investor must do proper in-depth research before buying any coin.


Diversification

Finally, the last so-called strategy for aspiring investors is always to diversify their holdings. Since predicting the future is impossible, any investment is a risk, especially cryptocurrencies. However, investing in a few projects that you are interested in increases the chances of making the right call.
Traders can diversify by investing in projects they like, but the main thing is to diversify by investing in assets with low correlation. By investing in such assets, the price drop of one asset will not affect the price of the others.

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 20 – Sudden selloff puts crypto market in the red; Bitcoin under $10,000 yet again

The crypto market fell significantly in the past 24 hours as Bitcoin dropped below $10,000 yet again. Bitcoin is currently trading for $0,590, which represents a 4.63% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 5.84% on the day, while XRP lost 6.09%.

The crypto market fell significantly in the past 24 hours as Bitcoin dropped below $10,000 yet again. Bitcoin is currently trading for $0,590, which represents a 4.63% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 5.84% on the day, while XRP lost 6.09%.

The crypto market fell significantly in the past 24 hours as Bitcoin dropped below $10,000 yet again. Bitcoin is currently trading for $0,590, which represents a 4.63% decrease on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum lost 5.84% on the day, while XRP lost 6.09%.

Kyber Network took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 22.18%. On the other side, WAX lost 21.81% on the day, which made it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance increased slightly as altcoins fell just a bit more than BTC did in the past 24 hours. It is now at 62.74%, which represents an increase of 0.19% when compared to the value it had yesterday.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization decreased significantly in the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $278.90 billion, which represents a decrease of $14.94 billion when compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

South Korean technology giant Samsung unveiled its latest smartphone series recently. The Galaxy S20 was revealed at the Unpacked 2020 event that took place in San Francisco.

While most people looked at the new camera, the official marketing material assured the market that the phone would also improve the integrated blockchain security features that they introduced a year ago with the Galaxy S10.

Honorable mention

Bitcoin Gold 

Bitcoin Gold’s price is being heavily manipulated by a whale controlling almost half of the circulating supply. Independent trader and analyst, who wants to remain anonymous, conducted this research, and came to the conclusion that one whale holds this much BTG.

He published the findings in a blog post, explaining why he believes that an individual or a single group of people accumulated a huge Bitcoin Gold position.

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Technical analysis

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin was moving slightly up or sideways until one big red candle, which brought its price to the $9,300 levels. The largest cryptocurrency experienced a massive sell-off (possibly from a single source) as the price fell from $10,150 to $9,300 during only one 5-minute candle. Bitcoin is now stable and trading above the $9,580 support level.


Bitcoin’s volume in the past 24 hours was average, with the exception of one big candle which occurred during the sudden price drop.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $9,735                                           1: $9,580

2: $9,870                                           2: $9,255

3: $10,015                                          3: $9,120

Ethereum

Ethereum experienced the same fate as Bitcoin. Its price was solid and stable while moving to the upside or sideways until one big red candle brought ETH’s price to $250. Ethereum recovered and managed to stay above the $259.5 support line.


Ethereum’s volume was average, with the exception of the big red candle. Its RSI level is hovering around the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $279                                                1: $259.5

2: $289                                               2: $251.3  

3: $302                                                3: $240

Ripple

XRP was no different from the other two of the top3 cryptocurrencies in the past 24 hours. The third-largest cryptocurrency experienced a quick and sudden selloff, which brought its price from $0.31 all the way down to $0.27. The price has not moved much from the bottom, so it is currently hovering just around $0.275.


XRP’s volume declined slightly, while the red candle during the selloff was above the daily average candle, but below average big “spike” candle XRP had recently. It’s RSI level is approaching oversold territory.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.285                                            1: $0.266

2: $0.31                                              2: $0.2454

3: $0.324                                             3: $0.235

Categories
Crypto Daily Topic Cryptocurrencies

What Is Rootstock (RSK): Understanding The Most Popular Bitcoin Blockchain

Bitcoin technology has played a phenomenal role in revolutionizing the global finance industry. Finance industry players, retail companies, and individuals understand this, hence its massive adoption across all industries. But Rootstock (RSK) sidechain developers believe that Bitcoin blockchain could be doing more. And that limitations in scalability, transaction processing, and lack of support for smart contracts the dominant cryptocoin is facing today are its biggest hindrances.

Bitcoin technology has played a phenomenal role in revolutionizing the global finance industry. Finance industry players, retail companies, and individuals understand this, hence its massive adoption across all industries. But Rootstock (RSK) sidechain developers believe that Bitcoin blockchain could be doing more. And that limitations in scalability, transaction processing, and lack of support for smart contracts the dominant cryptocoin is facing today are its biggest hindrances.

Bitcoin technology has played a phenomenal role in revolutionizing the global finance industry. Finance industry players, retail companies, and individuals understand this, hence its massive adoption across all industries. But Rootstock (RSK) sidechain developers believe that Bitcoin blockchain could be doing more. And that limitations in scalability, transaction processing, and lack of support for smart contracts the dominant cryptocoin is facing today are its biggest hindrances.

RSK developers also believe that the pioneer blockchain is money-dominated, implying that people concentrate more on Bitcoin Value than the technological revolution it promises the finance sector. And to address these issues, RSK labs sought to create a Bitcoin sidechain – Rootstock, also known as the ‘SMARTER BITCOIN.’ According to the company, the Sidechain will help Bitcoin overcome these limitations and boost its functionality and interoperability.

But what is RSK, and what progress has it made in making these feasible?

What Is RSK?

RSK is a Bitcoin sidechain connected to the BTC blockchain by a two-way peg. It can also be said to be an innovative virtual machine (RVM), tethered to the root of bitcoin blockchain with the aim of introducing the smart contract concept to the pioneer blockchain while effectively boosting its scalability. Plus, its through RSK sidechain that the crypto community will be able to create and run Bitcoin blockchain-backed smart contracts.

How does RSK hope to achieve these?

Ideally, the RSK sidechain seeks to marry the functionalities of the Ethereum blockchain with the security and efficiency of the bitcoin blockchain. To make this possible, the smart contract sidechain is tethered to the main blockchain by a two-way peg. This ensures that the side chain runs parallel to the main blockchain and that there is interchangeability of assets between both parent and side chain. It also has the backing of a semi-trusted third party that oversees the reliability of all transactions between RSK sidechain and Bitcoin blockchain in the execution of these smart contracts.

Hybrid federation to actualize smart contracts:

The semi-trusted-third-party (STTP) comprises of 25 highly accredited crypto community members of proven crypto knowledge and unquestionable integrity. And they serve as an interlink between RSK sidechain and Bitcoin blockchain, where they determine when to lock or release smart contract funds.

Why does the execution of smart contracts need a third party, you might ask? Well, because Bitcoin blockchain does not support the creation of smart contracts on its platform, RSK platform users needed an assurance that the Sidechain was operating in their best interests. And who to better provide such oversight and regularly audit the transactions carried out on the platform than the crème del crème of the crypto industry.

The 25 STTPs effectively form the hybrid federation that, in turn, operates the multi-signature wallet used to authorize the locking and release of funds. Each multi-sig wallet member has one vote, and it takes a simple majority to authorize the execution of a smart contract.

Two-way peg to actualize scalability and transaction speeds

The RSK Labs has been involved in the audit and analysis of both Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. In RSK sidechain, they have come up with a highly scalable platform that seeks to boost on-chain transaction processing speeds to 2000 in the long-run from the 3 TPS recorded by bitcoin blockchain today. They also intend to increase block confirmation speeds from 10 minutes per block to less than 10 seconds per block. To achieve this, RSK Labs developers utilized the GHOST protocol used on the Ethereum blockchain to speed up transaction processing speeds, and the DÉCOR+ block reward sharing protocol.

Note that RSK is a sidechain and will not be modifying the bitcoin blockchain code. How then does its scalability and transaction speeds impact Bitcoin? Well, the 2-way peg ensures the two blockchains run parallel to each other, and share assets like the blockchain database. This implies that if a transaction is recorded on the sidechain block, it automatically records on the main bitcoin blockchain, effectively eliminating chances of duplication. The tokens are also interchangeable, where 1 BTC = 1 SBTC (the token used on the RSK sidechain network).

RSK key features and components

Virtual machine:

RSK is to bitcoin, what EVM is Ethereum. A virtual machine through which bitcoin smart contracts can be executed. RSK, however, goes a notch higher to provide a platform on which the crypto community can create Bitcoin-based decentralized apps. And this effectively earns it the title –SmartBitcoin.

No commercializing tokens:

The fact that RSK is a sidechain that complements the Bitcoin blockchain means that its tokens won’t be commercially available. They will be restricted within the RSK to boost network operations like DApps creation. And to allow for easier interchangeability, 1 SBTC will always hold the same value as 1BTC. Let’s say you had 5 BTC and that you wanted to transact but want to leverage the speed and efficiency of the RSK sidechain. You simply exchange them for an equivalent amount of SBTC, and once done, convert your SBTC balance back to BTC.

Transactions not fully trustless:

The fact that Bitcoin’s blockchain does not support the creation of smart contracts on its native network necessitates the use of the Hybrid Federation interlink. When you exchange your BTC for SBTC or vice versa, your coins are locked in a multi-signature wallet within the 2-way peg. The federation, consisting of 25 highly accredited crypto community members, holds the keys to the multi-sig wallet. And locking and releasing funds held in the wallet only requires the authorization of a simple majority.  It provides a semi-trustless oversight over the funds as opposed to the fully independent, trustless, and automated oversight needed in a smart contract.

Merge-mining security:

 Bitcoin miners don’t need special applications or hardware to mine SBTC tokens. The RSK token mining applications are completely compatible with the bitcoin mining infrastructure. And as Bitcoin mining halves and block confirmation become harder, SBTC mining is a well-timed incentive.

The bridge between bitcoin and Ethereum:

RSK also supports the Turing Complete Programming language used by Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Ethereum DAPPs. This makes it possible for Ethereum blockchain users to easily migrate their systems to the RSK network. It is a viable option for Ethereum users, uncertain about the efficiency and reliability of the upcoming shift by Ethreum from proof of work to proof of stake.

What is the future of RSK?

Federation transitions to a drivechain/sidechain model?

Currently, RSK transactions over the 2-way peg are audited by the semi-trustless federation. Moving forward, however, and as the Sidechain gains traction and usage, RSK hopes to shift the custody of the locked coins on the 2-way peg to the merge-miners. A significant move aimed at reducing the need for trust.

RSK Educate:

RSK also looks forward to educating the crypto community on the effectiveness of its innovative Sidechain. To this end, RSK has published all the whitepapers related to this project and even created a blog where they share tips and educate the masses on how to interact with the Sidechain.

Why hasn’t RSK picked?

When RSK made public their intention to create and actualize the implementation of smart contracts, every crypto community member expected a flawless process. In its stead, RSK Labs, the developers of RSK sidechain, decided to include the semi-trustless federation of signees to maintain custody of the coins exchanged between Bitcoin main net and Sidechain.

The inherent risk associated with such an arrangement, especially considering their small and compromisable size of just 25 participants,  have seen the crypto community shy off the platform. Most of these lie in wait of the proposed upgrade to the 2-way link that elbows out the federation in favor of BTC and SBTC merge miners. 

Bottom line

It is about time Bitcoin blockchain took advantage of its massive industry support and incorporated smart contract features. And the Rootstock sidechain is here to give the blockchain its much-needed push towards execution of smart contracts. By adopting RSK, users of the already dominant legacy coin stand to benefit from such features only available with the newer blockchain models as faster transaction processing speeds, a DApps building platform, and the ability to execute bitcoin blockchain-backed smart contracts. Looking at the Bitcoin community, however, one can’t help but notice the pockets of resistance and doubts forming around the effectiveness and reliability of the Sidechain. And these are majorly attributable to its reliance on the federation of signees as custodians of the locked coins. Only time will tell if this will change once RSK migrates to verification by merge-miners.

Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 19 – IRS aiming at Crypto regulation; BTC over $10,000 once again

The crypto market rallied as Bitcoin moved above the $10,000 mark yet again. Bitcoin is currently trading for $10,058, which represents a 2.54% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 2.97% on the day, while XRP gained 0.04%.

The crypto market rallied as Bitcoin moved above the $10,000 mark yet again. Bitcoin is currently trading for $10,058, which represents a 2.54% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 2.97% on the day, while XRP gained 0.04%.

The crypto market rallied as Bitcoin moved above the $10,000 mark yet again. Bitcoin is currently trading for $10,058, which represents a 2.54% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 2.97% on the day, while XRP gained 0.04%.

ABBC Coin took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 29.24%. On the other side, MonaCoin lost 7.83% on the day, which made it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance increased slightly as altcoins rose while BTC stood still in the past 24 hours. It is now at 62.55%, which represents an increase of 0.44% when compared to the value it had yesterday.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization increased slightly in the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $293.84 billion, which represents an increase of $6.87 billion when compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

With the 2019 US tax season just around the block, the IRS wants to leave nothing off the table. The IRS has invited crypto companies and advocates to show up for a March 3 summit in Washington DC. One of the aims of the summit is to determine how to “balance taxpayer service with regulatory enforcement.”

Topics that will be discussed at the summit include regulatory guidance as well as compliance, preparing tax returns, crypto exchange issues, and technology updates.

Honorable mention

Ripple (XRP) 

A recent Medium post from Whale Alert (blockchain monitor) showed Jed McCaleb, CTO of Stellar, sold more than 1 billion XRP between 2014 and 2019. Whale Alert, however, noted that compared with the trade volume XRP has on a daily basis, the amount McCaleb sold seems insignificant.

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Technical analysis

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s went above $10,000 yet again. The bull presence increased and the price spiked from the $9,580 support level all the way to $10,290, breezing through the $9,735, $9,870 and $10,015 resistance levels. As the bulls got tired and overextended, bears took over and the price fell a bit. Bitcoin is now consolidating at the $10,100 level.


Bitcoin’s volume quite average when compared to the past week, while its RSI is now near the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $10,360                                         1: $10,015

2: $10,505                                         2: $9,870

3: $10,855                                          3: $9,735

Ethereum

Ethereum also had a green day, with gains similar to Bitcoin’s. The second-largest cryptocurrency increased in price from $244 all the way up to $286. The move broke the $251.3, $259.5, and $279 resistances with ease. The move, however, ended, and Ethereum’s price fell slightly, dropping under the $279 support (now resistance) level.


Ethereum’s volume is quite average, while its RSI level is just above the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $279                                                1: $259.5

2: $302                                              2: $251.3  

                                                           3: $240

Ripple

XRP performed worse than Bitcoin and Ethereum on the day. The third-largest cryptocurrency gained a bit of value, but actually stayed at the same level it was at 24 hours ago. It is currently consolidating and preparing for the next move, bound by the $0.31 resistance as well as $0.285 support level.


XRP’s volume is on the same levels it was at during the past week (if we disregard the few large candlesticks during the breakouts), while its RSI just under the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.31                                              1: $0.285

2: $0.324                                            2: $0.266

3: $0.332                                             3: $0.2454

 

Categories
Crypto Videos

Surviving a Bear Market! – Crypto Trading Strategies Part 1

https://youtu.be/DbtJs7LljaI

https://youtu.be/DbtJs7LljaI

Cryptos in a bear market – what to do? part 1/2

Ever since Bitcoin got created (over ten years ago), investors have learned how volatile the cryptocurrency market can be. As the years passed, bull and bear trends have constantly replaced one another, with little to no way of predicting or preventing them. Even the smallest details were enough to change the situation of the market completely.


The biggest growth that cryptocurrencies have ever seen came in 2017 when the bulls took over the market and brought coins to entirely new heights. Those that have invested prior to the bull run, made quite a fortune. However, those that invested while the prices were up — lost a fortune. This was due to a massive market crash that happened in early 2018. The downtrend continued throughout the year, all the way until now.

These days, experts predict a new bull run, as they believe that cryptocurrencies follow an established market cycle. Considering the situation and the state the crypto market was in, investors needed to develop various strategies in order to survive the bear market. These strategies were not necessarily about making a profit but rather preserving money. We will present four strategies that might work in such a situation, and these are as follows:

Shooting
Holding
Buy low – sell high
Diversification
Shorting


Short-selling, or “shorting,” occurs when traders predict that a market is about to decline. If their prediction is correct, they earn a profit as they bet on the market going down. This method works in many different markets and is not limited to just crypto markets.

The most well-known example of shorting happened in 1992 when an investor called George Soros predicted the drop of the British pound and made nearly $1 billion in profit.
Shorting has proven itself to be quite an effective way of making a profit. This way of trading is possible through CFDs (Contracts For Difference) as well as cryptocurrency margin exchanges. By employing this strategy, traders can sell assets that they do not own. Instead, they borrow assets and sell them at current prices, and then rebuy them at (hopefully) lower prices.
If the market moves down, their position goes up, which then lets traders buy the asset at a much lower price, and make a profit. Exchanges such as Bitmex offer its users shorting options based on how much Bitcoin they own.
Shorting doesn’t have to be used for just making a profit. It can also be used for hedging purposes.


If a trader is holding large amounts of a certain asset, such as Bitcoin, they can open a short position to decrease the risk of losing money in case the asset moves in the opposite direction.

Check out part 2 of our How to trade in a bear market guide to learn more about the strategies that can be employed in a downtrend.

Categories
Forex Elliott Wave Forex Fibonacci

How to Use Retracements to Analyze Waves – Part 4

In this educational article, we’ll review the fourth rule defined by Glenn Neely for the preliminary wave analysis. This rule, by its nature and context, it is likely that correspond to a corrective structure.

In this educational article, we’ll review the fourth rule defined by Glenn Neely for the preliminary wave analysis. This rule, by its nature and context, it is likely that correspond to a corrective structure.

In this educational article, we’ll review the fourth rule defined by Glenn Neely for the preliminary wave analysis. This rule, by its nature and context, it is likely that correspond to a corrective structure.

The Fourth Rule

The fourth case described by Neely considers the context when the price action developed by W2 retraces between 61.8% and 100% of W1. In the same way that the wave analyst measures the retracement developed by W1 on W0, and W2 on W1, it is necessary to evaluate the retracement of W3 on W2.

The author of “Mastering Elliott Wave” identified three possible categories of movements for wave three (W3), which are as follows.

  • Category “i”: will be considered if W3 is higher or equal to 100% and less than 161.8% of W3.
  • Category “ii”: this category occurs if W3 moves between 161.8% and 261.8% of W2.
  • Category “iii”: this category will occur if W3 is higher than 261.8% of W2.

The categories mentioned and their implications are detailed below.

Condition “a”: we consider this condition if W0 is lower than 38.2% of W1. For the three categories mentioned, in the most common cases, W1 could be the first segment or the center of a three-wave formation. In this context, W1 should identify as “:3”. In terms of the Elliott wave patterns, the structure could correspond to a Flat formation, the center of a triangle, or a segment of a complex corrective sequence.

In some particular cases, W1 may correspond to the end of a zigzag pattern inside of a complex correction or the end of a third wave. In this situation, W1 should identify as “:5”.

 

Condition “b”: will occurs if W0 is greater or equal than 38.2% and lower than 100% of W1. Depending on the extension of W3, W1 be likely the beginning or the mid-part of a corrective formation; then, W1 should identify as “:3”. In this context, W1 could be part of a flat pattern or the center of a Triangle formation.

In a particular case, W1 could be the end of a five-wave sequence; therefore, W1 must label as “:5”. If this scenario occurs, W1 could correspond to the end of a zigzag pattern.

 

Condition c: this condition occurs if W0 is greater or equal than 100%, and lower than 161.8% of W1. In this case, W1 belongs to a three-wave formation and should identify as “:3”. In terms of the structures defined by R.N. Elliott, the sequence in progress could correspond to a Flat pattern, a Triangle formation, or the center of a complex corrective formation, for example, a double or triple three pattern.

Condition d: this condition occurs if W0 is between 161.8% and 261.8% of W1. Similarly to condition “c,” in this case W1 should identify as “:3”. And in terms of the Elliott wave analysis, the structure in progress could be a flat, a triangle formation, or any part of a complex corrective sequence.

Condition e: will consider if W0 is higher than 261.8% of W1. In this condition occurs the same situation that conditions “c” and “d.” It means that W1 is part of a three-wave structure and should be tagged as “:3”.

According to the structures defined by the Elliott wave theory, W1 could be the first segment of a flat pattern, the center of a triangle formation, or the center of a complex corrective sequence.

Conclusions

In this article, we have seen the possible formations that could develop according to the retracements experienced by waves W0 and W2 concerning W1, and W3 compared to W2.

In terms of the patterns defined by the Elliott wave theory, the most likely formations to which W1 might belong is to a flat pattern, a central segment of a triangle structure, or the center of a complex corrective sequence.

Suggested Readings

  • Neely, G.; Mastering Elliott Wave: Presenting the Neely Method; Windsor Books; 2nd Edition (1990).
  • Prechter, R.; The Major Works of R. N. Elliott; New Classics Library; 2nd edition (1990).
Categories
Crypto Market Analysis

Daily Crypto Review, Feb 18 – Altcoins on the rise yet again; India voting with Blockchain

The crypto market suffered decent losses over the weekend as BTC failed to break the $10,500 mark. The aftermath was BTC falling under $10,000 and altcoins dropping massively in price. However, the past 24 hours passed with altcoins rising (some more and some less) while BTC was stagnating. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,791, which represents a 0.13% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 7.04% on the day, while XRP gained 3.06%.

The crypto market suffered decent losses over the weekend as BTC failed to break the $10,500 mark. The aftermath was BTC falling under $10,000 and altcoins dropping massively in price. However, the past 24 hours passed with altcoins rising (some more and some less) while BTC was stagnating. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,791, which represents a 0.13% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 7.04% on the day, while XRP gained 3.06%.

The crypto market suffered decent losses over the weekend as BTC failed to break the $10,500 mark. The aftermath was BTC falling under $10,000 and altcoins dropping massively in price. However, the past 24 hours passed with altcoins rising (some more and some less) while BTC was stagnating. Bitcoin is currently trading for $9,791, which represents a 0.13% increase on the day. Meanwhile, Ethereum gained 7.04% on the day, while XRP gained 3.06%.

Golem took the position of today’s most prominent daily gainer, with gains of 20.23%. On the other side, WAX lost 7.51% on the day, which made it the most prominent daily loser.

Bitcoin’s dominance dropped slightly as altcoins rose while BTC stood still in the past 24 hours. It is now at 62.11%, which represents a decrease of 1.47% when compared to the value it had yesterday.

The cryptocurrency market capitalization increased slightly in the past 24 hours. It is currently valued at $286.97 billion, which represents an increase of $6.4 billion when compared to the value it had yesterday.

What happened in the past 24 hours

India’s citizens will be able to vote even while outside their city of registration, all thanks to a blockchain-based system of voting.

India’s Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora announced that the country, in hopes of increasing voter turnout, will implement a blockchain-based voting solution. Arora added that, in the 2019 elections, over 300 million eligible voters did not manage to cast their vote because they were either not politically engaged or could not make it to their city of registration on that day.

Honorable mention

IOTA updating their Trinity wallet 

As we recently reported, IOTA’s Trinity wallet had a security breach where many users reported their funds as missing. The IOTA Foundation has recently released a safe desktop version of the Trinity wallet, which will hopefully not suffer from the same security issues.

According to a Feb 17 update post, IOTA will update their Trinity application to securely check balances and transactions by using Trinity 1.4.1. Trinity 1.4.1. is a new version of the wallet that is designed to remove the detected vulnerability from the wallets.

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Technical analysis

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Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s price failed to go above $10,500 due to the lack of bull pressure during the weekend, which was a great time for bears to take over. The largest cryptocurrency spent the weekend falling in price, and even touched the $$9,460 level on Feb 17. However, that price point was quickly rejected and its price rose above the $9,580 support line. The price went further up above the $9,735, which is where it is at right now.


Bitcoin’s volume is on a lower level than where it was over the past week. Its RSI is now on the lower side of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $9,870                                           1: $9,735

2: $10,015                                         2: $9,580

3: $10,360                                          3: $9,375

Ethereum

Ethereum had a worse than Bitcoin, as most of the altcoins dropped significantly in price. Its price fell from its highs of $287 all the way down to $237. However, the price got rejected, and bulls took over yet again. The story has changed in the past 24 hours, as Ethereum exploded to the upside and gained over 7%. Its price is now hovering around the $265 mark.


Ethereum’s volume is quite average, while its RSI level is around the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $279                                                1: $259.5

2: $302                                              2: $251.3  

3: $240

Ripple

XRP performed better than the stagnating Bitcoin on the day but worse than Ethereum, which increased its price by over 7%. The third-largest cryptocurrency tested the $0.266 support level a few times over the past couple of days. The support held up nicely, and the price now pushed past the $0.285 resistance as the bulls established their presence. XRP is now stable and consolidating at the $0.29 level.


XRP’s volume is on the same levels it was at during the past week (if we disregard the few enormous candlesticks during the breakouts), while its RSI is slowly rising to the middle of the value range.

Key levels to the upside                    Key levels to the downside

1: $0.31                                              1: $0.285

2: $0.324                                            2: $0.266

3: $0.332                                             3: $0.2454