Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Market gains $13 billion, Bitcoin still struggling to hold above $8,000.

Aurora keeps on pumping and dumping, up 55% in 24 hours

Most altcoins take significant beating, while BTC holds around $8,400

Digital Asset Partners With Amazon AWS Aurora on Smart Contract Language Interoperability

Ishan Garg Posted On July 2, 2019

[Beijing, Jul 1] Leading public blockchain Aurora Chain (token: AOA) publish new feature – Upgradable Block, bring more flexibility and utility to the public chain landscape. Developers using Aurora chain will be able to enjoy the lasted feature that Aurora brings. This upgrade can also reduce cases of hard forking.

Cases of hard forking are rather abundant during the industry’s short history. Take Bitcoin for an example, it now has more than 6 hard forks including Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin cash. Furthermore, the already forked Bitcoin Cash forked again last year by it’s two major mining pools, creating BCHABC and BCHSV.

Hard forks can be a good way to gain attention in twitter wars, it ultimate lowered the utility of bitcoins and undermines its mining capability. For more up-to-date and advanced blockchains, this could potentially be catastrophic. Hence, the Aurora tech team came up with a solution that can lower this risk.

Basically, the solution requires mining agents or agent candidates to vote for upgrading the blockchain within a 14 days limit. When votes for an upgrade exceeds the total number of voting agents and agent candidates, this upgrade passes and a block height will be chosen for implementing the new upgrade.

An upgrade should include URL of the version released on Github, the version code, description of the update and md5 information of the new upgrade.

When the upgrading program on the network received upgrading request, it will automatically retrieve the new release and proceed to verify this version. Once the verification is successful, the test network will be activated.

Users can try this new version on the test. If any problems or glitches happened before the implementation of the release, the agent that requested the upgrade can put the upgrade to a halt. Until the halt is revoked, the upgrade will not be carried out even if the network reaches the agreed block height.

The solution has two smart contracts and an upgrade control:

Smart contract A manages the upgrade smart contract, which is smart contract B. It can substitute the old version of the blockchain code with the new one

Smart contract B regulates the process of voting and retrieving of an upgrade. It supervises 5 major parts of the solution:

Agents and Agent node candidate votingsOther mining agents or agent candidates participating in the voting processThe upgrade is passed when “Yes” votes exceed 2/3 of the total number of the mining agents and agent candidatesThe agent that requests the upgrade can halt the upgrading process in case of emergencyThe agent that requests the upgrade can resume the upgrading processUpgrading control has three purposes:

oversee the who network, supervise the initiation, processing, and pausing/abanding the upgrade.Monitor the communication between contract A and contract b,Optimize the concurrence of Testnet and Mainnet.Upgradable chain markes a major step for the Aurora team. It could be the antidote to the scalability issues that the industry is facing. Aurora network is faster than most public chains. “Upgradable Blockchain” further boosts versatility and utility of Aurora chain based decentralized apps.

About Aurora

Aurora makes a breakthrough in the Blockchain world. By applying DPOS+BFT consensus mechanisms, we create lightning-fast contracts to link industries such as gaming, big data, artificial intelligence and IoT. Aurora offers unique intelligent application isolation, enabling multi-chain parallel expansion and an unlimited increase of TPS with guaranteed security.

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Disclaimer: Blockmanity is a news portal and does not provide any financial advice. Blockmanity's role is to inform the cryptocurrency and blockchain community about what's going on in this space. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment. Blockmanity won't be responsible for any loss of funds.

Author

Ishan Garg Ishan is a cryptocurrency trader and a journalist. He joined the cryptocurrency space in 2017. He is the founder of Blockmanity. He is a HODLER and is holding BTC, ETH & UGT.

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The cryptocurrency market doesn’t appear to be in the best of shape. Most cryptocurrencies are losing large chunks of value in the last 24 hours, and the total market capitalization has dropped with $6 billion in a few days to the current level of $187 B.

The second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, is among the worst-performing altcoins. ETH lost over 7% during the last day, and it’s currently trading at $132. Its latest hard fork, called Istanbul, was released a week ago, but it doesn’t seem to have a positive effect on the price as of yet.

Ripple’s price has been struggling for months, and now it went as low as $0,19 on Bitfinex, before bouncing back to the current level of $0,196. It broke below the strong support level at $0,215 earlier this week, and if it closes below $0,20, the next one will be at $0,185. Last time XRP was under $0,20 was back in 2017 before it skyrocketed to its all-time high of $3,80.

The situation with other major altcoins is not any different. Litecoin is below $40, EOS has lost almost 8%, and it’s at $2,34, and Binance Coin has decreased to $13,08, which is a 10% decline since yesterday. Somewhat unsurprisingly, only one digital asset is green in the top 10, and that’s Tezos. XTZ continues its positive trend as of late surging with 4.5% against BTC and 2% against the dollar.

CryptoMarket. Source: Coin360 As far Bitcoin goes, it’s down with 2.7% to $6,870 on Bitstamp but also tested the $6,800 support level, which managed to keep its stance. If it keeps going down, $6,500 is the next level, and if it reverses, the first resistance is $7,000. With so much blood in the altcoin market, BTC’s dominance is actually increasing, and it has reached 67.2%, after being at 66.4% three days ago.

Total Market Capitalization: $187 B | Bitcoin Market Capitalization: $125 B | Bitcoin Dominance: 67.2%

Major Crypto Headlines The Next Crypto Trend for Exchanges? Coinbase Is Now The Largest Tezos Validator. Tezos is quickly rising as a favorite within the community, and the largest U.S.-based crypto exchange, Coinbase, has become the largest validator for XTZ. People began wondering if this could be the newest trend and if users will be able to choose a specific baker.

You may also like: Market Meltdown: MemeCore Crashes 76% as MIM Breaks Peg to $0.50 Bitcoin (BTC) Dips Below $62K, Ethereum (ETH) Plunges 6% Daily: Market Watch XRP’s Price Could Explode to $8, But This One Zone Is Holding It Back Ready To Explode: Bitcoin Longs Surge 12% To A New ATH, Squeeze Might Crash Bitcoin Price. The number of BTC long positions placed on Bitfinex has reached its all-time high, and it could be related to the following drop. Generally, too many open longs mean that the price of the asset is set to decrease.

Bitmain’s Miner Manufacturing Subsidiary Had $680K In Assets Frozen In a Contract Dispute. One of the largest mining companies, Bitmain, had assets worth $676,000 frozen as ordered by a district court in Shenzhen, China. The decision came after another company, Dongguan Yongjiang Electronics, filed an application for asset protection to dispute a contract with the defendant.

Significant Daily Gainers and Losers Waves (26%) WAVES rises above all other cryptocurrencies in the top 100 with its increase with 26% against the dollar, and it’s currently trading at $0.89. Moreover, it skyrockets with almost 30% against Bitcoin to 12840 SAT. The company recently published an updated explaining how Waves staking works, and it also conducted a Twitter giveaway.

Fetch.ai (12.9%) FET is next on the list, with almost 13% gain against USD. The rise to $0.05 also means that the market cap has reached $34,5 M, and with so many altcoins losing value, FET has broken into the top 100. It surges with 16% against Bitcoin to 765 SAT. The company is set to launch its mainnet today and apparently has attracted severe attention to itself.

Aurora (-27.40%) While red is the predominant color, AOA has taken the lead with its loss of over 27% in the last 24 hours. The current price is $0,0048, and the market cap has plunged to $31,7 M, which actually threatens Aurora’s place in the top 100. Oddly enough, the drop comes a day after the popular crypto exchange, Bithumb, announced a 40,000,000 AOA airdrop event to take place this week.

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Market Wrap Crypto consolidation continues; Litecoin still inching up, NEO making progress, everything else is flat. Crypto markets are looking a little erratic as we enter the weekend but in the grand scheme of things nothing has changed over the past seven days. Total market cap has crept up marginally but most tokens are still consolidating within their slim boundaries.

Bitcoin has bounced of intraday resistance levels of $3,640 twice but is still holding above major support at $3,600. Lower highs have been made all week indicating that BTC is likely to turn bearish soon, especially if it falls below the key $3,600 level.

Ethereum is stable at $123 still, it has not moved a bit over the past 24 hours and remains where it has been since mid-week. XRP is slowly weakening and the gap between the two has now widened to $450 million.

There has been so little action for the majority of the top ten that they are showing tenths of a percent change over the past day. Litecoin is the biggest mover with 2% as it pulls away from EOS and increases the market cap gap between them. Very little else is going on in this section.

NEO is today’s top coin in the big twenty as it adds 3% on the day. Tezos is creeping back towards a top twenty place adding 2% but it is still a way off Zcash. Maker and NEM are dumping 4-5 percent following a couple of days of reasonable gains.

There are only two altcoins in double digits at the time of writing. Ontology and Aelf have added 16% a piece during the Asian trading session. The Parity Games partnership appears to be driving momentum for ONT. There are no big dumps going on at the messy end of the top one hundred but the day’s worst performers are Aurora and Revain.

Total market capitalization has not moved over the past 24 hours and remains a fraction higher at just over $121 billion. Markets are still range bound in a very tight channel where they have been all week. There are no signs of momentum in either direction and the tedium continues in crypto land.

Market Wrap is a section that takes a daily look at the top 20 cryptocurrencies during the current trading session and analyses the best-performing ones, looking for trends and possible fundamentals

Crypto markets pulling back; Bitcoin dominance rising, BNB and Cardano falling, BAT getting attention. Market Wrap Crypto markets have held gains largely thanks to Bitcoin’s rally yesterday. Total market capitalization remains over $180 billion at the time of writing as BTC eats into the altcoins while its dominance climbs to the highest levels this year.

Bitcoin surged through $5,600 yesterday and spent most of the past 24 hours above it. It has started to pull back now though in early Asian trading and was sitting around $5,550 this morning. Volume is currently at a weekly high of $16 billion and momentum has remained with BTC which has increased its total market share. Analysts are expecting a pullback but the correction should not be too severe;

$BTC Daily Chart.

There are multiple Fib clusters lined up at the 5850 area. Not to mention that it rejected at the 127.2 retrace today. IMO, getting close to a local top. Not saying to sell all out, but if me, I would reduce exposure and see what the correction looks like. pic.twitter.com/VP6ZpTIQUN

— CryptoFibonacci (@CryptoFib) April 24, 2019

Ethereum has dropped back to just below $170, it did not react with BTC this time and has remained pretty flat over the past week or so. ETH is falling back to last week’s levels as all gains get wiped out.

Altcoins have not rallied this time around and the top ten is all red today. The biggest two losers are Binance Coin and Cardano which have dumped 6 to 7 percent on the day. The rest have slumped 2 to 4 percent as traders move into Bitcoin or back into stablecoins.

There are only a couple of beacons of green in the top twenty at the time of writing. Monero and Tezos have made marginal gains but all those around them have fallen back. IOTA, Ethereum Classic and Ontology have dumped hard dropping over 6 percent each. The rest are losing 3 to 5 percent during early trading this Wednesday.

FOMO: BAT Back At It There are no major pumps going on in the top one hundred at the moment but the best performing altcoin is Basic Attention Token after a few days of declines. BAT is up 9 percent on the day to reach an intraday high of $0.45. Brave browser ads have gone live according to the Reddit which has driven momentum for BAT again.

Aurora and NULS are making around 8 percent today but there are no double digit gains as most altcoins are getting eaten by Bitcoin. The biggest loser today is yesterday’s fomo coin, DigixDAO dropping 17 percent. Digitex Futures and Revain are also getting dumped doubles today.

Total market cap 24 hours. Coinmarketcap.com Total market capitalization has corrected a little back to $181 billion. Most of yesterday’s gains have been lost by altcoins but Bitcoin is holding on to them at the moment. Market dominance has risen to a four month high of 54.2 percent as Bitcoin controls the markets at the moment.

Market gains over $20 billion as BTC is fighting to get back above $11,000

After limited upside, many coins dipping again. Bitcoin fails to hold $8700

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Two useful trading techniques that have become popular in the cryptocurrency space recently are staking and lending.

Today, my goal is to discuss the difference between staking and lending and how you can use these techniques to adapt your trading strategy depending on your risk/reward profile.

Essentially, while staking helps to secure the network and in turn pays users with newly minted coins, lending allows users to lock up their coins and receive an interest payment.

I cannot say one strategy is better than the other, as it depends on what type of investor you are.

If you like to directly participate in a protocol, perhaps staking is more your thing, while if you’re simply looking to get an interest payment, lending could be the right choice for you.

Similarly, if you consider giving up control of your coins too risky no matter what, then you may think neither strategy is worthwhile. It’s completely up to you, and you should always do your own research and make sure you’re comfortable with your level of risk/reward when trading.

As always, the views in this article should not be considered financial advisement.

Staking coins What are some of the best coins for cryptocurrency staking? Learn about staking #NavCoin, #Pivx, #Komodo, #Decred, and more at https://t.co/LMASrGgayY #Staking #Crypto #ProofOfStake pic.twitter.com/z7sSKCd15u

— Switchain (@switchaindotcom) October 21, 2019

Although there’s a bunch of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocols available – like Ardor, Dash, or EOS – I will instead focus on which exchanges, preferably non-custodial, allow users to stake coins directly.

The first I’ll discuss is IDEX.

IDEX, as the name indicates, is a decentralised exchange where users own their private-public key pairs. To trade, users sign transactions using interfaces such as MetaMask.

IDEX also incorporates the AURA token – the exchange’s native currency – which encourages users to stake the coin and help support the network. The AURA token enables stakers to earn a share of fees generated by IDEX and other Aurora products.

By staking AURA, node operators will be rewarded proportionately to their percentage stake, and 50% of fees have been allocated to be paid to AURA stakers. Traders will also be able to utilise the Boreal coin as a payment option for trading fees or as a stable base currency.

The second exchange worth mentioning is Switchain.

Switchain is an instant non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange with a user-friendly platform that makes trading crypto easy and fast.

Switchain works with different cryptocurrency trading partners to guarantee the best cryptocurrency rates for its clients.

An important partner I would like to mention is Exodus, one of the most widely used crypto wallets. By integrating Switchain’s fixed rate API, users of Exodus wallets have been able to exchange crypto assets with a single click.

Switchain works in a non-custodial manner, and the wallet creates an exchange on behalf of the user. The user sends the coins and receives the exchanged asset instantly.

Lending coins If you hold different crypto-assets, then you can make them work for you in a high-interest account. Companies like BlockFi and Celsius Network provide a simple way to earn up to 10% interest on your crypto-assets per annum.

You have to read the fine print and do your own research as there are many different companies around offering to pay interest on different cryptocurrencies. Be sure you know the lock-up period (if any) and what rates you get on each coin.

Celsius won’t pay you 10% interest on your BTC, for example. But they will give you somewhere between 4-5% depending on how much you hold with them. If you want to earn the big interest rates, you could consider purchasing a stablecoin like TRUEUSD or Gemini Dollar with your fiat and holding there rather than with a bank.

At the end of the day, with all these solutions, you have to give up custody of your coins. If that’s not a problem for you, earning some additional benefits on your crypto makes a lot of sense. If you’re a firm believer that you should retain your private keys at all times, you may be better off simply HODLing after all.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.

Bitcoin slips below $12K as altcoins move upward