While most altcoins are trying to cope after the March 13 plunge, LEO is ahead in the market cycle, as it has already formed a golden cross. Among LEO, Bitcoin gold, and Augur, LEO shows the most profitable future while the rest, not so much.
LEO The Bitfinex token LEO is trading at $1.04 and has a market cap of $1.03 billion making it the 11th largest crypto. With a minuscule 0.06% surge in the last 24 hours, the coin showed a bearish scenario with the formation of a bearish parallel channel. The price may drop to the immediate support at $0.998.
However, due to the formation of a golden cross, the coin’s future looks bullish in the medium term.
Bitcoin Gold Bitcoin Gold, a fork of Bitcoin, was priced at $7.28 and has a market cap of $127 million making it the 40th largest cryptocurrency. The coin has undergone a -2.42% drop in the last day.
It is stuck between resistance [$7.8] and support [$6.5], with Stochastic RSI already in the oversold zone.
Augur The symmetrical triangle formed by Augur aka REP showed chances of a bearish breakout with MACD indicating a bearish crossover. Further, the coin, like BTG is stuck between support at $9.24 and resistance at $10.58.
It’s not uncommon for Non-Profit organizations to accept donations, but it’s not very common for these donations to come in the form of cryptocurrencies. Stellar is one blockchain/crypto project that is now making the big step towards donating to non-profits.
As a matter of fact, the foundation has already announced that it will be giving out a total of 1.9 million Stellar Lumens (XLM) to a select 6 organizations that have had its back for some time. The lucky non-profits include Heifer International (a global organization fighting hunger by helping agricultural producers), Women Who Code (encourages women to take up positions in the tech industry), Watsi (creates new technologies to improve financing models in the healthcare sector), Freedom of the Press, Unicef France, and the Tor Project (the creator of the anonymizing browser called The Onion Router).
Crypto Donations In the case of Tor, the project has been receiving crypto donations (Bitcoin) since 2013. Tor started accepting other cryptos in March 2019. These include Dash (DASH), Litecoin (LTC), Zcash (ZEC), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Augur (REP), and Monero (XMR). In fact, according to the project’s fundraising director, Sarah Stevenson, about 20% of the donations received by Tor come in form of cryptocurrencies.
Stellar’s new move in giving out crypto donations highlights the increasing exposure of cryptos to possible mass adoption in the future. Also, Stellar wants to support the non-profits as they have been using its technology and supporting its project, and it’s only right for the company to return the favor.
Crypto Against Coronavirus Granted, Stellar isn’t the only crypto-oriented donor in the industry. Various entities have moved to send their donations in cryptos during hard economic times and unrest in countries like Venezuela. Now, even more, entities are stepping up to help in the fight against the current Coronavirus pandemic.
In late March, Binance Exchange made a huge move by starting an initiative dubbed #CryptoAgainstCOVID. The initiative is focused on buying and distributing much-needed medical supplies to the regions hit by the pandemic. For a start, Binance donated $1 million towards the cause and pledged to match any public donation to a tune of another $1 million.
Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. Bitcoin has effectively been flat on the week, recently returning to around where it started the week after briefly interacting with the ever-important $7,400 resistance. Altcoins, interestingly, came into their own this week, with Ethereum, Link, Tezos, EOS, among other top altcoins posting double-digit percentage gains in the past seven days.
Bitcoin’s stagnation over the past week comes as the stock market has mounted a strong comeback, with the S&P 500 rallying 12% from last Friday’s close to Thursday’s close despite 6.6 million new unemployment claims in the U.S. and the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
Despite the non-action, analysts are still bullish on BTC and the rest of the cryptocurrency market. In fact, as reported by NewsBTC previously, BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes said that while he could see Bitcoin revisiting $3,000, his year-end price target “remains $20,000,” which is 180% above the current price.
As to why he thinks this is the case, he cited that the monetary and fiscal solutions that governments and central banks are enlisting to stave off precision:
“Everyone knows the shift is upon us, that is why central bankers and politicians will throw all of their tools at this problem. And I will reiterate, that is inflationary because more fiat money will chase a flat to declining supply of real goods and labour. There are only two things to own during the transition to whatever the new system is and that is gold and bitcoin.”
Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin At $7,000, FATF Regulation, Coinbase Backs Ethereum DeFi Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits Crypto Industry Sees Layoffs: The Bitcoin community and broader crypto space have not been spared in the recent economic carnage. According to a “100% user-generated” list of companies on recruiting/job site Candor, Bitcoin.com, crypto mining firm Bitfarms, and mining hardware manufacturer Bitfury are among the firms in this industry that have begun to lay off staff over the past few weeks. Outside of this, one of the original crypto companies, Factom, has purportedly gone into liquidation, despite securing millions of dollars worth of funding over the past five years and garnering a grant from the U.S. Energy Department. Ethereum DeFi Has Seen Stellar Growth: In a report published April 9th, blockchain analytics site DappReview revealed that transaction volume across Ethereum-based DeFi projects has increased by nearly 800% when comparing Q1 2020’s metrics to that of Q1 2019. Much of this growth was attributed to projects like Maker and Compound — which offer decentralized loans and stablecoin solutions — and derivatives providers like Synthetix and Augur. This growth comes as crypto upstart Thesis and other partners are soon to release tBTC — a project that will act as a decentralized representation of Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain. Analysts expect for the launch of this project to boost DeFi adoption, with both ETH and BTC holders Bitcoin Cash & Bitcoin SV See Block Reward Halvings: Both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV have seen their block reward halvings pass in the past 72 hours. As a result, both networks saw their hash rates and difficulty drop. The halving resulted in an instant 50% reduction in mining revenues for those operating on the BCH and BSV chain, forcing operators running on tight margins to turn off their machines or mine on other networks. Fewer machines mean fewer computers processing blocks, resulting in slower transactions. South Korea Launches Digital Currency Project: On Monday, South Korea’s central bank, the Bank of Korea, revealed that it has launched a pilot program for testing a digital won, which is slated to run to December 2021. A release outlining this move said the program will determine if there are a legal case and ample technical capability to launch a digital currency in South Korea. This comes just six weeks after the South Korean National Assembly passed legislation that will provide a comprehensive framework for the regulation and legalization of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin exchanges. Twitter CEO & Bitcoin Bull Jack Dorsey Pledges $1 Billion to COVID-19 Relief: Jack Dorsey announced in a Twitter thread this week that Yesterday, Dorsey announced in a Twitter thread — it’s quite fitting, I must say — that he will be “moving $1 billion of my Square equity,” which purportedly corresponds with around 28% of his total wealth, to a LLC called “Start Small” to “fund global COVID-19 relief.” Start Small existed prior to this outbreak, but this is the first time it has seen mainstream attention. The Bitcoin bull intends to allocate the rest of the donation to the promotion of Universal Basic Income and girl’s health and education, calling both issues critical. Fidelity Sees Growth In Crypto Demand: Fidelity Digital Assets — the crypto services division of Wall Street giant Fidelity Investments, a firm with trillions under management — has confirmed it has seen an uptick in interest. Speaking to Frank Chaparro of The Block, a spokeswoman for the firm said that:
“From a trading perspective, we continue to onboard new clients every month and are seeing significant pipeline growth. […] And in recent weeks, we’ve seen more momentum across our business.”
The Komodo platform is many things – a unique blockchain, a coin that pays interest, a decentralized exchange, a development blockchain with many additional features being planned for the future.
The Komodo blockchain is a fork of the ZCash blockchain, which itself was forked from the Bitcoin blockchain, making Komodo a descendent of Bitcoin. It includes the zk-snark technology that Zcash was built upon, and adds a delayed proof of work consensus algorithm to make Komodo more robust and secure.
The ultimate goal of Komodo is to create an entire ecosystem comprised of diverse partnerships that will send the platform forward into the future. Because it was designed to be used by developers of any level and in any industry it is extremely versatile.
In this comprehensive review, I will give you everything that you need to know about the Komodo platform.
How Komodo WorksThose doing development on the Komodo platform are not building onto the blockchain, but are instead building their own standalone blockchains. It’s not a fork or sidechain, and the Komodo platform doesn’t act as a parent to the new blockchain.
Each project is an independent blockchain that becomes connected to the Komodo ecosystem. This is crucial because the fact that each blockchain is independent means that future development won’t be limited by Komodo in any way.
Benefits of the Komodo Platform
Komodo was also designed from the ground up as a modular ecosystem. This allows developers to choose which technologies they wish to use in their own projects.
Perhaps most importantly, Komodo was developed with security as a top priority. In addition to using the Zcash zk-snark protocols for anonymity and privacy, Komodo uses a delayed proof of work (PoW) protocol to provide Bitcoin level security to even the smallest blockchains and projects. As stated on the Komodo website itself:
Komodo’s innovative dPOW (delayed proof of work) provides a security layer that creates backups of your blockchain’s data and notarizes it to Bitcoin’s blockchain, providing even the smallest of blockchains with Bitcoin-level security.
In essence, Komodo is using Bitcoin’s hashrate to ensure immutability for the Komodo blockchain.
Komodo PrivacyKomodo was created as a form of the Zcash blockchain, using their technology known as ‘Zero Knowledge Proofs’. This technology allows each transaction on the blockchain to be 100% anonymous or as transparent as necessary given the requirements of each situation.
Anonymous transactions are important to many users because they hide the amount, sender and recipient of the transaction, but still make it possible for miners to verify that the transaction is valid and without any double-spending. Alternatively transactions can be left transparent, in which case information shows just as it would for a Bitcoin transaction.
Anonymous transactions help protect user privacy, but they provide a more important function, and that is to preserve fungibility, which is a basic requirement for any currency.
Komodo SecurityAfter including privacy by forming from Zcash, the developers of Komodo provided for enhanced security of the blockchain in a unique manner. They created a proof of work token, but modified it to be Delayed Proof of Work, allowing it to recycle Bitcoin’s hashrate to ensure immutability of Komodo’s blockchain.
Komodo does this by using 64 “notary nodes” that work to notarize blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain. This provides protection for Komodo because an attacker would have to alter both the block in the Komodo blockchain and the block in the Bitcoin blockchain.
Steps in the Komodo Delayed Proof of Work
As long as the Bitcoin blockchain is secure, so too will Komodo – and all the other blockchains built using Komodo – remain secure.
This mechanism can now be used by any cryptocurrency that wishes enhanced security. By using Komodo the new blockchains are connected to Bitcoin, benefiting from the security of the Bitcoin blockchain, while also saving on transaction costs.
Komodo TeamThe Komodo project is based on anonymity, so it comes as no surprise that many of the Komodo team members initially chose not to reveal their identity. The founder and one core developer of Komodo went by the moniker JL777, but is now known as James ‘JL777’ Lee.
The CTO of the project was known as CA333, but we now know him as Kadan Stadelmann. This increased transparency has come about as Komodo grows in size and scope and is attracting more investors.
The full team is now nearly 30 members spanning leadership, development, marketing, and community development. And speaking of community, there are numerous contributors from the community, both developers and community outreach ambassadors.
Some of the Komodo Team Members
Currently, the general manager of Komodo is Ben Fairbanks, who is also the founder and CEO of RedFOX Labs, an incubator that is helping to launch Komodo based companies in emerging markets. Prior to joining Komodo and launching RedFOX, he served as COO at the ride-hailing service Grab. He brings extensive business and marketing experience to the project.
The CTO of the Komodo project, almost since the very beginning, has been Kaden Stadelmann. He also serves as CTO of RedFOX Labs. He previously worked as an IT security analyst and software developer, and founded the company satoshihack back in 2011, making him a pioneer in the blockchain space.
Core development is led by founder James Lee, and he is joined by Adam Bullock and Mihailo Milenkovic as well as roughly a dozen full-time developers and another dozen community volunteer developers.
KMD CoinThe Komodo native currency (KMD) was launched in an ICO in February 2017 at a price of $0.10. Since then the price of the coin has risen and fallen with the fortunes of the project and the markets. As of mid-March 2018 it was trading at $2.73 and was ranked the #48 coin by market cap on Coinmarketcap.com.
Even though 2018 saw many coins losing 90% or more of their value, KMD held up fairly well in the face of the bear market. It rallied in April, topping $4 and slowly sank from that level, finally dipping under $1 in November 2018 and hitting a low of $0.492329 on November 25, 2018.
It slowly recovered from that low and by February 2019 had doubled in price as it traded back above $1. It remained above $1 for nearly all of 2019, and nearly hit $2 in July 2019, but the price has recently dropped and as of August 9, 2019 stands at $0.863399.
KMD Price Performance. Image via CMC
The fundamentals for the coin continue to look solid thanks to the 5% annual interest rate paid to KMD holders, and the current low price is more a reflection of broad-based weakness in the cryptocurrency markets.
There are currently 115,389,114KMD in circulation, with a planned total supply of 200 million coins, which is projected to be reached in 2031. Until that time, KMD holders will continue to receive a 5.1% annual interest payment (called Active User Rewards) on their KMD holdings, so long as they keep more than 10 KMD in a wallet where they control the private keys. The KMD had an all-time high of $12.54 on December 21, 2017.
Buying & Storing KMDKMD can be purchased on a good number of exchanges, with the largest volume on CoinBene. There is also good volume at Binance, CoinEx, and HitBTC. Other good choices for buying KMD include CoinEx and Bittrex.
Given that there is strong volume across a number of exhanges, it bodes well for the liquidity of KMD. Improved liquidity means that you can execute large block orders on these books without much slippage in the price of the coin.
Register at Binance and Buy KMD Coin
In order to earn the 5.1% annual interest users must hold their KMD in a supported wallet. The top two based on the Komodo website are the Verus Agama wallet, which is a multi-coin wallet from the Verus Coin project, or the native Komodo OceanQT wallet. Other options include the Guarda Wallet and the ZelCore wallet.
Development & RoadmapWhen it comes to determining the amount of work that has been done by a project, there are a number of metrics one can look at.
However, one of the most effective that I have found is to take a look at the coding activity in the project's public repositories.
Therefore, I decided to jump into the Komodo GitHub to get a better sense of what the developers have been pushing over the past year. Below is the total code commits to two of their development repos.
Commits for Select Repos over past 12 months
As you can see from the above, the team has been quite active pushing code to their core repository over the past year. It is also worth pointing out that there are a further 56 other repositories with varying degrees of activity.
This is more development activity than we have seen at most other projects. In fact, if we were to compare Komodo to its peers, it is ranked 30th in terms of commits and 12th for overall coding activity on coincodecap.
This perhaps makes sense when viewed in the context of the numerous projects being built on the Komodo platform (more below).
In terms of the upcoming roadmap, the two most important remaining milestones for 2019 are the release of the developer portal as well as the GUI for the fully mobile-ready wallet/DEX hybrid.
If you want to keep up to date with development on the project then I suggest you jump into their discord and meet the team. They also encourage community developer contributions to the core.
Komodo Platform ProjectsThere are a number of standalone projects that were developed for the Komodo platform. Those that are farthest along in development and have been released as at least betas include Decentralized ICOs, BarterDEX along with a built-in “tumbler” service called Jumblr.
However, as of July 2019 Komodo has launched its Antara Framework, which is the basis for nearly all current services on Komodo.
Decentralized Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)The Decentralised ICO concept was meant to be an exciting option for startups as it would mean that they could launch their process much easier. It would also have given them access to the Komodo technology, marketing channels, and consultants.
However, given the regulatory pressure that has been placed on ICOs recently, this initiative seems to have fallen by the wayside. Of course, the lackluster performance of most recent ICOs has not helped the process.
The Komodo team had plans to launch a number of Decentralised ICOs. In May of last year they planned to release their first with the BlocNation dICO. However, this did not seem to materialize and the Blocnation project seems to have gone dead (with the site down).
The dICO that never materialized... Image via Komodo Blog
Despite this though, Komodo will accept pre-existing blockchain projects on other platforms that would like to migrate to Komodo to receive your own fully customizable, high performing independent blockchain.
As of August 2019 there are a number of projects that have launched on Komodo.
JumblrJumblr is a cryptocurrency anonymizer developed by Komodo which is decentralized and open-source. It can be used to increase privacy when using the Komodo platform.
Anonymizing funds is actually a fairly straightforward and simple practice. The Jumblr will take KMD tokens from a non-private address and send them through a number of zk-snark addresses.
Once these untraceable addresses have processed the coins they are sent to a new address where they are completely anonymous. The fee for using the Jumblr service is 0.3%, which is payable in KMD tokens.
BarterDEX Rebranded to AtomicDEXBarterDEX was previously called EasyDEX but was rebranded in July 2017. It is a decentralized exchange utilizing atomic swaps, and more recently etomic swaps, which bridge the gap between Bitcoin and Ethereum based blockchains.
The use of atomic swaps and etomic swaps lower counterparty risk, transaction fees and speeds the transfer of assets. BarterDEX can support trading of any cryptocurrency, and will also support fiat in the future. Already the decentralized exchange is capable of performing swaps for 95% of the cryptocurrencies in existence.
BarterDEX also solves the liquidity problem encountered by most decentralized exchanges by producing Liquidity Nodes that stabilizes prices by buying and selling assets in the order books.
Screenshots from the AtomicDex App. Image via atomicdex.io
In July 2019 the BarterDEX platform got another upgrade and rebrand and has been re-launched as AtomicDEX in a closed public beta. AtomicDEX provides a secure, reliable, and completely decentralized method for trading digital assets.
Trades no longer have to pass through an intermediary but are done from wallet to wallet. AtomicDEX will act as a multi-currency wallet and as a fully decentralized trading platform. At its beta release, AtomicDEX has support for 13 different coins, but can technically support 99% of all existing cryptocurrencies. New coins will be added with each update to the DEX.
The Antara FrameworkThe Antara Framework was launched on the Komodo mainnet on July 15, 2019, completing a rebrand that stretched out for nearly a full year. This relaunch has included several new developments, such as the beta release of the Antara Smart Chain Composer, which allows anyone to launch their own SmartChain blockchain in just minutes, including full seed nodes and mining nodes.
The Antara Framework is an adaptable framework for simple, end-to-end blockchain development. Antara makes it easier than ever before to launch a chain, activate modules, and start building blockchain-based applications.
Antara has maintained the independence and privacy of building with Komodo. Each independent chain has its own consensus rules, hashing algorithm, decentralized network, and coin. Blockchains launched with Komodo’s technology never depend on the KMD chain, network, or platform.
Antara Network Recently Going live. Image via Komodo Blog
It’s an open ecosystem so there is no vendor lock-in. Creating a chain from the CLI is permissionless and free. The Komodo team is not informed when a chain is created so there's no way to track a chain after launch.
The framework also comes with built-in modules, making development speedy and easier. This allows developers to natively support any software, dApp or blockchain-based games.
With 18 different customizable Smart Chain parameters, any blockchain can be built to serve any business need. The Antara Integration Layer also offers several white label products such as a multi-coin wallet, block explorers, full seed nodes, a branded DEX, a crowdfunding app and integration with SPV Electrum servers.
CompetitionBecause Komodo is involved in so many aspects of the blockchain it is facing competition from many different directions.
Decentralized exchanges are becoming increasingly popular, and the AtomicDEX exchange is in competition with BitShares, EtherDelta, and Waves, as well as many other smaller players.
As a privacy coin, KMD competes against the larger Dash and Monero coins, and of course against the Zcash that it was forked from.
Komodo faces stiff competition from Ethereum as it is the leader in the ICO and smart contracts field, but other established blockchains such as NEO, NXT and Waves are also competing for ICO traction.
And now we also have initial exchange offerings (IEOs) from the likes of Binance and other exchanges growing in popularity. Smart contracts have also found their way into most projects. One strength for Komodo is that it is the first to offer a fully decentralized exchange with atomic swap capabilities.
ConclusionThe Komodo project is an extensive and ambitious large-scale project that aims to solve many issues that centralization of cryptocurrencies and blockchains face.
In addition to being its own blockchain and coin, it is also tackling the decentralized exchange, atomic swap, and decentralized ICO space. It includes options for anonymity and has a unique proof of work consensus algorithm that promises enhanced security, even for new blockchains based off Komodo.
Needless to say, that’s a lot to bite off, but the Komodo team has shown itself to be up to the challenge time and again. In a world where deadlines are often missed by months, the Komodo team has not only delivered but also delivered early and with few bugs. The team also takes user feedback into consideration and has been known to pivot quickly based on the needs of the community.
If the Komodo team continues to deliver it could make a long-term lasting impact on the cryptocurrency space, but it is too early to tell if this will be the case. In any event, it is certainly a project worth watching.
In the roughly 18 months since this review was first prepared the Komodo team has continued to deliver an exceptional product, and with the July 2019 release of the Antara Framework, it has advanced to the first composable SmartChain platform in the industry. This first-mover advantage keeps Komodo on the cutting edge of blockchain development.
Disclaimer: These are the writer's opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
In case you missed you can check out the first part of this series here.
Is Bitcoin Mining Legal in the United States?As implied by the FinCEN regulations, there’s no obligation on keeping virtual currencies. While spending, trading and exchanging crypto for fiat currency are considered money transmitters and should be reported.
In June 2019, Squire Mining (SQRMF), a Canadian mining mogul with the most hashpower, signed a letter of intent to host blockchain cloud computing units - over 41,000 Bitcoin - to the United States. As mining migrates from China to the US, the latter is changing priorities from application and protocol development to focusing on infrastructure.
How to Buy, Store and Spend Crypto in the USAIf you’re wondering how interested Americans really are in the cryptosphere, here’s a fun fact: Bitcoin has become so popular that as a term it has outrun Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump in search requests by three times.
Source: Consensys
Bitcoin is going mainstream in the States. It is already accepted as a payment by retailers and services like Overstock and NewsEgg and some major tech companies like Microsoft. The United States has over 3500 cryptocurrency ATMs and tellers – that’s 64% of all the crypto ATMs in the world. There is even a list of major cities in the US with ATM installations. Unsurprisingly, the top-5 cities are Los Angeles (372), Chicago (250), Miami (199), Atlanta (171) and Detroit (149). Despite the huge amount of tellers where you can buy BTC, XRP, ETH, etc. a majority of people prefer to buy crypto via the various exchanges and crypto services online.
Cryptocurrency has become an important aspect of local economies. California, New Jersey, Washington, New York, Colorado, Utah, Florida, Alaska, Nevada, and Massachusetts are the states with the largest amount of citizens who have cryptocurrency.
In 2018, Finder surveyed 2000 US citizens to get an approximate idea of what coins Americans prefer to store. It comes as no surprise that Bitcoin is the number one cryptocurrency in the US.
Source: finder.com
Is Trading Bitcoin legal in America?The question was raised on the federal level by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the focus was on the use of blockchain assets as securities, such as whether or not certain Bitcoin investment funds should be sold to the public, and whether or not a certain offering is fraudulent. However, the SEC’s report focused entirely on Initial Coin Offerings, so the results don’t apply to BTC. To trade securities on the Blockchain, a company must register as an exchange, Alternative Trading System (ATS) or a broker/dealer.
Top cryptocurrency businesses in the USAIn addition to the wide user base of cryptocurrencies in the US, the country is also home to some of the most influential crypto projects in the industry. American crypto projects range from powerful exchanges to headline grabbing social media experiments. Here are some of the most notable.
LedgerX is a New-York based Bitcoin trading platform. As a start-up, LedgerX was actively lobbying for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and after a few years got a derivatives clearing organization license from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That opened the door for the platform to bring classical financial tools to the cryptosphere. In November 2017, LedgerX launched the first long-term BTC options.
Ripple constantly finds itself the subject of debate in the crypto community regarding its centralised nature. Despite the mixed feelings, Ripple is already working with hundreds of financial institutions to drive crypto adoption and has launched the University Blockchain Research Initiative to support the research and development of blockchain technology.
Gemini is a crypto exchange based in NYC that was created by the Winklevoss brothers. In 2016, Gemini became the world’s first licensed cryptocurrency exchange. Also, Gemini holds the distinction of being the first institution to launch Bitcoin futures contracts.
Stellar was co-founded by Jed McCaleb, who was also among Ripple’s founders. The company strives to provide banking services for unbanked people. Their team is working to improve cross-border transactions and reduce fees and transfer times.
Steem is the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain-based social platform Steemit where users are rewarded for writing posts, commenting, reading and curating content. The NY-based company was founded by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, who is also known as the CTO of EOS and creator of BitShares.
Libra CoinLibra deserves its own section as it is one of the most controversial crypto projects that are sure to change the cryptocurrency market and the entire financial sector. The project initiated by Facebook, with Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal among its 27 charter members, is set to join the pantheon of premier US cryptocurrency projects. Facebook decided to launch the project to give financial freedom to 2,000,000,000 adults around the world who are outside the financial system. Of course, the guys from Facebook believe that people will trust decentralized management systems more now, when trade wars build barriers for money, when the trade is limited to the borders of the countries in dispute. Yet, the troubling issue is that Facebook management has been repeatedly accused of centralization and cooperating with authorities. On the other hand, the positive impact of mass adoption Libra can bring, will strengthen the cryptocurrency industry. However, much to my regret, Libra contradicts the basic ideas of blockchain - privacy and decentralization, the core values that Freewallet and many crypto companies fight for.
The third and final instalment of these articles will be released tomorrow at 12:30pm BST.
China’s Center for Information Industry Developed Research Institute’s monthly crypto rankings have always been viewed as an oddity, given that the CCID is controlled by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in a country notoriously scathing toward cryptocurrency.
But since President Xi Jinping’s recent address at the Politburo claiming that “We must take blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies. Clarify the main directions, increase investment, focus on a number of key technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain and industrial innovation,” the rankings potentially warrant more respect.
With the Chinese government announcing its intention to be at the epicenter of blockchain technology development, cryptocurrency markets went into overdrive, with Bitcoin seeing over 30 percent gains within ten hours.
Whether the Chinese government actually warms to the decentralized cryptocurrencies its citizens have long been enamored of remains to be seen. In the meantime, the news was widely viewed as a positive sign for the markets.
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Are the CCID Research Institute Rankings Suddenly Relevant Again? The newfound enthusiasm for blockchain in the CCP, also indicated in recent news of a pending state-run digital currency, drags the CCID’s rankings back into view. Its latest edition has just been released.
Assessed in terms of technology, applicability (capability of being applied to solve problems), and creativity (how unique the blockchain is in its approach to solving problems), EOS has consistently ranked first since the organization began publishing its rankings in May of 2018.
The 14th index shows some notable movements since its last report. TRON overtook Ethereum in second place, though only by the skin of its teeth. Lisk is up seven places to seventh and Qtum surged ten places to eighth.
Ontology is down seven places to fourteenth and Cosmos fell twelve places, from tenth to 22nd. GXChain fell precipitously, falling out of the top five in favor of BitShares. The top five now reads EOS, TRON, Ethereum, NULS, BitShares.
NANO on the Rise NANO enjoyed a rise from 22 to 13, finding a place back in the spotlight it lost during the early 2018 BitGrail debacle, from which it has since struggled to recover. As reported recently by Crypto Briefing, NANO is playing a substantial role in the ecosystem of Softbank-backed payments processor Wirex, an FCA-licensed company based in the U.K.
At a recent NANO meetup in London, Wirex’s CEO Pavel Matveev said the company was keen to continue its relationship with the crypto formerly known as RaiBlocks. A Wirex blog post also spared no compliments in describing Nano, calling it “a next-generation cryptocurrency with great potential.”
With an opaque ranking system, the CCID results will likely remain a curiosity for some time. However, the CCP’s apparent newfound fondness for blockchain technology means it is warranted for the community to put blatant skepticism over their rankings on hold for at least an interim period.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Paul de Havilland. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
While any spike in gun violence may give the impression that purchasing a gun is too simple, selling one can in fact be quite tricky. Indeed, many payment processors prohibit gun sales as part of their terms of service.
TUSC—The Universal Settlement Coin—presents itself as a solution to the specific problems facing gun retailers. The cryptocurrency's mainnet launched at the end of December after several months of testing. In the announcement, the company described its coin as “a gun-centric crypto [designed] to act as a 'continuity of business' payment system for gun retailers.”
In an interview with Decrypt, Rob McNealy, a Salt Lake City-based podcaster and entrepreneur who co-founded TUSC, explained the main problems firearm retailers face when trying to make a sale. For starters, he said, some of have trouble just getting a checking account where they can deposit payments.
What’s more, third-party payment providers such as PayPal typically bar weapon sales as part of their terms of service, McNealy said. Credit card fees are also higher than normal—between 4 and 6 percent, according to McNearly—because firearms is a high-risk industry. And sales are prone to credit card chargebacks because of the amount of time it takes to fulfil a custom gun order (hence the higher fees).
Why not just use Bitcoin?After talking to gun retailers and manufacturers, McNealy thought cryptocurrency might provide a way around relying on an unreliable credit card ecosystem—but purposely didn't use Bitcoin for several reasons. Most importantly, he said, "We wanted something fast for retail." With reported three-second blocks and two-second confirmation times, TUSC is a nimbler solution at a time when "Bitcoin has moved away from payments" and "Lightning is not ready for primetime."
And while Roger Ver might be itching right now to show McNealy how to buy cucumbers with BTC in Hong Kong, that hints at another big reason to create a new cryptocurrency rather than just promote an existing payment solution: the gun community itself.
Emphasizing that he spends more time with people in the gun industry than in crypto, McNealy described a cryptocurrency landscape riven with conflict and factionalism. "Some proof-of-work projects, when they have a disagreement, it fractures their communities," he said. "I think it's bad for adoption."
McNealy and his team instead settled on a delegated proof-of-stake network forked from BitShares 2.0 with on-chain governance so there is an inbuilt way to handle conflict among gun retailers using the network. The result is a custom-built solution for a narrow problem afflicting one industry.
Though TUSC is now in circulation, the team's developers are working on creating payment gateways so that it can become a comprehensive ecosystem—third-party cryptocurrency payment providers like BitPay don't allow firearm purchases either. Already, 15 retailers have committed to joining when the payment gateway is ready, according to McNealy.
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With all eyes fixed on Bitcoin’s valuation at the moment, the lesser-known assets with medium-range market caps were seen performing better than the large market cap assets.
According to Arcane Research, the best performing tokens over the past week has been outside the major altcoins with only Monero and Bitcoin SV making the cut from the major assets. Privacy coin Dash and Chainlink also registered impressive recoveries over the last few days, with Dash witnessing over 14.45 percent in the last 24 hours.
The Weiss Crypto’s Mid-Cap Crypto Index (WMC) (a measurement index covering the mid-range market cap on the basis of market performance) registered a sharp rise since the start of January. The index exhibited a growth of 1.05 percent for the collective market movement from the likes of Cardano, Monero, Dash, IOTA, and Ethereum Classic.
In comparison, Weiss Large-Cap Crypto (WLC) Index only pictured a 0.14 percent growth collectively as Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash were responsible for the majority of the positive growth. Ethereum and Litecoin managed to exhibit positive returns as well.
However, the bearish side was rather dominant with other digital assets. According to the chart above, the Weiss Small Cap Crypto Index (WSC) recorded a drop of 0.44 percent over the same period. The likes of Verge, Ziliqa, and BitShares failed to take advantage of the surging market.
As a whole, the above data indicated that mid-level crypto assets were collectively outperforming in the market over the past week, whereas the likes of major assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin were playing the game cautiously.
Prominent angel investor Armando Pantoja recently commented on the popular claim within the crypto community from critics labeling XRP as a “dead coin.”
The market commentator disagrees with this categorization. According to him, the claim is devoid of logic, as XRP remains the fourth-biggest crypto asset in the market. He stressed that a “dead coin” obviously cannot have a $112.8 billion market cap and rank just behind Ethereum and Bitcoin.
XRP Stands Strong Over Ten Years and Counting Drawing from his over a decade of experience in the crypto industry, Pantoja pointed out that the crypto assets making the top ranks today are entirely different from those of the past. In particular, some crypto assets that once ranked in the top 100 by market cap have now faded into oblivion.
Indeed, historical data from CoinMarketCap confirms that tokens like BitShares (BTS), Dash, NXT, Paycoin (XPY), and MAID were among the top ten precisely ten years ago, in March 2015.
However, these coins have now been completely relegated to the back seat. Meanwhile, during this time, XRP was even the second biggest crypto, behind Bitcoin only. Ten years later, XRP continues to defend its position among the most prominent crypto assets.
Top ten crypto ten years ago with XRP Pantoja cited this data to emphasize that the argument labeling XRP as “dead” is wholly misplaced and lacks sincerity. In his words:
“People don’t realize that all these other coins—hundreds, even thousands of coins—that were supposed to be great projects are gone now. XRP has held on, and that shows it’s not a dead coin. This is what we call success bias.”
He argued that supporters of such negative views are driven by a sense of rivalry. Pantoja stressed that commentators often fail to recognize all the failures and focus only on the successful projects. As a result, they’d look at XRP and assert, “Well, these other coins are more successful, so XRP is a failure.”
For Every Few Coins That Outperform XRP, 10,000 Others Failed In terms of price performance, Pantoja argued that out of the three or four coins that may have done better than XRP over the years, there are at least 10,000 coins that have failed completely.
He used this argument to dismiss the critical views concerning XRP’s failure to establish a new all-time high in seven years. At press time, XRP trades at $2.03, down 47.1% from its 2018 peak of $3.83.
DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
DigiByte is a UTXO PoW network that focuses on digital payments, security, and decentralized apps. The decentralized blockchain was created by Jared Tate six years ago and has since been growing rapidly.
DigiByte prides itself on facilitating faster and cheaper transactions, unlike bitcoin. In a recent tweet, creator Jared Tate explains exactly why DigiByte is better than the OG crypto, bitcoin.
The argument about which cryptocurrency will be the next bitcoin has always prevailed in the crypto space ever since altcoins started catching on. Some altcoin creators have a penchant for making comparisons about transaction fees and speed in a bid to make a case for their pet projects.
In a recent 2-part tweet thread, DigiByte founder Jared Tate became the latest person to compare his crypto project with bitcoin. Tate pointed to the latest version of Bitcoin Core and the updated fee policy to prove his point. In particular, he noted that the new 0.19 version is now supporting slow transactions that take even a week to be confirmed, on top of being ridiculously expensive.
With DigiByte, transactions are much cheaper and it takes the blockchain approximately 2 minutes to fully confirm the transactions. Per Tate, this is why DGB is 40X faster than Bitcoin (BTC).
With the latest 0.19 version of #Bitcoin core & updated fee policy you can choose to send a TX that takes 7 days to confirm which costs more than what it costs to send a normal #DigiByte TX which confirms in 2 minutes. This is why $DGB is 40x faster than $BTC. Try it yourself. pic.twitter.com/i69G865IvM
“Seriously, who would ever send a #Bitcoin transaction that takes 7 days to confirm? Might as well go back to the banks ACH system that takes 2-5 business days. Or just use $DGB.”
Does It Really Matter? In all fairness, bitcoin’s slow transaction speed has been viewed as the chink in the asset’s armor. The fact that a single transaction can take hours or even days before it’s confirmed has led many to speculate that the crypto will not be replacing fiat any time soon unless major improvements are made. As such, bitcoin is better suited as a store of value.
DigiByte holders received this tweet with delight. For many of them, DGB is the most advanced cryptocurrency. Another Twitter user even noted that they are in Scotland and received DigiByte from Nigeria instantly.
That said, it is solely up to an investor to decide which of the two cryptocurrencies best serves their interests because the two have disparate use cases.
DigiByte is currently embroiled in the market-wide sell-off and is trading at $0.006847 at the time of publication, with almost 10% losses in the last 24 hours. Its market cap stands at $87,938,259 making it the seventieth-largest cryptocurrency on the planet.
Despite several technological advancements, most altcoins have failed to breach their previous highs. Instead, most have retraced their steps back to their yearly lows. These altcoins, strongly mimicking the price action of Bitcoin, have endured heavy losses. However, this time, not all altcoins sustained severe losses.
Cardano
On the development front, 2020 has been a good year for the Cardano ecosystem. The latest development for Cardano was IOHK’s announcement of a ‘reboot’ of the Cardano blockchain’s Byron-era codebase, paving the way for Shelley-era decentralization that will be deployed on 31st March.
On the price side, at press time, ADA was trading close to its support at $0.028, while holding a market cap of $745.6 million. Over the last 24-hours, the coin fell by 5.42%. Additionally, ADA’s 24-hour trading volume stood at $85.64 million.
Resistance: $0.044, $0.052
Support: $0.023
MACD: The MACD indicator was bullish on ADA’s near-term price movements.
Chaikin Money Flow: The CMF indicator also appeared to be heading for a much-anticipated bullish revival.
Ethereum Classic
The ETC network underwent its second block reward reduction on 16 March at a block height of 10,000,000, following which, its block reward was cut by 20% from 4 ETC to 3.2 ETC.
With respect to its price movement, ETC changed hands at $4.79 after it noted a drop of 6.54% over the last 24-hours. At press time, the coin held a market cap of $557.4 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $1.38 million.
Resistance: $7.01, $8.47
Support: $3.47
Parabolic SAR: The dotted markers below the candlesticks signaled a bullish trend for the coin.
Awesome Oscillator: AO too aligned with the bulls with its green closing bars.
Digibyte
Unlike other coins, Digibyte did not post impressive rallies at the start of 2020. Its surges remained mild. Following the sharp decline in the second week of March, the DGB token, however, paced itself after it surged for the sixth consecutive day.
In the latest development, the beta version of DigiByte’s [DGB] new website has been released for proper community assessment. The version is still in the test mode and DGB community members have been given the opportunity to report potential bugs and come up with fixes for the same.
DGB was priced at $0.0043, at press time, after it posted gains of 5.77% over the last 24-hours. Furthermore, the token registered a market cap of $56.17 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $2.20 million.
Resistance: $0.0064, $0.0071
Support: $0.0030
Klinger Oscillator: KO indicated a highly bullish phase for DGB in the offing as the signal line continued to hover well below the leading line.
RSI: The RSI also headed towards the median, depicting positive sentiment in the DGB market.
At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency market was noting a sudden surge in market cap and valuation. In fact, Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, was recording a 5% pump in value, a pump that most of the altcoin market followed. At press time, Tezos [XTZ] was up by 4%, Monero [XMR] by 4.45%, and DigitByte [DGB] by 8%.
Tezos [XTZ]
The tenth-largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, Tezos [XTZ] has been one of the few major assets to reap some profits lately. According to its YTD returns, the coin was returning 44.19% since the beginning of 2020. Despite major falls in the market, the XTZ market had regained its lost value following the crash in March. Further, Binance’s launch of Tezos staking gave a lot of positive momentum to the market.
At press time, the coin was valued at $1.951 with its resistance marked at $2.189 and support at $1.219. However, the coin may have been entering bearish territory.
According to the Awesome Oscillator, the coin had shed its bullish momentum, with bearish momentum soon taking over. However, the trend was lacking strength, suggesting that even though there were sellers in the market, the pressure wasn’t high.
Monero [XMR]
Monero was recording a 0.58% growth in its price over the past 24-hours, with a market cap of $964.28 million. As the charts suggested, the coin was not successful in reversing bearish attacks, with the privacy coin registering losses of 15.69% in the market. XMR was being traded at $55.190, its with immediate resistance at $60.66 and support at $41.956.
The volatility in the market had reduced as the Bollinger bands appeared to converge. However, it would seem that the bulls may return as the moving average had slipped under the candlesticks.
DigiByte [DGB]
The 63rd-ranked coin on CoinMarketCap was recorded to have a market cap of $66.91 million, DigiByte has been at a loss of 10.73% since the beginning of the year. The coin noted a sudden spike in its price over the past week, however, after which it slipped. At press time, DGB was valued at $0.0051, while resistance was noted to be 0.0068, with the support at $0.0040.
Bullish signals were also reversed as the coin’s price went down. As per the MACD indicator, the MACD line was above the signal line until recently. However, with sellers in the market, the MACD line had crossed over the signal line, giving way to a bearish trend.
PANews reported on February 24 that, according to Decrypt, the Arizona Senate has advanced SB 1649, proposing to establish a "Digital Asset Strategic Reserve Fund" managed by the state treasury. This would authorize the state treasurer to hold, invest in, and lend seized, confiscated, or surrendered digital assets to the state through qualified custodians or regulated exchange-traded products. The bill passed the Senate Finance Committee on February 16 with 4 votes in favor and 2 against, and was approved by the Senate Rules Committee on February 23. It will now be submitted to the full Senate for a vote.
The bill explicitly classifies Bitcoin, XRP, DigiByte, stablecoins, and NFTs as eligible assets, and uses a "cryptocurrency fair value score" to screen other eligible digital assets, based on a 1% benchmark threshold set when Bitcoin reaches $100,000 per coin. The bill emphasizes that related operations must not increase the state's financial risk. SB 1649 must first pass the Senate before being sent to the House of Representatives, and finally to the governor for signature.
TLDRBitcoin and the Arizona Crypto Reserve StrategyXRP and DigiByte Included in Eligible AssetsGet 3 Free Stock Ebooks Arizona lawmakers advanced Senate Bill 1649 to create a state-managed crypto reserve funded by seized digital assets. The Senate Finance Committee approved the bill in a 4 to 2 vote before sending it to the full Senate calendar. The proposed fund would hold Bitcoin, XRP, DigiByte stablecoins, and certain NFTs obtained through criminal proceedings. The Arizona State Treasurer could invest up to 10 percent of public funds in digital assets under the measure. Arizona lawmakers are advancing Senate Bill 1649 to create a state-managed digital asset reserve. The proposal would place seized cryptocurrencies under the control of the State Treasurer. The measure now awaits a full Senate vote after clearing two key committees.
The Senate Finance Committee approved SB 1649 in a 4–2 vote on February 16. Lawmakers then moved the bill through the Rules Committee and placed it on the full Senate calendar by February 24. The proposal authorizes the Arizona State Treasurer to establish a Digital Assets Strategic Reserve Fund.
The fund would hold digital assets that courts seize, confiscate, or receive through surrender in criminal cases. Lawmakers state that the fund would not rely on direct taxpayer appropriations. However, the Treasurer could invest up to 10% of public funds in digital assets under the bill.
Bitcoin and the Arizona Crypto Reserve Strategy The legislation lists Bitcoin as an eligible asset for the proposed reserve. Lawmakers cited Bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million coins in committee discussions. Supporters argue that this cap supports its use as a hedge against inflation.
NEW: 🇺🇸 Arizona advances legislation to create a state digital asset reserve fund from seized crypto.
📜 AZ SB1649 allows the state treasurer to hold, invest, or loan #Bitcoin, $XRP or "any other digital-only assets that confer economic, proprietary or access rights or powers." pic.twitter.com/J0eI7JPi4J
— Bitcoin.com News (@BitcoinNews) March 4, 2026
Senator Mark Finchem supports holding seized Bitcoin instead of auctioning it immediately. He said the state should benefit from potential appreciation rather than sell assets quickly. “The state should capture value for taxpayers,” Finchem said during hearings.
The bill permits the Treasurer to loan digital holdings to generate returns. However, the Treasurer must ensure that lending does not introduce added financial risk. Custody rules require multi-party governance and geographically distributed data centers.
Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed similar digital asset proposals in the past. She cited volatility as a concern in prior veto letters. SB 1649 must pass the full Senate before it can reach her desk.
XRP and DigiByte Included in Eligible Assets The bill names XRP and DigiByte alongside Bitcoin as approved assets. Lawmakers also included stablecoins and non-fungible tokens within the eligible categories. The measure does not limit holdings to a single blockchain network.
Arizona has built legal frameworks for digital assets over the past year. In May 2025, HB 2749 allowed the state to retain unclaimed digital assets in native form. The law prevented automatic conversion of abandoned crypto into cash.
Separate legislation seeks to exempt cryptocurrency from state property taxes. Lawmakers have also addressed crypto ATM fraud through new compliance rules. Operators must provide full refunds to defrauded first-time customers.
The new ATM rules also cap daily transactions for new users at $2,000. Lawmakers said the cap aims to reduce fraud exposure. The provisions operate independently from SB 1649.
Law enforcement agencies often use forfeiture proceedings to seize digital assets. Victim restitution holds legal priority over agency claims in criminal cases. In crypto matters, victims may claim the actual digital assets taken.
Texas and Connecticut have enacted laws addressing criminal forfeiture of digital assets. South Dakota advanced SB 43 to define cryptocurrency as a seizable asset. New Hampshire remains among seven states pursuing strategic reserve legislation as of early 2026.
SB 1649 now stands on the Arizona Senate calendar for a full floor vote. Lawmakers have not scheduled a final vote date. The bill requires majority approval before it proceeds further in the legislative process.
Bitcoin pioneer Jeff Garzik's production company NextCypher has tapped "Star Trek's" Jonathan Frakes to direct an adaptation of sci-fi novel "Deathlands."
Frakes, who starred as Commander Riker on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," is a veteran director who's helmed TV shows including "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," "Star Trek: Picard," and "Leverage: Redemption."
"It's absolutely amazing," Garzik told Decrypt, adding that he was "incredibly humbled and blessed" to have Frakes join the project.
Based on a series of novels by James Axler and Jack Adrian, "Deathlands" follows a band of survivors traversing a post-apocalyptic world using teleportation technology. "It's post-apocalyptic, Mad Max meets AI meets the monsters from 'Tremors' and everything in between," Garzik said.
The TV show is a "refreshed" adaptation of the novel series, Garzik explained, noting that "the books were a post-Cold War, post-nuclear war scenario," and that the TV show updates the setting to "post-AI driven chaos and all the fun that happens after that."
"I know 'Deathlands' doesn't scream optimism from the title," he said. "But it's about a group of plucky survivors that continue to persevere despite what we throw at them every week. To me, that's optimistic—and I think that inspired Frakes."
Source: Jeff GarzikThe first show into production on NextCypher's slate, "Deathlands" will go before the cameras in Sofia, Bulgaria this spring. Garzik serves as executive producer on the series alongside Thomas P. Vitale, with "Pandora" and "Agent X" producer Mark A. Altman as its showrunner.
A key developer of the Linux operating system and Bitcoin Core project, Garzik founded NextCypher Productions in 2022, aiming to use Web3 tools to produce independent science fiction entertainment.
Garzik, who also co-founded Bloq, Spacechain, and Vesper Finance, explained that the firm plans to leverage Web3 technologies such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to give fans early access to productions.
While stressing that the "details may change," Garzik explained that the production company's playbook includes a run of 1,138 NextCypher multipass NFTs that are "cross-production, not tied to any one IP or one specific production," as well as "production-specific NFT runs."
Holders of the multipass NFTs will be offered a "discount or a tranche or a first bite at the apple" for the "Deathlands" NFTs, which will offer rewards such as gated access to downloadable digital assets, Discord events and competitions. Other ideas on the roadmap include contests to win Zoom chats with the showrunners, contributing to the design of props, costumes and sets, competitions to win those show-used items, and a "very rare trip to Sofia, Bulgaria" to visit the set.
Garzik said that NextCypher isn't currently exploring Web3 financing and distribution models for its shows.
"It's not there yet from a practical basis for NextCypher specifically, to the point where we would dedicate an IP to a Web3 streaming platform." He added that the production company is taking a "hybrid approach," involving traditional financing and distribution models for known properties, while "weaving in" Web3's "proof of fan base" element.
"Hopefully the flywheel starts moving," he said. "We gain some momentum, we prove that we can actually produce, and then more of the Web3 funding doors open."
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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Crypto markets remain sideways; Litecoin still surging, BNB and Cardano doing well, Bitcoin and ETH flat. Market Wrap As the crypto consolidation continues markets have fallen back again following a day of minor gains. There is still no sign of this correction that everyone is expecting as total market capitalization remains above $250 billion and Bitcoin remains sideways.
Bitcoin fell back to $7,780 yesterday before recovering back to $8,050 during Asian trading today. As was the case yesterday, BTC dropped back below $8k pretty quickly and is still trading there, flat on the day. Unless the bulls can take it above $8.2k BTC will remain range bound.
Predictably Ethereum has also done absolutely nothing and remains trading at $248, a fraction higher than it was this time on Tuesday morning. ETH is still hopelessly tied to Bitcoin and is likely to remain so until some fundamentals kick it into gear.
The top ten is a mixed affair during the morning’s trading session. Many altcoins have not moved at all since yesterday but one is showing a lot of strength with a 34 percent gain on the week and another 9 percent added today. Litecoin has turned $125 from resistance into support and has surged to $140 as the halving fomo heats up. Analysts expect LTC to reach $150 before traders start taking profits and it retraces a little. Binance Coin is the only other one moving with a 4 percent gain to reach $33.
The top twenty is looking equally mixed today with Cardano leading things adding 5 percent to $0.088. Tron, IOTA and NEO have notched up a further 2 percent each but the rest remain flat, unchanged from yesterday.
FOMO: Egretia Emerges Entering the crypto top one hundred with a spike of 30 percent is EGT which is now priced at $0.015. OKEx is driving momentum for this Singapore based video gaming token with a series of giveaways.
A Breaking News: 5 Million EGT Giveaway!!!
11:00 am June 11th - 11:00 am June 18th in OKEx
More details: https://t.co/jn3pTaOv17 #egt #okex #airdrop #gaming #blockchain pic.twitter.com/DOFzalUUKz
— Egretia (@Egretia_io) June 10, 2019
Zcoin is also on a pump today as XZC adds 20 percent largely driven by crypto exchanges in Thailand. WAX is the third best performer today with a rise of 11 percent. Such a surprise at the red end – it is Aurora again dumping 23 percent; this altcoin is so predictable that everyone should be trading it.
Total market capitalization 24 hours. Coinmarketcap.com Total crypto market capitalization is up a tiny fraction from yesterday at $256 billion. The mini $6 billion dump was quickly recovered meaning that markets are still at the same level and still consolidating. Nothing is likely to happen until Bitcoin makes a bigger move, its dominance has been steadily eroding this month and it is now down to 55.4%.
Market Wrap is a section that takes a daily look at the top cryptocurrencies during the current trading session and analyses the best-performing ones, looking for trends and possible fundamentals.
Crypto markets still range bound; Bitcoin, BCH and BSV moving marginally, Litecoin, BNB and ADA fall back. Market Wrap It has been another day of consolidation for crypto markets as they end the week flat. Very little movement outside of the channel has occurred this week as total market capitalization has been range bound around the $250 billion level. Things have picked up marginally for some crypto assets but others have lost ground.
Bitcoin hit an intraday high of just above $8,300 a few hours ago but pulled back to its current price of $8,230. The move is bullish but not strong enough to break the resistance at this level. Volume has picked up again and is approaching $20 billion which is a sign that further gains could be on the cards.
Ethereum is still flat and holding around $255. There has been very little momentum in the ETH camp and it is down 1.5 percent on the day. Volume is declining as the head and shoulders formation reaches its closure and a drop could be imminent. Current support for ETH lies at $230.
The top ten is showing more red than green during Asian trading this morning. The only two aside from Bitcoin that are up on the day are Bitcoin Cash with 2.5 percent and Bitcoin SV with 3.5 percent. The rest are in the red with Litecoin and Binance Coin dropping the most at over 3 percent each.
Top twenty movements are also minimal with a couple of percent being dropped by Cardano and Tron. Gaining a similar amount are Cosmos and NEO reaching $6.25 and $13.13 respectively. The rest are plus or minus a percent or so as the crypto consolidation continues.
FOMO: Chainlink Spikes on Google Hints It comes as no surprise that today’s top one hundred top performer is Chainlink. The 43 percent spike came after Google Cloud dropped hints that it would be working with Ethereum based LINK. The Reddit feed went wild and the altcoin spiked in volume from $24 million to $390 million as the fomo frenzy gathered pace. Binance is getting the majority of trade at the moment with 67 percent.
Energi is a newcomer to the top one hundred with a 30 percent pump as NRG gets listed on KuCoin. Bytom has also had a productive 24 hours with 14 percent added. As predicted the big dump is Aurora as it peaks and troughs on a daily basis, today dumping 50 percent for no obvious reason.
Total market cap 24 hours. Coinmarketcap.com Total crypto market capitalization is currently marginally higher than this time yesterday at $262 billion. Markets are still range bound however and are unlikely to see any bigger moves until Bitcoin breaks out. The push back above $8,200, albeit briefly, is a bullish sign though so the weekend in crypto land could get interesting.
Market Wrap is a section that takes a daily look at the top cryptocurrencies during the current trading session and analyses the best-performing ones, looking for trends and possible fundamentals.
Crypto markets reach 2019 high; Bitcoin still in charge, XRP and BNB pumping, LTC retreating slowly. Market Wrap Crypto markets have reached their highest level since July 2018 in terms of market capitalization. The momentum has come from Bitcoin hitting another 2019 top, and Ripple’s XRP pumping on a new partnership announcement.
Bitcoin has been grinding higher for the past 24 hours until it topped $9,400 briefly marking its highest price since early May 2018. There is heavy resistance above this and BTC quickly started to retreat back to the $9,200 area where it was trading this time yesterday. According to coinmarketcap.com daily volume dumped 25% in an unnatural looking spike so the figures could be spurious.
Ethereum has been static again and remains at $270 where it was this time yesterday. Without any solid fundamentals ETH remains sluggish and unable to push towards $300. It is still 80 percent down from its all-time high and ‘altseason’ has yet to materialize.
The top ten is a mixed affair during Asian trading today but the top performer is XRP. The Ripple token surged 9 percent after the announcement that the company was partnering with MoneyGram. The deal would involve the deployment of xRapid for cross border transfers using XRP. After topping $0.46 XRP corrected to $0.44 where it currently trades.
An industry defining milestone: together, @MoneyGram and @Ripple are solving the challenges with cross-border payments using the speed and efficiency of #XRP. https://t.co/xIfeJJgSy7
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) June 17, 2019
Binance Coin is also doing well today adding 5 percent as the exchange announced that it will issue a number of crypto-pegged tokens on Binance Chain in the coming days, starting with $BTCB, a BEP2 token pegged to $BTC. BSV is up marginally and Litecoin is starting its pullback, dropping 3 percent back towards $130.
The top twenty is also mixed but red is dominating over green as altcoins slide again. NEO and Tezos are dumping 5 percent a piece right now and IOTA and NEM are not far behind dropping 3 percent. Only Cosmos is making anything with 3 percent added on the day.
FOMO: Chainlink Churning Higher Today’s top one hundred top performer is LINK which has cranked 18 percent to hit $2. The fomo is still lingering from the Google Cloud tie up as this altcoin climbs the charts to 24th with a market cap of $700 million. Japan’s Monacoin is also on a roll today adding 15 percent, unsurprisingly most of it on Bitbank in JPY. Zcash is the third most popular altcoin today making 13 percent.
The two usual suspects are at the bottom end of the performance pile, Maximine Coin and Aurora.
Total market cap 24 hours. Coinmarketcap.com Total crypto market cap hit a new 2019 high of $290 billion a few hours ago. The move was driven by BTC and XRP which both pumped within a few hours of each other. Market cap is currently back at $286 billion where it was this time yesterday. BTC is still in the driving seat.
Market Wrap is a section that takes a daily look at the top cryptocurrencies during the current trading session and analyses the best-performing ones, looking for trends and possible fundamentals.
[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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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.
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.
Internet penetration has reached so far that, currently, more than half of the world’s population has an Internet connection. Today, everything is migrating toward the Internet, including businesses, education, communication, and, of course, jobs. For example, the segment of global e-retail sales amounted to $2.8 trillion last year. You don’t need to drive to the office every day or follow corporate rules anymore; everyone is free to work online and follow their own schedule. That's why the number of freelancers increases every year; there are currently 53 million freelancers in the US alone.
Finding a freelance job online is becoming easier, and this trend is likely to increase in the coming years. Thus it’s very important that freelancers and their employers could have a reliable platform where they could communicate, make deals, and accept payments for the work they do, minimizing the risk of fraud.
There will always be the problem of trust. On one hand, there are a lot of malevolent people who would leave a freelancer without payment after receiving the results of his/her work. On the other hand, many people would take money with great pleasure and disappear without moving a finger to do the job they were tasked with. That's why it's necessary to have an arbitrary third party, a freelancing platform that keeps the funds in its custody when two parties agree on a task only to release it upon completion (or solve the dispute).
Source: websiteplanet.com
Undoubtedly, freelancing platforms are priceless for those who don't have regular employers and have to deal with new, unknown customers everyday. But they also have a handful of hidden problems.
Global freelance platforms: pros and consCurrently, any freelancer can find a job that would suit his/her skills on many sites:
Upwork is a platform targeted to IT professionals Fiverr has many different categories, but it's famous for its cheap, creative freelancers from around the world Freelancer is the oldest platform and includes many categories Peopleperhour is a lesser known platform, which can be an alternative to the previously listed ones Guru.com has some rare categories, including legal If you have any skills that could be sold online, there's a chance that you'll be able to find a task on any of these platforms. But there’s also a chance that you'll face problems with employers who may try to persuade you to accept other forms of payment outside of the safety of the platform, and after doing the work they will refuse to pay. Not only are the employers are abusing the system, but freelancers can often deliver low-quality work and still demand payment, as the platform only counts the fact that the task has been delivered, not that it is quality work. And to top it off, both parties face fees up to 20-30%, taken by the platforms for its middleman services.
So, the problem of trust isn’t fully solved by existing solutions. They’re good, but they have flaws. Perhaps blockchain technology could be a better alternative?
Smart contracts improving the freelance experienceWhat is a smart contract? It’s basically a program that contains the condition of its execution.
Person A places a reward in the form of cryptocurrency and a condition. If Person B fulfills the condition the contract is executed automatically and Person B gets the reward.
It doesn’t require trust, so the smart contract can be created between total strangers and can involve any amount of money - both parties can be assured that the deal is safe.
Source: slideshare.net/SergeiTikhomirov
For the freelance field, it's the exact thing that everyone needs. Smart contracts can bring:
Trust - Since you know for sure that the other party can’t be malicious, it locks up money in the contract in the moment of creating the contract, and if you deliver the work, you get the money released. Confidence - Freelancers can concentrate on their tasks instead of worrying about payment. Transparency - Any smart contract can be checked. It’s publicly visible that at the certain address there’s a certain amount reserved. So if a freelancer doesn’t believe his customer, he can take a look by himself. Also, there are more benefits compared to centralized platforms - such as increased security. A smart contract is protected by the principle of blockchain technologies. In a brute-force attack it would take more time than our universe exists to find the correct private key containing funds. Also it’s said that the chances of hacking a wallet is equal to winning a Powerball nine times in a row.
Decentralized freelance platformsAs blockchain technology continues to improve, more and more solutions are being introduced. We’ve picked three interesting platforms for freelancers that may serve the mission of connecting the freelance workforce with employers in the future.
The first one is Freelanex. It has the ambitious goal of creating a global, decentralized platform for all kinds of freelancers and to fight unemployment among young people. The project is integrated with Hyperledger, which is used by half of the biggest companies implementing blockchain today. Also, it uses ERC20 tokens, a universally accepted standard, as the means of payment within the platform.
Another platform is StormX. It’s a bit different from the previous platform, because it’s designed for microtasks; participating in surveys, watching videos, trying new products, and all similar things that can be done in 5 minutes. The payments are released instantly upon task completion, from the pool reserved for a task by a person/company who creates it. The platform has its own Storm Tokens working on Ethereum network, but it also supports payouts Bitcoin and Ethereum.
CryptoTask is a more traditional freelance platform, supporting all standard categories you may find on a centralized freelance site, such as freelancer.com. It works on the Aeternity blockchain and it targets the eastern European and African countries such as Kenya and Croatia. The platform works as a decentralized app containing a system of smart contracts, which defines how all participants interact.
For those people who want to be able to work at the legal and global platform, the most convenient solution may be the Freelanex platform, since its competitor, CryptoTask, is oriented toward non-Westernized countries. So, what advantages does Freelanex have over all the centralized platforms?
Nobody controls your work and your earningsFreelanex aims to provide the most user-friendly experience for all participants. That’s why it doesn’t restrict payments only to cryptocurrencies like many other blockchain services do; it supports both crypto and fiat. Those users that adopt FLXC get discounts if they create tasks, or they receive more tokens if they complete tasks. Freelancers pay an 8% fee, clients pay a 10% fee, but initially after the launch the platform will be operating without any fees. So, it might be a good idea to try it as an early adopter.
All operations get regulated by smart contracts and operate independently in a decentralized manner, which excludes the possibility of fraud from any one party. Also, there is a KYC procedure which isn’t obligatory for freelancers, but they get a FLXC bonus for completing it.
Also, Freelanex has a very noble incentive. They say that currently there are 73 million young men and women who don’t have a job. The platform plans to establish courses and laboratories to provide free online training for those who are unemployed for free in order to promote the freelance economy and create more jobs.
The only issue we can see with the platform is the possibility of the smart contract to be hacked, as it’s often prone to human error. Smart contracts rely on blockchain security, but if they contain any security holes due to poorly written code, it can be exploited to withdraw funds from the contract. Last year, EOS users lost more than $500,000 in EOS smart contracts because of such an exploit. That’s why it’s crucial to choose a reliable and safe platform if you want to use a decentralized solution.
ConclusionThe freelance economy, or “the gig economy” as it’s often called, is growing fast. 50 years ago, people would work at one job their whole life, but now everything has changed. The job market, thanks to the Internet, has become global, and now professionals with good skills can work and earn from any place on the planet. The more people connected to the Internet, the more jobs will be created. According to Intuit, by 2020 the number of people participating in the gig economy will grow to 43%.
Source: upwork.com
People use freelance earnings as a secondary income; some people freelance to increase their savings, in some poor countries it allows people to earn more than they would get working a normal day job. The gig economy even creates new jobs for those with disabilities. It’s highly probable that in the future everyone will be employed in a freelance activity. Forty-seven percent of Millennials are already calling themselves freelancers, more than any other generation, and there will be more and more young people accustomed to online work. All this workforce will need reliable platforms to communicate and interact, and blockchain will play a huge role in this future economy.
Aeternity is a Blockchain protocol started in 2016, Aeternity Ventures is the investment arm of the project started in 2017. Nikola Stojanow is the Co-Founder of the Aeternity project and is the CEO of Aeternity Ventures.
We at Blockmanity had a chance to interview Nikola on a call recently. We hope you enjoy the interview.
Blockmanity: Hey Nikola, I would love to know more about your background and the story of how you got into this space.
Nikola: To start my journey from the beginning, I was born in Bulgaria and raised in Germany. While I traveled a lot for most parts of my life, I decided to move my base back to Bulgaria for the last couple of years. Before starting AE Ventures in 2017, I worked in the corporate world for a while, specifically in the pharmaceutical sector in Europe, MENA and Asia and Pacific regions. I last held the position of Director, Business Development until I felt a need for change. I entered the realm of blockchain technology with a travel company that was built based on decentralized open source bookings technology where I was involved with fundraising campaigns. The entrepreneurial bug bit me and I moved back to Berlin where I met my old friend Yanislav Malahov, who is now my co-founder at æternity. He was looking for a business guy and invited me to join the æternity team. From there we toiled and managed to build one of the few blockchain unicorns in Bulgaria.
It was during our journey at æternity that we realized the significance of quality startups and projects adopting our infrastructure and so I created AE Ventures, the company that would do exactly that: incubate, accelerate and invest into startups around the world.
At that point, Sofia had an incredibly vibrant startup ecosystem that welcomed me and showed how much potential we locally have and how people have the desire to innovate and work towards a positive change and so we decided to set up AE Venture in Bulgaria. That I would say was one of my best decisions as things developed really quickly and strongly, our Starfleet accelerator started growing and is now on several continents. We are building an amazing international team, which is creating a global ecosystem, where people actively collaborate with us around the world, allowing us to be at multiple places, at the same time!
The immense potential and seeing how much need there is for funding and proper mentoring has been my fuel to nurture my desire to do more and help more people to get the chances that we got, when we started off with the Starfleet Program.
Blockmanity: æternity was founded in 2016 and the mainnet launched in late 2018, How has the journey been so far? And how would you describe æternity to those who haven’t heard about it?
Nikola: Yes, we launched the mainnet in November 2018 and since then the race to bring blockchain technology to the mainstream has begun. æternity has been constantly improving and developing, numerous implementations have been made and we are happy to see that the ecosystem is growing. æternity blockchain is a public blockchain protocol that is highly-scalable and is interoperable with several other blockchains. Developers can build dApps or æpps, as we’d like to call it, with several features that include accessing oracles and state channels to use real-world data in a trustless environment. In its essence, æternity aims to solve problems of scalability, and security making it more economical and user-friendly when it comes to accessing the smart contracts on the network.
Blockmanity: So how is æternity similar and different to other Blockchains like Ethereum, Tezos, etc?
Nikola: æternity is one of the few blockchain protocols that have solved the fundamental problems that lie in archetype protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum -it is decentralized, public, global, censorship-free, tamper-proof transaction technology.
It’s a scalable smart contract platform that can handle more transactions and smart contract calls and has far more advanced features capable of handling an enormous amount of people all over the world.
One of the main differences between æternity and earlier blockchains lies under the hood: æternity is written in Erlang, which is a proven functional language for distributed systems.
Blockmanity: Ok now let us get into AE Ventures, what is the vision for the fund and tell us more about the Starfleet accelerator program.
Nikola: AE Ventures is built on the vision to enable the creation of decentralized businesses that would be a great improvement on the prevailing systems. With this conviction, we work towards funding blockchain startups from around the world alongside providing them with the advisory and training to built market-ready products that can solve real-world problems.
This is something we have brought to life through direct investments and with the Global Accelerator Programme for Blockchain startups – Starfleet. With three editions completed over the last two years, we’ve invested over $1.9 million in 18 startups. We are drawn to people who not only build exceptional products that go past the proof-of-concept stage that can be taken to the market, but to those who are solving problems that contribute to the greater good of society.
Blockmanity: At what stage of the startup do you mainly invest in? And do they have to build exclusively on the æternity blockchain to get funded?
Nikola: We usually like to enter at a seed/pre-seed level and predominantly through the Starfleet accelerator program. We are very industry-agnostic – the only common thread we look at is the use of Blockchain tech and its implementability.
The participating startups need to build the product entirely or as a part of æternity blockchain as it is one of the most scalable and interoperable blockchains out there. And this way, we can provide the startups with the right kind of help and hand-holding required to build their products.
Blockmanity: What are the best use-cases for Blockchain that you have seen so far and what use-cases are you excited about for the future?
Nikola: I truly believe that Blockchain has the power to impact every sector. Every Starfleet program reveals interesting use-cases solving real-time problems. It is not surprising that DeFi is developing very rapidly. I expect a huge boom and adoption in this sector. It also makes a lot of sense since blockchain technology serves the financial sector with almost instant transactions at almost no cost.
In the future, essentially everything might be tokenized. There is a whole other world of opportunities with tokens.
Identity management is another critical segment with a focus on individuals owning their own data and deciding who to share with and for what. With the recent concerns of privacy, we have seen some very interesting use-cases in this aspect as well.
Another sector that I am very keen to explore is bringing in more transparency in political campaigns, voting etc. We have seen political parties collaborate with the open-source blockchain and developer platform in order to optimize the participation processes of citizens in internal voting. This is the need of the hour in every democratic nation and more and more players from the ecosystem should focus on it.
Other interesting applications of blockchain use-cases include banking with fiat on and off-ramps, decentralized exchanges and of course gaming!!
Blockmanity: Could you share some names and numbers from your portfolio of startups you have already invested in?
Nikola: We are proud to say that so far we have invested directly or through our acceleration program more than $2mln in 19 startups. To name a few: WeiDex (Bulgaria) – decentralized exchange for cryptocurrencies, which just recently released their cross-chain atomic swap widget called Jelly. AmpNet (Croatia)- a whitelabel, all-in-one platform for running energy cooperatives and energy communities. Abend (Germany) – the cashless, on-site payments platform aiming to be an “own little economy” for each festival and club around the globe. Cryptic Legends (Serbia/Malta) — blockchain-based, team management game in an awesome ancient fantasy world. SmartCredit (Switzerland) – a platform for crypto-loans creating 2-click consumer credits (money on demand) for the borrower and tools like credit tokenization, credit transferability and interest-bearing to the holder.
Blockmanity: Recently you teamed up with IBC Media to build a presence and get Indian startups to apply for the program, what is the thought process behind this and what other markets are you targeting?
Nikola: India has a booming blockchain ecosystem and armed with its strong developer pool and the burgeoning startup ecosystem with over 27,000+ start-ups, there is tremendous scope for a decentralized future. Raghu and his team from IBC Media have shown great potential in tapping the Indian market and identifying blockchain startups with interesting use cases. We had over 175 blockchain-based early-stage startups up registering for the Starfleet India in its first edition, of which we have shortlisted 13 very interesting startups for the Genesis Week. We are hoping to see strong Indian problems being identified and looking forward to solving them with blockchain technology. We are happy to partner with IBC Media to launch the first edition of the Global Starfleet program here in India and look forward to successfully finding these Indian startups gems with a proven capability to build technology products that can scale, and a strong underlying blockchain use case.
Blockmanity: What is in store for the æternity ecosystem in 2020, what are you most excited about?
Nikola: I am extremely happy to watch how the æternity ecosystem is growing. All the startups we invested in brought value and some diversity. It is also great to observe how the projects are building partnerships between each other and creating synergy. In 2020, we organized the First Indian edition of our Starfleet accelerator. We are confident that we are on the right place as we are confident that people Developing countries such as India, Kenya, and others in East Africa are discovering and implementing an increasing array of applications for blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology that promises a secure, low fee, peer-to-peer mechanism for verifying and validating information.
We are also very excited about the development of the blockchain startup which we accelerated as now it is their time to prove their concept.
Blockmanity: If a startup founder is reading this, where can he/she apply for your program?
Nikola: Well, we’ve closed applications for Starfleet India this year and we’re well on our way with the Genesis Week. However, if you’re a startup that has a great product that is built on blockchain, you’re more than welcome to contact us on our website. However, do keep in mind that when you’re pitching your idea you have to be as clear as possible and give us a suggestion of how we can work together to improve your product and perhaps, fund it if it makes it through the selection process. And more importantly, take a good look at the æternity blockchain and do your due diligence. See where it can help your product become a better version of itself; don’t try to force-fit it.
Blockmanity: Last but not the least, which is your favorite company in Crypto other than your own?
Nikola: Interesting question, but not simple to answer. There are numerous companies that I have been following for some time now, but with the market and interests changing rather quickly, new interesting projects are coming to light more often.
For me, the most interesting Dapps have not been developed yet, as the idea is to have them function in a way, where the user does not need a Ph.D. in Computer Technologies or Cyber Security, in order to use a product.
Simplicity should be key, without jeopardizing the integrity or security of users and product. If I would have to choose, I would go with either wallets, payment gateways, or products that engage the user to do something, in order to receive tokens (positive incentivization to do good seems to be quite a powerful medium, in order to have a large number of people to positively impact their surrounding).
But as mentioned above, I admire all projects that have a sincere agenda and want to improve or innovate in a space, which has not seen innovation in a long time, as simply building products and having projects succeed is what excited me most in the entire space, rather than a single favorite company.
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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.
This week, NEO joined Microsoft’s .NET Foundation, serving as a major asset to Microsoft’s blockchain efforts.
Mainline Blockchain Efforts From Microsoft Following the integration, NEO will be able to introduce a new set of tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, making it easier for mainstream developers to create NEO dApps. This news comes just months after NEO expressed interest in the .NET stack.
This isn’t Microsoft’s first time using blockchain. Over the past few years, Microsoft has allowed enterprises to make use of various blockchains through its Azure services. Azure provides access to popular chains like Ethereum, Quorum, and Corda, as well as obscure blockchains like SIMBA Chain, Rootstock, Stratis, and more.
Microsoft’s most frequent collaborator, though, is JPMorgan. This year, Microsoft introduced Quorum as Azure’s first fully-managed blockchain, offering a more simplified blockchain experience. Microsoft also uses Quorum in-house to manage XBOX royalties. A strategic partnership is ongoing, so there may be more to come.
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Microsoft’s blockchain efforts don’t stop there: the company is also a member of several blockchain groups, such as the Hyperledger Foundation, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, and the Token Taxonomy Initiative. Microsoft hasn’t produced much in the way of products with these groups; rather, it is contributing to standards.
The company has also developed ION, a Bitcoin-based decentralized identity system, covering the costs of the project through its Identity Division.
Funding, Acceptance, and Other Efforts Microsoft is also pouring funding into blockchain projects. Notably, it has contributed funds to events like the Ethereal Virtual Hackathon, which took place in April.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Research’s blockchain division has contributed to a handful of research papers over the years. Microsoft Research was responsible for Microsoft’s first foray into blockchain: in 2012, the group published “On Blockchain and Red Balloons” with Cornell University, describing a Bitcoin information propagation system.
Finally, casual crypto users might be interested to know that Microsoft accepts Bitcoin in its stores. You can deposit Bitcoin into your account and receive credit in return.
Are Microsoft’s Blockchain Efforts Overrated? Blockchain endeavors are sometimes exaggerated in the media, and Microsoft is no exception. In 2017, a Microsoft representative mentioned a partnership with IOTA before both companies denied it. Although Microsoft was indeed participating in IOTA’s IoT marketplace, there was no formal partnership.
Likewise, Microsoft may never live down Bill Gates’ attacks on Bitcoin: he has called it a “greater fool” investment. Gates is now only minimally involved in Microsoft, and current reps have made more positive comments. Some have even said that blockchain is “at a tipping point.”
Despite a few disappointments, Microsoft’s blockchain efforts make it one of the most pro-blockchain companies. Ultimately, the company must change with the times: other tech giants like IBM and Amazon have made their own blockchain breakthroughs, while Microsoft is just getting started.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Mike Dalton. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Enterprise blockchain technology platform Stratis has announced the launch of its new Security Token Offering (STO) platform.
The product will allow businesses to raise capital by issuing legally permissible, asset-backed securities on its native blockchain.
Stratis has been engaging with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to ensure it is compliant with SEC regulations, and the platform has been fine-tuned through “regular dialogue” with the firm’s clients.
The STO platform conforms with both Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws and has been subject to rigorous testing to make sure it follows the legal requirements for hosting a Security Token Offering.
New beginnings Stratis’ new platform is an adaptation of its existing Initial Coin Offering (ICO) platform and includes extra legal features to ensure it is suitable for security token issuance.
It will enable companies and organisations to run a secure and flexible web-based application on the Stratis blockchain to issue tokens to investors.
One key feature the platform boasts is real-time pricing, with the ability to accept payments in both fiat (USD) and cryptocurrency (BTC and STRAT).
It utilises currency data from multiple providers such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko to ensure its participants benefit from up-to-date prices.
“We are delighted to launch our STO platform, one of the key milestones of our 2019 Development Roadmap,” said Chris Trew, Stratis CEO.
“The STO platform builds on the functionality of the Stratis ICO platform with the addition of several new features that satisfy the rigorous regulatory requirements needed to conduct STOs.
“Our STO platform is highly secure, flexible, and scalable, making it easy for businesses of any size to raise money through the tokenisation of their asset.”
Interested in reading more cryptocurrency-related news? Discover more about the trader who lost $26 million in one week after Bitcoin slumped to $6,500.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.
