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Personal bodyguard service is now basic need of crypto CEOs and founders

Skycoin shows McAfee the door over 'whale abusive tweets'

Ishan Garg Posted On July 4, 2019

Blockchain cruise the most iconic event in the blockchain space featured one of the most iconic projects – Skycoin. Skycoin founded in 2014 by early Bitcoin Core developer, Synth, is a project focussed on building Blockchain 3.0. Since its inception, Skycoin has been touted as one of the best projects in the cryptocurrency space by John McAfee himself.

According to Synth, there are three main problems with the current implementation of blockchain- TPS is slow, Vulnerabilities in Smart contract and resources are not isolated.

To illustrate his point Synth points out the slowness of Bitcoin’s transaction speed and its susceptibility to a 51% attack.

Synth explained how Skycoin works on the problems of current blockchain networks to build a better blockchain. He takes the example of Fiber and Skywire technologies that are developed by Skycoin.

Fiber & CXA highlight of Synth’s keynote was the part about Fiber. Fiber is a proprietary technology developed by Skycoin which is the backbone of blockchain 3.0. Fiber uses DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) to allow companies and individuals to create custom blockchains according to their needs which can interact with Skycoin’s ecosystem.

Two things about Fiber on which Synth brought our attention to.

Fiber is completely customizable –  That is any business can use their own consensus or a better consensus algorithm in the future to execute contracts/transactions. Fiber chains run in parallel and are infinitely scalable – Each fiber chain is not dependant on other blockchains, but if required they can communicate to each other via the Skycoin network.Fiber is the structural layer of Skycoin’s blockchain and supports the ability to execute a smart contract. Fiber has its own programming language called CX and also comes with a default consensus mechanism called Obelisk.

Synth explains the idea behind Skycoin is not just a token but an entire ecosystem. And Fiber sits at the heart of this ecosystem.

SkywireAnother highlight of Synth’s speech was Skywire. According to Synth, Skywire is decentralized internet built entirely on top of Skycoin’s blockchain. Skywire has its own hardware and antennas to build a truly decentralized internet.

Users can build DApps and run it on Skywire. The new Dapps will focus on security, and privacy combined with the speed of the current Internet.

To support the decentralized internet, Synth explains on how Skycoin has combined game theory with technology. The idea behind Skywire according to Synth is to create a self-sustaining ecosystem much like the current internet. Moreover, users are rewarded in Skycoins for hosting the new decentralized internet.

 Synth said,

“As a participant in the network, hosting a Skywire node, users earn Skycoin and Coin Hours for providing bandwidth, storage and computing resources.”

Invest in SkycoinsOne of the problems investors have figuring out is why should they invest in a particular token and Skycoin is no different. Synth’s keynote answered this question by pointing out, Skycoin is not just a coin, it’s an entire ecosystem.

Fiber, it’s own infinitely scalable blockchainSkywire, it’s flagship mesh net applicationSkycoin itself as a currencyAll the features of Blockchain 1.0, 2.0 and moreAll in all Synth’s presentation on Skycoin was a huge hit a fact evident by its current price. Skycoin is currently up by 8.8% and has a market capitalization of $28 million.

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

Author

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

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Skycoin Soars 15%, BTC Falls Under $67K: Market Update in Bitcoin

Vertcoin (VTC) is one of the more established cryptocurrencies that was launched "way back" in 2014 without too much fanfare.

It was released without an ICO, without an airdrop, and without a pre-mine as a simple blockchain project on Github. It was and is open-source and was built on the Bitcoin codebase with one simple change – Vertcoin is committed to remaining ASIC-free.

However, with so many newer projects, can Vertcoin still stand out?

In this Viacoin review, I will give you everything that you need to know about this project. I will also take a look at the long term adoption potential of VTC tokens.

What is Vertcoin?Vertcoin is a fork of Bitcoin that took place in January of 2014. It was created as a GPU mined version of Bitcoin in order to ensure decentralization and therefore, network security.

It’s this strong commitment to mining fairness that distinguishes Vertcoin from other cryptocurrencies that are Proof-of-Work but have fallen to the power of ASIC mining and the decreasing decentralization that follows.

Vertcoin remains the coin that can be mined by anyone with a GPU, and the community of volunteers that support the project have ensured it remains this way, even though the project has already faced three hard forks to keep it free from ASIC miners and botnets.

In the past Vertcoin has referred to itself as “The People’s Coin” because it remained committed to the ideals from the Bitcoin whitepaper that kept voting power of the network with the individual. That ideal was that one CPU is equal to one vote, but the rise of ASIC miners and large mining pools has sadly meant that most Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies no longer adhere to that ideal.

The Vertcoin AlgorithmBeing based off of Bitcoin, Vertcoin was created to use Proof-of-Work as its consensus method. Unlike Bitcoin’s use of SHA-256, Vertcoin used Scrypt Adaptive N as its algorithm when it launched in order to remain ASIC resistant. It was less than a year later that the coin had to undergo a hard fork to remain ASIC resistant, and it switched to the Lyra2RE algorithm.

Less than a year after that the Vertcoin development team found that a botnet had taken control of more than 50% of the network, and this prompted a move to the Lyra2Ev2 algorithm.

Algorithms ASICs hash & resistant Algorithms. Via Vertcoin Blog

That lasted until late 2018, when it was discovered that an ASIC capable of mining the Lyra2REv2 algorithm had been created in China. On February 1, 2019, Vertcoin forked for a third time to the Lyra2REv3 algorithm.

Vertcoin has also taken the trouble to make itself Lightning Network compatible, as well as implementing Segregated Witness, and providing compatibility with Stealth Addresses. The development team is now working on upgrading the blockchain to allow for instantaneous atomic swaps.

Vertcoin Fair MiningAs mentioned above Vertcoin has already been through three hard forks, and another is on the way due to new developments in the hardware used to mine cryptocurrencies.

This new development is the rise of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) hardware.

The FPGA device is the GPU equivalent of ASIC mining, which is a CPU based device. The previous Lyra2REv2 algorithm was totally exploitable by FPGA devices, and the newer Lyra2REv3 algorithm will soon be affected as well. This would do away with fair mining and could push all the individual GPU miners away from Vertcoin.

FPGA Compared to other computing chips. Via Reconfigure.io

The Vertcoin developers are now working on a new algorithm which they are calling Verthash. It’s been in development for quite some time, and while there is still no release date set for the new algorithm the team has been diligently working to release it as rapidly as possible.

The team has said the algorithm will be similar to the Ethash algorithm used by Ethereum and will not only secure the blockchain for fair mining, but will also maintain the security of the network.

One other consideration the team has to deal with is the mining platforms that sell hashing power. These platforms could make it possible for a single entity to purchase enough hashing power to successfully launch a 51% attack on the network. As long as Vertcoin is able to keep its fair mining standard this type of activity will be blocked.

Even though remaining ASIC free and maintaining a fair mining environment is one of the goals of Vertcoin, it doesn’t mean the project will be successful. However, it does almost guarantee that the project will continue to live on with at least a small, but dedicated community of miners and users.

Vertcoin’s 1-Click MinerIn order to make mining as simple for users as possible Vertcoin has developed and released their own 1-click mining software. It has to be the easiest mining software for any cryptocurrency.

You can download the 1-Click miner from the Vertcoin website, but unfortunately, it is only available for Windows. In addition to the 1-Click miner, you’ll also need a wallet capable of storing Vertcoin and a Vertcoin mining pool.

UI of one-click miner. Via vertcoin.org

Aside from letting the software know which mining pool to use and what wallet address to send rewards to you also specify either CPU or GPU mining. Once you have those three things in place you can simply run the miner and collect your VTC.

Merged Mining with VertcoinVertcoin has enabled merged mining, allowing users to mine more than one coin at a time, but currently, there aren’t many other coins that can be merge mined with Vertcoin. Unitus (UIS) has been available to be merge mined since the beginning, and according to the information at Give Me Coins you can also merge mine Monocle and Parallaxcoin through them.

The Vertcoin TeamVertcoin has historically been little more than a loose group of volunteer developers, and that’s still true in 2019. That will likely change in the near future as there has been an application filed with the IRS in March 2019 to create the Vertcoin Foundation.

This will help the project take advantage of tax-exempt status, and will give the project the legal framework necessary to file for trademarks and copyrights.

Some of the Vertcoin Developers & Team members. Image source

Many of the developers working on Vertcoin over the years have come from MIT since the coin and the project has close ties with the school. In fact, some of the work done with Vertcoin comes from other MIT projects, which allows for some free development for Vertcoin.

The downside to working solely with volunteer developers has been a negative impact on Vertcoin when developers have inevitably left for better-paying work over the years.

Once the Vertcoin Foundation has been created it will be able to offer salaries to the lead developers, giving the project a more consistent development atmosphere and maintaining top talent.

One of the most effective ways in order to increase adoption for a cryptocurrency is through an active and engaged community. To that end, Vertcoin prides itself on its community.

Firstly, they have their official Discord channel. They have over 9,400 members in the channel. I jumped into it to get a sense of the discussion and it was encouraging to see that many of the members.

Vertcoin Discord Channels with Community Chat

On the social media front, the Vertcoin Twitter has over 62k followers. They regularly keep their community up to date over here and they get a great deal of engagement from their followers.

There are also two subreddits on Reddit for the Vertcoin community. The official one has over 33k users. Then you have the vertcoin mining subreddit and this has 3.8k members. Both of these are pretty active with regular discussion.

Finally, Vertcoin has an official Medium blog that is relatively active. Every month they will share the latest updates on every aspect of the project - well worth following.

The VTC TokenWhen Vertcoin launched in 2014 the token was trading at $0.07, but by the second day, it had nearly tripled to $0.20. It continued climbing and in just two weeks the price skyrocketed as investor demand for the coin reached a fever pitch. It hit $10.12 on February 5, 2014.

That spike was short-lived and just a week later price had gone back to $3.47. It continued declining and by September 2014 it was back at $0.07 for a loss of 99.25% from its high.

From there VTC declined even further, and by May 2015 it was at its all-time low of $0.005343. That was on May 6, 2015. By May 28 the price of VTC was nearly back to $0.20 and after a couple of weeks, it had nearly tripled again to almost $0.60 each. Price declined from there and was around $0.02 as 2016 began.

It remained in the range of $0.02 to $0.06 throughout 2016 and into 2017.

VTC's rocky price history. Image via CMC

A new rally began in April 2017, with levels reaching above $1 by June. Price pulled back and shot higher at the end of 2017 along with the broader cryptocurrency markets, reaching an all-time high of $10.53 on December 6, 2017.

2018 was a bad year for Vertcoin as it declined steadily alongside the rest of the cryptocurrency market during the bear market that lasted until 2019. As of mid-June 2019 price was above $0.60, but by late June 2019, the price pulled back to $0.52, showing that volatility remains high in this coin.

Buying & Storing VTCThose who believe now is a good time to load up on some VTC can head over to CoinEgg, Bittrex, Upbit or Poloniex to buy. It is also listed on a few other exchanges but there is almost no trading volume on these exchanges.

When it comes to VTC trading volumes in general, they are quite thin on each of the individual exchanges. This could present an issue from a liquidity perspective. If you were looking to buy / sell large block orders of VTC then you may run into some slippage on the orders - so trade carefully.

Once you have your VTC, best practices would have you taking it off the exchange and storing it in an offline wallet. We are all too aware of the risks that come from the some of the largest exchange hacks.

Perhaps the safest place to store your VTC would be on a hardware device such as a Ledger Nano. This will keep your keys in a secure offline environment and interact with the Ledger PC client through a USB cable.

If you don't have a ledger then you can always use Vertcoin's Electrum Wallet. This is forked from the original Electrum wallet and is quite intuitive and easy to use. It is also a light wallet so it means that you can connect to remote nodes and don't have to download the entire blockchain.

Finally, if you are looking for a third-party wallet with mobile support then the Coinomi wallet could be ideal. This is also a multi-currency wallet that supports numerous other cryptocurrencies - over 500 to be exact!

Vertcoin DevelopmentSomething that I always like to do in order to determine how much work is been done on a project is to take a look at their public code commits.

For an open source project like Vertcoin, it really is "the proof is in the pudding".

Hence, I decided to dive into the Vertcoin GitHub and take a look at their three most active pinned repositories. Below is the commit activity in these repos.

Number of commits in select repos over past 12 months

As you can see in the above, the developers are still busy pushing code to their repositories. Of course, this is much less than we see on some of the newer projects.

For example, if we were to take a look at the ranking of Vertcoin as based on the number of code commits, they come in at number 383 on Cryptomiso.

Having said that, Vertcoin is a more established protocol and was built off the Bitcoin core. This means that they did not have to build a protocol from scratch. This is also the reason why some of the newer projects like Insolar have so many commits.

Finally, Vertcoin is mostly community driven and the developers are not paid for their contributions. This is unlike many of the other projects that may have held an ICO or a pre-mine where the developers pocketed it.

ConclusionIn 2014 the International Business Times wrote an article praising Vertcoin and calling it a superior alternative to Bitcoin because of its fair mining policy. It also claimed that Vertcoin could be one of the altcoins to make its way to mainstream adoption.

That hasn’t happened yet, and as of June 2019, Vertcoin is ranked in the 188th spot based on its market cap. That certainly isn’t mainstream, but no other cryptocurrency has made it to mainstream adoption levels yet either, so there’s still hope.

Continued development and a dedicated community will keep it in the running, and if fair mining becomes one of the most important factors of a useful cryptocurrency Vertcoin will quickly jump into the top positions.

Considering its early start we can say that it’s impressive to see Vertcoin hanging on for six-and-a-half years already. It kept chugging along during the ICO and airdrop mania of late 2017, survived the bear market of 2018 and has come out stronger than ever.

And even though it had to fork three times over the years, it remains one of the few ASIC resistance coins, thanks to the commitment of the development team. That alone should ensure the survival of Vertcoin, and ensure it maintains a strong mining community.

While the mainstream prospects for Vertcoin may not look great right now, its consistent and steady growth could eventually leave it as one of the remaining cryptocurrency after most other disappear into the mists of history.

Featured Image via Fotolia

Disclaimer: These are the writer's opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.

Bitcoin Price: 4 Key Similarities to Previous Bull Market Corrections

Vertcoin was 51% attacked. Coins were double-spent and 603 blocks were replaced by the attacker’s transactions.

Vertcoin Attacked On Dec. 1 at 15:19 UTC, 603 blocks were removed from VTC’s main blockchain and replaced by 553 attacker blocks. There were 5 recorded double-spent transactions. A total of 125 VTC ($29) was redirected to the hacker’s wallet address.

Bittrex, Vertcoin’s most trafficked exchange by real volume, disabled withdrawals on the platform once it became clear the attack was in progress.

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Vertcoin is a Bitcoin clone that claims to be ASIC-resistant through regular mining algorithm changes introduced via hardfork. Vertcoin currently ranks 194th by market capitalization and boasts a market cap of $12.5 million. Vertcoin was previously 51% attacked in December of 2018.

Details on the 51% Attack On Nov. 30, hashrate rental prices for Vertcoin’s mining algorithm Lyra2REv3 increased significantly. There is strong evidence that hashrate rental service Nicehash was used to conduct the attack.

According to James Lovejoy, lead maintainer of Vertcoin, the attacker spent between 0.5-1 BTC to perform the attack. The total value of the attack was roughly 0.44 BTC, meaning the attack likely not profitable.

“Given the reorg was just deeper than 600 blocks (Bittrex’s confirmation requirement for VTC), it is possible that Bittrex was the original target,” said Lovejoy. “But the double-spend portion attack was aborted due to Bittrex disabling their wallet before the fork could be released.”

It is also possible that the attack was merely a proof-of-concept or sabotage attack, continued Lovejoy.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Mitchell Moos. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

A second 51% attack on Vertcoin was just attempted earlier today The hackers (unknown) ended up paying for the attempt out of their own pockets!

The hackers seem to have come out of this whole ordeal $440 worse off. A second 51% attack on Vertcoin was just attempted earlier today but the hackers (unknown) ended up paying for the attempt out of their own pockets!

Turns out, crime DOES pay… just not in the way they intended...

51% Hacking

The lead maintainer on Vertcoin, James Lovejoy revealed that a malicious person(s) targeted the crypto platform Bittrex. This was in order to try and force a manipulative manner onto the Vertcoin blockchain.

In 2014, the cryptocurrency left Bitcoin in the form of a fork. This led to a major attack in December of last year in which a whopping $100k was stolen by hackers.

But the exploit attempt this year has clearly been a whopping fail instead.

“Based on the market prices during the attack's preparation and the difficulty of the blocks the attacker produced, we estimate the attacker spent between 0.5-1 BTC to perform the attack,” Lovejoy explained. 

The hackers seem to have come out of this whole ordeal $440 worse off. That’s at the very least too, $4.1k is the most they could have reportedly lost.

“The total value of the block rewards the attack received is 13825 VTC (~0.44 BTC). Given the attack was likely not profitable to perform based solely on block rewards, the motivation for the attack is not certain.”

The Rise of Crypto

The rise in the price of cryptocurrencies has been often accompanied by an increase of general interest by big institutional investors. At the end of 2017, we saw a lot more people enter the market who probably never even heard of cryptocurrency and get involved with the space. Just as institutional investors got attracted into the space through the idea of money, hackers and scammers also jumped on the bandwagon...

For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!

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“Today we know that centralization and big bureaucracies have not, as promised, been the answer for promoting better opportunities for society” ~ Carlos Salinas de Gortari

To ASIC or not to ASIC has been the dilemma for years now. For some, the distinction is very easy; it comes down to choosing between centralization and decentralization. For others, it is about taking all the aspects of mining into consideration and opting for what’s best suitable for the end participants and the network altogether. With ASICs in the scene, one side of the coin depicts decentralization, the other side portrays centralization. A coin that’s puzzling not only to the ones in the cryptocurrency space, but also to the ones outside.

While there are many projects that completely oppose even the idea of ASIC mining, there is an equal number of projects or even more that have warmly embraced the new idea. And, why not? Decentralization means an open-market, which in turn symbolizes technological advancement.

Skating on thin ice On one hand, the argument that’s pro-ASIC is that “it contributes to the network security,” which is debatable. On the other hand, the argument that it leads to centralization of the network is something that’s hard to be brushed off. The security threats of ASIC mining centralization include ASIC boost, selfish mining, eclipse attacks, and launching a 51 percent attack without having 51 percent hash power (just by collaborating with three or four other mining pools). The problems of ASIC mining have taken a prominent seat in the crypto-market.

However, this is not the only factor that bothers miners and participants. There is only a portion of the community that can afford ASIC miners and the ones who can also have their table full with the question of whether or not their ASIC miners will be profitable by the time it ships.

The largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is among those cryptocurrencies that have been pro-ASIC mining, and it is because of this very cryptocurrency that ASIC mining has gained a strong foothold in this space. The mining evolution from CPU to GPU to FPGA to ASIC completely superseded Satoshi Nakamoto’s “one CPU, one vote” rule.

Speaking to AMBCrypto, Bob Summerwill from ETC Cooperative said,

“If you see what’s been happening with every single cryptocurrency has ASICs, even the ones that claim to be ASIC resistant. And the reason is very simple, it just you can do it more efficiently. You are just doing a fairly simple algorithm and doing that in hardware is going to more efficient than doing it in software. There’s no going around that and the economic is such that you just cannot resist. It’s just futile to try and resist. The ASICs are going to happen anyway and they are actually good for you. So, resisting is futile and actually counter productive.”

While Bitcoin itself is relatively safe from the biggest problems of ASIC mining and centralization – 51 percent attack, the same, however, does not hold true for other cryptocurrencies. The reason is quite simple; the cost of BTC mining and the price is higher compared to the rest of p-o-w coins. In short, it’s possible, but it’s not quite feasible for the attacker considering there would also be a war against the rest 49 percent, and even if one percent hash rate is lost to the other side, it would mean game-over. Meaning, there’s zero economic incentive for launching a 51% attack on Bitcoin.

The Hash War A classic example of the blunders that can be caused by mining pools powered by ASICs is the Bitcoin Cash vs Bitcoin Satoshi Vision hash war that took place towards the end of 2018. Some market speculators even claimed that the hash war resulted in not only two different chains, but also the crash of Bitcoin’s price and hash rate towards the end of last year.

This was not the first time Bitcoin Cash got dragged into a mining war, nor was it the last time that BCH made headlines concerning matters related to mining. The cryptocurrency was itself a result of a fork war that took place in 2017 over the bigger block size argument. The latest on the shelf was this year’s report on re-org, carried out by BTC.com and BTC.top, with both pools joining hands to reverse blocks of transactions in order to cease an unknown miner from gaining access to coins, an exploit taking advantage of after May 15 hard fork.

Such instances show how the most important pillar of any cryptocurrency in the market, decentralization, can be undermined.

An achievable goal? While many are of the opinion that ASIC-resistance is futile, there are still projects that stand firm against ASIC-mining, keeping decentralization as the most important goal, even though there hasn’t been any substantial proof that this is an achievable goal.

Ethereum and Monero were the two coins that held the beacon of ASIC Resistance; Ethereum with back-and-forth discussion over implementing ProgPoW, and Monero with RandomX.

The Valladolid Debate

While ‘To ASIC or not to ASIC’ is a dilemma that the entire ecosystem faces, ‘to ProgPoW or not to ProgPoW’ is the question the Ethereum community is struggling with.

The reason to implement ProgPoW is simple, ASIC resistance, which even had a greenlight from the auditors. There are several reasons against it: debates of GPU miners buy-outs, Proof-of-Stake shift, and problems with the teams that proposed the algorithm.

Bob Summerwill said,

“When Ethereum was started it was like we don’t want ASICs, we don’t want to be like Bitcoin, we don’t want our mining to be dominated by a few of these Chinese companies. So, we are going to do something which is memory hard and runs on GPUs and not specialist hardware. It’s a different time now and I think what we’ve ended up inheriting there is not something that really makes sense anymore. The ASIC resistance is a myth. You can’t resist it.”

How does ProgPoW aim to answer the ASIC question? ProgPoW would have five key elements to its algorithm: change from Keccack_f1600 to Keccack_f800 [shift from 64-bit words to 32-bit words], the random sequence generated would change every 50 blocks, the DRAM would increase to 256 bytes from 128 bytes, adds reads from a small, and low-latency cache that supports random addresses.

ProgPoW would not eliminate the threat of ASIC mining. It would merely make it minimal by giving GPU miners a boost. The GitHub post reads,

“The design goal of ProgPoW is to have the algorithm’s requirements match what is available on commodity GPUs. If the algorithm were to be implemented on custom ASIC there should be little efficiency gains compared to a commodity GPU.”

The algorithm was supposed to make a debut this year with the Istanbul hard fork, but was postponed to the next one due to audit delays. Sailing through these troublesome factors, it is still unclear whether ProgPoW would ever make it to the Mainnet.

The ‘I have a dream’ of Monero

When Bitmain announced an Antminer designed for Cryptonight-based cryptocurrencies, it left the entire Monero community in a state of shock. If there was one thing that this community was sure of, it was that ASIC miners were a no-no.

The immediate response was to tweak the network algorithm on a constant basis, in this case – every six months. While the strategy did come at a cost – compromising the security of the network, it did work. In the ASIC-manufacturers‘ perspective, it would be pointless in terms of cost and effort to build an ASIC only to see the cryptocurrency change its algorithm to a different one.

Interestingly, the tweak in the mining algorithm brought an end to the popular crypto-jacking service, Coinhive, on 8 March 2019. The official announcement on the discontinuation of the service, stated,

“The drop in hash rate (over 51%) after the last Monero harh fork hit us hard. So did the ‘crash’ of crypto currency market with the value of XMR depreciating over 85% within a year. This and the announced hard fork and algorithm update of Monero network on March 9 has lead us to the conclusion that we need to discontinue Coinhive.”

The Monero community upped the ante with RandomX. The algorithm will be using all components of the core but not all of the chips, including the memory interface of the uncore; a difficult aspect to achieve for ASICs as it only focuses on one element in mining. The algorithm was changed from CryptonightR to RandomX at the end of November 2019. Its maiden voyage has been on easy waters so far. “Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast” has been Monero’s mantra so far.

Hit-and-miss

In December 2019, Vertcoin [VTC], ranked 306 on CoinMarketCap, recorded a 51 percent attack. Interestingly, the cryptocurrency has always been at arms against ASIC mining and had opted for Lyra2REv3 proof-of-work algorithm. Notably, this was not the first time the coin succumbed to the attack as the network faced a 51% attack in December 2018 too. A GitHub post on the attack stated,

“On Sunday, 1 December 2019 15:19:47 GMT 603 blocks were removed from the VTC main chain and replaced by 553 attacker blocks. We note that 600 blocks is the current confirmation requirement for VTC on Bittrex. There were 5 double-spent outputs in which ~ 125 VTC (~$29) was redirected. Each of the double-spent outputs are coinbase outputs owned by the attacker and it is unknown to whom the coins were originally sent before being swept to an attacker address after the reorg.”

Decentralized ASIC mining?

While the topic of ASIC centralization continues to be hot debate every now and then, Blockstream, a blockchain technology company, unveiled its mining colocation service and Blockstream Pool, earlier this year. In an episode of Magical Crypto Friends, CSO of Blockstream, Samson Mow, said that the pool would be contributing to Bitcoin’s mining decentralization as it utilizes BetterHash protocol. Mow had stated,

“So, you can run your own node at home, you can host your miners in a facility or you could have your own miners in your facility and then run BetterHash node that would connect to our pool and then it’s just more decentralized overall […]”

After all that’s said and done, the question here is not if ASIC resistance or mining is the way, but is Decentralization truly achievable?

Decentralization in mining is always going to be something that’s going to be hard to achieve as mining would always centralize in a place where electricity is cheap, farms with either CPUs or GPUs or ASICs are always going to exist.

“Maybe wars aren’t meant to be won, maybe they’re meant to be continuous.”

Wed 24 Jun 2026 ▪ 6 min read ▪ by Luc Jose A.

Summarize this article with:

The crypto market has just experienced one of the most violent shocks of the year, illustrating once again the fragility of positions heavily linked to leverage effects in the face of macroeconomic uncertainties and technological disruptions. In just a few hours, more than 100 billion dollars of global market capitalization disappeared. This massive purge occurs in a context of global technological rout and regulatory tightening and plunged the Crypto Market Fear & Greed index into an “extreme fear” zone, with a score of 23. 

In brief The crypto market suffered a brutal correction, with more than 100 billion dollars wiped out in a few hours and a marked return of fear across the sector. A wave of liquidations exceeding 720 million dollars hit traders using leverage, causing the capitulation of thousands of investors and a widespread drop in major digital assets. Bitcoin, Ethereum and leading altcoins recorded sharp declines, while spot crypto ETFs suffered significant capital outflows, increasing selling pressure. New American initiatives in favor of quantum computing revive concerns about the future ‘Q-Day’, a scenario in which quantum computers could challenge the security of current cryptographic systems. The capitulation of crypto assets The first act of this crisis is characterized by liquidation metrics of a magnitude rarely seen in recent months, which explains the shift of the crypto market into extreme fear. According to market data, more than 720 million dollars of positions were wiped out in 24 hours across all main assets: bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Dogecoin… Nearly 145,000 traders fell victim to this wave of forced selling. 

The losses mostly hit buyers using leverage: 610 million dollars of long positions liquidated, versus 110 million dollars for short positions. As proof of the violence of the bearish wick, 182 million dollars of buying positions were erased in just one hour. The Hyperliquid platform also recorded the biggest individual liquidation on the ETHUSD contract, valued at 15.34 million dollars. On the network, on-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr. has summarized the situation : “weak hands capitulate while strong hands did not even flinch”.

Here is the factual breakdown of losses recorded in the Spot market :

Bitcoin (BTC) : the price heavily stumbled to reach an intraday low of 61,893 dollars, breaking its critical 200-week moving average (200-WMA) at 62,000 dollars, generating 216 million dollars of liquidations alone ;  Ethereum (ETH) : the market’s second crypto plunged below the 1,650 dollar mark to hit a floor at 1,639 dollars ;  Major altcoins : XRP fell more than 3 % to 1.10 dollars, while other assets like BNB, Solana, Cardano or Dogecoin recorded corrections ranging from 3 to 7 % ;  Institutional flows : Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs experienced significant net capital outflows, with BlackRock’s IBIT ETF alone seeing 170 million dollars of redemptions. Faced with this massive unwind of positions, analyst Ted Pillows warned about the need to preserve the technical support zone between 61,000 and 62,000 dollars, predicting that a “cluster drop around the 61,200 dollar level” might occur before any hope of a rebound.

Macro-economic contagion and global monetary tightening Beyond the technical crisis, this collapse finds its deep causes in a combination of macroeconomic factors and major political decisions. Traditional financial markets have effected a strong contagion. The Korean KOSPI index experienced a historic collapse of nearly 10%, its third largest drop ever, while the Nasdaq 100 lost 2.60% in pre-opening.

This global risk aversion is explained by the rise to 4.5% of the 10-year US Treasury bond yield and the strength of the dollar index (DXY), which reached 101.17, its highest level since May last year. Investors, worried about peace talks between the United States and Iran and fearing future interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, eagerly await the PCE inflation figures. The diagnosis for the analysis entity Bit Official is clear: “the weakness of both markets can therefore be explained by the Fed being less accommodative since October 2025, with the AI narrative offering only a practical explanation for the correction”.

The specter of the “Q-Day” and the threat of quantum computing A fundamental event has shaken investors’ long-term confidence: US President Donald Trump signed executive orders aimed at massively boosting quantum computing to ensure national security. The White House officially announced its intention to “relaunch a national innovation effort in quantum technologies, to preserve national security and stimulate American growth in a key industry sector”. This direction places the crypto industry against a critical countdown: 2030, the date by which the US government has imposed the migration of its own critical systems to post-quantum standards.

Experts fear the advent of a “Q-Day” by 2030, the apocalyptic scenario in which quantum computers would be able to break current standard encryptions. This fear is all the stronger as Google has issued a major warning, highlighting that large-scale quantum machines would be able to break standard cryptography by 2029. Thus, some networks like Solana or XRP already plan to integrate quantum upgrades in their roadmaps for 2028, but a study indicates that nearly 7 million bitcoins could be threatened if the flagship crypto does not update its cryptographic signatures in time.

This triple constraint, monetary on one side, technological and political on the other, sketches a complex outlook and invites nuanced analysis. In the short term, the market’s ability to absorb liquidations will depend heavily on this week’s US economic indicators, which will guide Fed policy. Ultimately, the blockchain industry is forced to accelerate its transition to a post-quantum architecture to preserve its promise of inviolability. This crash, while temporarily eliminating excess speculation and the leverage of “weak hands”, forces developers and institutions to look beyond price charts to meet an inevitable industrial and security challenge.

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Luc Jose A.

Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019. Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

Every major crypto cycle produces one meme coin that captures the cultural moment perfectly. In 2023, that coin was Pepecoin and it rewarded early believers beyond anything most predicted.

Today, a new wave of meme-native projects is emerging, backed by AI infrastructure and structured tokenomics. MemeToro, with its $MT presale underway on BNB Chain, is generating early-stage attention that echoes familiar patterns.

Three specific parallels stand out between $MT’s current presale phase and where PEPE was before the world caught on.

What Made Pepecoin Run Historic Before examining $MT, the Pepecoin 2023 story deserves a factual foundation. Elon Musk began tweeting about Memecoins in early 2021, kicking off a furious rally that culminated in his Saturday Night Live appearance.

Its large market cap now limits the magnitude of future moves, as early asymmetry has largely been captured. The window that early DOGE holders exploited no longer exists for DOGE and PEPE but it may exist for $MT.

Reason 1: Ground-Floor Entry at the Same Price DOGE Once Was The most striking parallel between $MT and early DOGE is the entry price itself. DOGE was trading around $0.004 in January 2021, right before its historic run began.

The $MT presale is currently priced at exactly $0.00139 per token. This is not a coincidence that MemeToro highlights lightly, it is a deliberate positioning signal.

Investors who entered PEPE at sub-penny prices saw life-changing returns within months. $MT sits at that same numerical starting point, in a market cycle where AI-memecoin narratives are accelerating.

Ground-floor entries at this price level are rare for structured, audited projects with working products. For investors who understand what early PEPE positioning looked like, the $0.00139 price point carries significant weight.

Reason 2: Community-First Tokenomics With Real Infrastructure Behind Them PEPE’s 2023 rise was fueled almost entirely by community energy, there was no staking, no utility layer, no ecosystem.

MemeToro takes the community-first model but adds the infrastructure Pepecoin never had. The public sale allocates 71% of total $MT supply directly to the community, one of the highest ratios in any 2026 presale.

Staking is already live, offering up to 35% APR on $MT from day one. Marketing and partnership tokens are locked under a 24-month vesting schedule, protecting against early sell pressure.

The smart contract has been independently audited by approved third-party security firms. Pepecoin proved that community momentum alone can drive enormous gains. $MT pairs that same community-first spirit with tokenomics that reward long-term participation.

Reason 3: An AI Agent That PEPE Never Had and the Market Now Demands The crypto market has evolved significantly since 2023. MemeToro’s $MT AI Agent is where this project most clearly separates itself from anything PEPE offered. The agent autonomously scans social media, global news, and cultural trends in real time. It identifies viral memecoin narratives before they peak, then acts on them without manual input.

This is the infrastructure layer that PEPE never had, an autonomous, AI-driven system built specifically for the memecoin economy. Bonded memecoins created on the platform auto-list on PancakeSwap, secured by BNB for transparent market access.

The platform also integrates prediction markets, portfolio management tools, and creator reward systems under one ecosystem.

MemeToro gives $MT holders both: the meme energy of early PEPE and the AI infrastructure that the current cycle demands.

The Early Window Is Always Finite The most important lesson from PEPE in 2023 is that the early window closed quickly. Those who bought after the headlines arrived entered a different risk-reward environment entirely.

$MT is still in its presale phase at $0.00139, before exchange listings, before mainstream coverage, before the crowd. The presale allows payment via BNB, ETH, USDT, or card, keeping access broad.

For investors who missed the meme coin moment in 2024, the $MT presale is presenting a second look at familiar timing.

More Information on MemeToro ($MT) Presale Here:

Website: https://memetoro.com/

X: https://x.com/memetoro_mt

Telegram: https://t.me/memetoro_mt

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The crypto market extended its decline as BCH, SHIB, and PEPE traded among the biggest monthly discounts. Total market value fell 1.24% to $2.46 trillion, while Bitcoin dropped 1.41% to $72k. The persistent outflow of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs pressed several Crypto Market Coins.

BCH Price Extends Losses After Breaking $300 Bitcoin Cash traded lower after heavy selling pushed the token below the key $300 support level. The coin fell 5.78% in 24 hours to $288.27, extending its monthly decline to 35%. BCH is now displaying one of the highest monthly discounts in crypto Market Coins. 

The trading volume increased by 83.67 to a high of 220.48 million, indicating more market activity in the breakdown. In case BCH town has more than $285, short term consolidation can subsequently be effected. 

Source: Tradingview Nonetheless, a decisive failure below that may reveal $275 as the second support level. Any recovery above 300 can be an early relief among the traders noting the momentum.

SHIB Price Drops 15% Monthly as Market Weakens Shiba Inu price dropped by 1.06% in 24 hours to $0.00000543, after the presentation was weak in the broader crypto market. The token is also 15% down over the last month, a following of pressure on meme coins. 

The most recent action seems to be a part of a bigger risk-off action as Bitcoin and major altcoins were lower. SHIB has burned 787,927 tokens in the past 24 and total burned supply is 41.08%. 

Source: SHIB burn data SHIB might stabilize at roughly 0.0000054 in case Bitcoin is at about $72,000 or higher. Nevertheless, a more significant weakness can drive the price to the $0.000005 support.

PEPE Price Faces Pressure After 15% Monthly Loss Pepe price fell 1.98% in 24 hours to $0.00000336, extending its monthly decline to 15%. The fall put PEPE in the list of the top 4 crypto market coins with the highest monthly discounts. The most recent downside was the result of a wider crypto market crash, which strained meme coins and other risky assets. 

The trading volume increased by a factor of 58.63 with increased selling being experienced in the fall. In case of pressure PEPE can revisit the $0.00000328 support. But at the level of more than $0.00000334, it may indicate short-term stabilization as per the full PEPE forecast report.

In general, BCH, SHIB, and PEPE are experiencing some pressure with a weak market mood. These crypto market coins are currently trading at significant monthly discounts, and Bitcoin ETF outflows are still influencing short-term risk appetite in the altcoins and meme coins.

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According to Hyperinsight monitoring, Cerebras (CBRS), the AI chip firm previously dubbed "Nvidia’s strongest challenger", saw its stock price fall in stages after reporting its first quarterly results since going public, as negative guidance overshadowed better-than-expected performance. The stock has dropped roughly 22% since the earnings release and officially broke below its IPO price today. On-chain whales are overall bearish. CBRS trades at $184 on the Hyperliquid platform, down 7.7% in 24 hours. Large-scale short positions (million-dollar level) total around $11.62 million, 2.39 times the long positions ($4.87 million). Two major short positions were placed precisely at high levels as early as the IPO day or even before the IPO: - Whale 0xe0ff: Shorted at $284.51 on May 14 with a 3x leveraged position of $6.13 million, generating an unrealized profit of $3.24 million (+104%); - Whale 0x9996: Shorted at $275.92 on May 11 with a 5x leveraged position of $5.48 million, generating an unrealized profit of $2.64 million (+162%). It is learned that both addresses currently hold short positions in both CBRS and SPCX, and have recorded substantial unrealized profits, preferring to place short positions at high levels before or on the day of major stock listings. With the realization of negative earnings news in this round, the combined unrealized profit of the two positions is around $5.88 million. Currently, the average entry price of CBRS short whales is around $275, and the current price is over 30% lower than that. The nearest short liquidation line is at $200.13, about 7% away from the current price.

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DA Davidson Raises Micron’s Price Target to $2,000, Retains Buy Rating

U.S. investment bank DA Davidson released a research note stating that Micron Technology has entered a new phase with one of the best performance visibility in the semiconductor industry, a stark contrast to its past standing in the sector. Driven by another quarter of results that handily exceeded expectations and positive forward guidance, Micron’s stock price surged sharply. These signals indicate that the current memory chip boom cycle is far from over. While the company is ramping up capacity investments (with capital expenditure (CAPEX) projected to hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, which will bring additional supply), management expects the memory market to remain tight on supply and demand at least through 2027. Against this backdrop, DA Davidson reiterated its "Buy" rating on Micron and raised its price target from $1,500 to $2,000, equivalent to a 20x price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio based on the company’s 2026 calendar year expected earnings per share (EPS).

8 minutes ago

Morgan Stanley raises Micron's price target to $1,200, maintains 'Overweight' rating.

Morgan Stanley released a report raising Micron Technology (MU.O)’s price target from $1,050 to $1,200, while maintaining an "Overweight" rating. The investment bank lifted its fiscal 2027 earnings per share (EPS) forecast for the chipmaker by roughly 40% to $168, and upgraded its free cash flow (FCF) projection from $104 billion to $140 billion. Aligning with Micron’s management, the bank holds that AI will push DRAM demand to consistently outpace supply significantly after 2027. Micron’s last fiscal quarter results matched this trend, with both its quarterly performance and outlook showing notable upside potential.

8 minutes ago

US officials: Israel has withdrawn troops from parts of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

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8 minutes ago

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According to Hyperinsight monitoring, Cerebras (CBRS), the AI chip firm previously dubbed "Nvidia’s strongest challenger", saw its stock price fall in stages after reporting its first quarterly results since going public, as negative guidance overshadowed better-than-expected performance. The stock has dropped roughly 22% since the earnings release and officially broke below its IPO price today. On-chain whales are overall bearish. CBRS trades at $184 on the Hyperliquid platform, down 7.7% in 24 hours. Large-scale short positions (million-dollar level) total around $11.62 million, 2.39 times the long positions ($4.87 million). Two major short positions were placed precisely at high levels as early as the IPO day or even before the IPO: - Whale 0xe0ff: Shorted at $284.51 on May 14 with a 3x leveraged position of $6.13 million, generating an unrealized profit of $3.24 million (+104%); - Whale 0x9996: Shorted at $275.92 on May 11 with a 5x leveraged position of $5.48 million, generating an unrealized profit of $2.64 million (+162%). It is learned that both addresses currently hold short positions in both CBRS and SPCX, and have recorded substantial unrealized profits, preferring to place short positions at high levels before or on the day of major stock listings. With the realization of negative earnings news in this round, the combined unrealized profit of the two positions is around $5.88 million. Currently, the average entry price of CBRS short whales is around $275, and the current price is over 30% lower than that. The nearest short liquidation line is at $200.13, about 7% away from the current price.

8 minutes ago

Bitcoin Cash [BCH], despite a strong run this year, could face another major decline that drives the asset toward $100, according to new on-chain insight.

Data across the spot and perpetual markets point to building selling pressure, with key indicators flashing the risk of a deeper move lower.

Bitcoin Cash faces a possible 50% decline The Aloha on-chain signal, an indicator that has marked the tops and bottoms of asset prices on multiple occasions, shows that neither target has been met for BCH so far.

At press time, data from Alphractal places BCH in the middle of that range, between its top and bottom. Joao Wedson, senior analyst and founder of Alphractal, said he would not be surprised by a further BCH drop despite the asset’s record.

“Even with this impressive track record, I would not be surprised if BCH still falls further.”

Source: Alphractal If a drop materializes, the signal indicates the price would likely find a floor near $100—the level that typically marks its bottom—roughly 50% below where it trades now.

Wedson added that nothing guarantees the decline, noting that “no market ever gives certainty.” However, AMBCrypto reviewed the wider spot and derivatives data to gauge how that move could play out.

BCH whales place large orders but lean short CryptoQuant data shows near-neutral sentiment across BCH’s spot and perpetual markets, though two indicators stand out and point to a rising risk of a bearish move. The average whale order size shows large holders firmly in control, averaging 229.96 BCH, about $44,688 at press time.

That control raises concern because the market’s funding rate has flipped to a negative 0.0028%, suggesting most perpetual-market capital sits in short positions.

Source: CryptoQuant The spot cumulative volume delta tells a similar story, with selling volume outpacing buying. The spot CVD shows taker sellers dominating the market, a trend that has held for weeks alongside BCH’s decline.

If the metric stays in that bearish direction, it would weigh on price and could extend BCH’s losses well below current levels, though it does not confirm a fall to $100.

BCH decouples from Bitcoin BCH has broken away from Bitcoin, with the 20-day correlation coefficient sliding to 0.24 after holding near 1.0 through much of May and early June.

That reading marks a weak positive link rather than the near-lockstep movement of prior weeks; the two assets have largely stopped trading in tandem, though they are not yet moving inversely.

Source: TradingView The breakdown matters because BCH has fallen hard, dropping from above $600 late last year to around $200. If the de-correlation holds while Bitcoin trades sideways or rallies, BCH could extend its slide on its own, or the relationship could snap back.

For now, the prospect of a short-term BCH decline remains in place, leaving the asset exposed to further downside.

Final Summary Analysts say Bitcoin Cash could lose roughly half its value, sliding from around $200 toward the $100 mark, though no one is calling that drop a certainty. BCH has started moving on its own rather than shadowing Bitcoin, which means its next move may not follow the broader market in either direction.

Holochain is a project that many say is set to change the way we think about Distributed Ledger Technology. As a result, interest in HOT is at a fever pitch.

Indeed, Holochain is offering an alternative to the current landscape of bloated blockchains and imperfect solutions. However, the project is facing questions of its own including why development is progressing so slowly, months after a highly successful ICO.

So, is it still a project worth considering?

In this Holochain review I will attempt to answer that. I will also take an in-depth look at the use cases of the HOT token and it's long term adoption potential.

What is Holochain?Holochain is being positioned as an alternative to the blockchain, giving developers a framework for creating decentralized applications (dApps).

One huge change to enable this is a switch from the data dependent blockchain to an agent-centric system. Holochain's method avoids keeping a global consensus, using an agent system in which each agent keeping a private fork, and that is stored and managed in a limited manner on the blockchain with a distributed hash table.

Holochain Benefits. Source: Holochain Website

This avoids scalability problems that have plagued blockchain solutions. It also allows any dApps hosted on Holochain to do far more with less resource than required for blockchains. In this Holochain review, we will take an in-depth look at the project, technology and token prospects.

Holochain vs. BlockchainThe traditional blockchain works by storing data via cryptographic hashes on a distributed network. Each node on that network maintains a full copy of the blockchain and the global consensus to verify the network and keep its integrity intact. It's one feature of blockchain technology that has been a strength of the emerging technology.

There are weaknesses that come with the blockchain methodology. One that has been plaguing blockchain developers is scalability issues that are created by requiring each node in the network to verify the entire network.

As the amount of data increases on the blockchain, it becomes increasingly restrictive for transaction throughput on the blockchain. This is why some cryptocurrencies have experienced such long transaction times, and such high network fees.

The name came about because the system used by Holochain resembles the construction of a hologram. In a hologram a coherent 3-D pattern is created by a specific interaction of light beams, and in the Holochain the system creates a coherent whole in a similar manner, putting individual components together to form a whole.

In addition, the technology uses holistic patterns as part of its functionality.

The Public Portion BlockchainThe Holochain system does away with scalability issues by not requiring each node or agent on the network to keep a continually updated record of the entire public blockchain.

Instead, each node keeps its own blockchain which interacts with the node's unique cryptographic key. Imagine the entire public blockchain as a river, and each node is similar to a smaller stream that feeds into the river.

If a node goes offline it creates a fork of the public chain, but the public chain continues forward, without being impacted by the loss of one of its nodes.

Holochain is a Green SolutionBy now everyone knows how much energy is required by Proof of Work blockchains such as Bitcoin. Holochain claims to be a green solution to environmentally destructive blockchains.

Because nodes on Holochain don’t store and validate the entire blockchain there is only a small percentage of bandwidth used in comparison with traditional blockchains.

Moreover, there’s no mining component to Holochain, so the electricity used is minimal, really no more than would be used by the node computers in their normal operations. With the electricity requirements of PoW blockchains constantly on the rise, this environmentally friendly approach seems far better.

Node Data Accessed by the Public SpaceInstead of making each node keeps its own copy of all the data in the entire blockchain, the Holochain central chain maintains a series of rules to verify the data on each node's blockchain. That verification occurs occurs on a distributed hash table.

This means that when a node goes offline its data is not lost to the public blockchain. Instead a limited copy is maintained and verified according to the set of rules.

Node Architecture at Holochain

As you can read in the FAQ section of the Holochain website, the developers compare the system to the way that a living organism stores information in DNA or the way that languages are stored by populations of people.

“Where is the English language stored?” the Holochain developers ask in the FAQ. “Every speaker carries it. People have different areas of expertise or exposure to different slang or specialized vocabularies. Nobody has a complete copy, nor is anyone’s version exactly the same as anyone else, If you disappeared half of the English speakers, it would not degrade the language much.”

How Scalable is Holochain?The question of how many transactions per second Holochain can handle needs to be looked at differently than the way we look at scalability on traditional blockchains.

The quick answer to the question is that scalability is unlimited on Holochain. That's somewhat simplistic, and honestly the idea of transactions per second doesn't apply to Holochain due to its inherent nature.

Rather than keeping a global consensus of data on the blockchain, Holochain uses a distributed hash table to keep a record of the essential type and validity of data that each individual node contributes.

 
Network topology of five agents running three different apps. Every app is it’s own p2p network. Source

The developers have used an analogy of a dance floor to better explain. You can look at a dance floor and immediately know who is dancing ballet and who is dancing hip-hop.

How many dancers can be dancing at the same time?

As many as will fit on the dance floor. It's apparent that there's no need to use a trusted centralized third-party to keep track of the dancers and what style of dance they are performing.

“So, Holochain as an app framework does not pose any limit of transactions per second because there is no place where all transactions have to go through,” the developers wrote. He went on to say

It is like asking, ‘How many words can humanity speak per second?’ It's an irrelevant question. With every human being born, that number increases. Same for Holochain.

What Dapp's Work With Holochain?Holochain would be a very good fit for any dApps that require a large number of individual inputs where each individual has access to a limited copy of all the inputs.

The immediate use case put forth by Holochain is social media platforms, but they’ve also suggested that Holochain will work well in peer-to-peer platforms, supply chain management, reputational cryptocurrencies or loyalty programs, collective intelligence projects and more.

These projects make a good fit for Holochain because of its agent-centric nature. You can also view a comprehensive overview of the types of apps you can develop on the holohackers map.

Some Apps on Holochain Github Already

Holochain would not work well with any type of private or anonymous datasets however, since each individual node publishes a shared distributed hash table. Holochain is also not suited for any application that hosts large files, or for running data positivist-oriented dApps, like most cryptocurrencies.

The vision adopted by Holograph postulates that there are no absolute truths on the public blockchain, only the individual perspective held by each node that can be brought together to form a larger picture. This has been compared to a blockchain vision of the theory of relativity.

Language SupportHolochain was written in Go, and that particular programming language was chosen for its similarity to C and its ease of use. The code base is fully open source and can be examined at the Holochain GitHub.

When developing dApps for Holochain developers are free to use both Lisp and JavaScript and there is also support for front-end languages such as CSS, HTML and JavaScript.

The Holochain developers have stated that Holochain is flexible in regards to handling new languages, so there is a good possibility that support for additional languages will be added in the future.

The Holochain TeamThe developers behind Holochain have a vast amount of experience. The co-founders both have 34 years of programming experience. Arthur Brock, who is the Chief Architect behind Holochain has been a contract coder since 1984, working with AI systems and as an online alternative currency system designer since 2001.

Holochain Team

Eric Harris-Braun is the Executive Engineer behind Holochain. He has also been a contract coder since 1984, a full time programmer since 1988, a designer of peer-to-peer communication applications (glassbead.com) for many years, a full-stack web developer, as well as having experience in system design, framework design, etc.

Rounding out the team are 12 additional developers, UX/UI experts, and software engineers. The core developers are David Meister, an Australian software architect with over a decade of experience, and Nicolas Luck, a German software architect who also has over a decade of experience developing elegant software solutions. 

Adoption and CommunityPossibly because the community is still waiting for the release of the Holochain mainnet, the adoption and community activity isn’t quite what you see from some other projects.

The sub-Reddit for Holochain has just under 7,000 subscribers, but posts are only made every few days on average, and many of the recent posts have no responses or comments.

The development team remains active on Reddit though, with AMA’s and explorations of various team members, community leaders, and features of the platform.

Twitter is another popular social platform in the crypto-world, and Holochain is active there, with almost 30,000 followers. They tweet regularly, and most tweets get about 100 likes, and 20-30 retweets.

The Telegram channel of Holochain is fairly large, with just over 12,500 members, and the Holochain Facebook page has over 5,000 likes. There’s also a Holochain Forum, but it doesn’t appear to be exceptionally busy, with only 1-2 posts a day.

Holochain Token (HOT)Holochain completed a month long ICO on April 28, 2018 during which they raised a bit over 30,000 ETH worth roughly $20 million at the time. There were 133,214,575,156 HOT tokens minted for the ICO. As of October 21, 2019 the HOT token is trading for 0.000950, and has a market capitalization of over $150 million, making it the 37th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Immediately following the ICO the token had traded as high as $0.002 for a more than 1,000% gain in a week. The price quickly deflated over the following two months, and by July 2018 was trading below $0.0005.

 
HOT Price Performance. Image via CMC

Like all the coins in the cryptocurrency markets, HOT has had its ups and downs over the years, trading as low as $0.000341 on June 29, 2018 and as high as $0.002538 on May 29, 2019. 

The HOT token is an ERC-20 token that can be stored in any ERC-20 compatible wallet, such as MetaMask, MyEtherWallet, or one of the hardware wallets. Eventually, the ERC-20 tokens will be able to be swapped for Holofuel. That swapping will become available once the Holo mainnet launches.

Rather than burning the HOT tokens after swapping they will be held in a reserve account to help maintain stability in the network. There are no plans yet for when HOT will be completely removed. There are also no set plans for listing Holofuel on exchanges, although the team understands this conversation will need to happen.

HOT TradingWhen it comes to the markets for HOT, it is listed on a number of exchanges. These include the likes of CoinEx, Binance, MXC etc. The volume is seems to be pretty well distributed although CoinEx has over 30% of it.

When it comes to the liquidity on the individual exchanges, it appears to be pretty strong. For example, if we were to take a look into Binance's USDT / HOT order book it appears to be quite deep. There is also pretty reasonable daily turnover.

 
Register at Binance and Buy HOT Tokens

In addition to this, the Binance Exchange also makes a market in BTC & ETH crosses of HOT. So, this means that you will be able to place large block orders without too much slippage.

What is Holofuel?Holofuel is the planned native cryptocurrency of Holochain, which will be a mutual-credit currency, and will be backed by actual assets.

The Holochain team calls it a “contractual service obligation” because it can be earned and redeemed for hosting on the Holochain platform. Its primary use is for Holochain application (hApp) providers to pay Holo hosts for their services.

The Holochain team believes Holofuel is different from many of the existing cryptocurrencies for three primary reasons:

Mutual Credit: Unlike other cryptocurrencies which are primarily used for speculation, HoloFuel is not tokens created from nothing. It is a double-entry crypto-accounting framework that provides scalability, transparency, and accountability.Asset-Backed: HoloFuel is backed by the computing power of hosts across the globe.Value-Stable: The value of HoloFuel is connected to the computing capacity of the network of hosts. This capacity evolves and changes slowly and isn't subject to huge spikes and crashes the way other speculative tokens are.Ultimately this makes Holofuel a hosting utility token, and there are already several competitors who are much further along in development. Projects like Sia, Storj and Filecoin all reward users for sharing their computing power, harddrive space or bandwidth capacity.

DevelopmentI will also mention here that there have been some criticisms of Holochain, most notably that the project is making little to no progress.

And it’s true the project has been progressing quite slowly. It is still waiting for the alpha testnet to launch 18 months after the ICO was completed.

That’s a long time, and there’s no indication when the mainnet might launch. Of course, the team says they’re taking a long view towards their project, and that they don’t want to rush anything.

Of course, there is a simple way to assess the monthly development output and that would be to take a look into their code public code repositories. By observing the code commits we can get a good idea of how much work is actually being done.

Hence, I decided to dive into the HoloChain GitHub and check out their repositories. Below you have the total code commits for the top 3 most active repos over the past 12 months.

Total Code commits to Select Repos over past year

As you can see, the developers have indeed been quite active. There have been regular commits to all of these select repos over the past year. The project also has over 100 further repositories with varying levels of activity - quite impressive.

If we were to compare this to other projects it's quite clear that Holochain is amoung the most active of all. In fact, on this site they are ranked number 2 when it comes to commits to their core repo.

So, although there have been delays in getting the testnet up and running, one can't complain that the team is not working towards it. If you want to keep up to date with this development you can follow their official blog.

ConclusionWe’ve been told that Bitcoin and blockchain are the future technology, but this might not be entirely true. Blockchain technology is actually nearly 10 years old already, and top cryptocurrencies do little more than mimic our existing corrupt financial system in a quasi-decentralized fashion.

Bitcoin is meant for storing value, and has also become something of a casino for traders. Holochain will be a system of value creation and community engagement that is designed to help us get to a post-monetary society based on community, personal contributions, merit, and service to others. It was designed to grant both data and personal integrity.

It’s not certain if Holochain will be successful, but it is ready to be used, and developers can already begin building the applications they feel can help change our society and our world. Some examples of Holochain dApps can be found here and if you’re interested in developing your own dApp with Holochain you can get started here.

Investors have done very well already with the token seeing a 500% increase from its ICO, and that was during a bear market in crpytocurrencies. Once Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies begin rising again the HOT token could see significant upside.

Disclaimer: These are the writer's opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.

Bitcoin Price Diary: VET, XLM, TRX Double-Digit Gains — BTC Flatlines

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Crypto analyst Scott Melker is bullish on Bitcoin, XRP and the crypto markets at large.

The founder of Texas West Capital is revealing his outlook on Bitcoin and a list of altcoins. In a new note on the state of crypto, Melker says BTC is looking bullish on the daily, weekly and monthly charts – with the monthly looking especially enticing.

“[Monthly chart is] incredibly bullish. Anything above the most recent support at $9,243.83 remains as such.

The last monthly candle engulfed the previous 2, with a hammer at the bottom – arguably a morning star reversal. There is quite literally nothing bearish about the chart on this time frame.”

Source: Scott Melker/TradingView Melker says he began buying BTC when it was in the $6,400 range, and he sees no evidence that BTC’s rally above $10,000 is finished.

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As for the altcoin market, Melker says he’s eyeing XRP, Stellar (XLM), NEO and Holo (HOT).

$XRP

I didn't need a chart to predict this, but it's nice to look at one for confirmation. Blast off. pic.twitter.com/Ow7uY995vE

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) February 13, 2020

$XMR / $BTC

Continuing to consolidate against major resistance. I am expecting a major pop if it breaks. pic.twitter.com/Nue2We0tHY

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) January 30, 2020

$NEO / $BTC

Holy mother. Confirmed breakout of an inverse head and shoulders that has existed for almost 10 months. This should pull a 50% move up just on that pattern. Expecting to see NEO take flight. pic.twitter.com/iGSsUt4I6R

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) February 13, 2020

$HOT / $USDT

This looks crazy bullish. Broke descending support and has now flipped horizontal resistance to support and moved away on strong volume. pic.twitter.com/nFsWTcrjqL

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) February 12, 2020

In the end, Melker says it’s easy to ride a wave in a bull market, but smart traders will take profits and incrementally sell their positions as the price of an asset rises.

“Everyone is a genius in a bull market. We will see how many people actually make it out with their profits…

– Scale out of your trades. This will help remove the pressure of deciding when to exit.
– Take profit often, there’s always another trade. Don’t worry about what happens after you exit.
– Use trailing stops to lock in gains and make sure you never turn a winner into a loser.”

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Although Melker joins a number of analysts who are bullish on the state of the market, veteran trader Josh Rager says the bullish sentiments may be too good to be true.

Rager confirms a sudden influx of messages from people asking him for trading advice. The last time this happened, he says, the market was hit with a major pullback.

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