Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Many Blockchain Leaders Choose Anonymity, Why?

During the peak of the 2017 crypto-mania, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee announced that he had sold all of his LTC holdings. Lee, who founded Litecoin in 2011, cited the conflict of interest as the main reason for that move. Despite this explanation, Lee’s decision to sell-off his LTC holdings still does not sit well with so many in the cryptocurrency community. Some still believe he dumped his LTC due to some knowledge that was not divulged to the wider community.

In mid-December 2019, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revealed that, under his instruction, the Ethereum Foundation sold 70,000 ETH during the 2017 parabolic bull market. This sale resulted in $100 million liquidity which according to Vitalik, extended the runway for the Ethereum Foundation. Funnily enough, Vitalik admitted this two years later after ETH hit its $1,432 all-time high.

His admission was met with strong criticism with many claiming that it was no different from what Charlie Lee did. In a recent episode of the Magical Crypto Friends podcast, Charlie Lee explains why he thinks his LTC sell-off was different from Ethereum Foundation’s ETH sell-off.

Charlie Lee cited a couple of differences during his discussion with Riccardo Spagni. For starters, he noted that Vitalik only made that revelation two years later. Further quipping that Buterin transferred ETH to an exchange which does not necessarily mean he sold it and he could be trading it.

Secondly, ETH coins were pre-mined for Buterin and for the Ethereum Foundation, which is quite different from Charlie Lee. Another important difference that Lee noted is the Ethereum Foundation’s lack of transparency. He opined:

 

“The Ethereum Foundation, it’s not very transparent at all, right. As a Foundation kind of centralized, where they pre-mined coins, they should be very transparent about how many coins they’re selling. At least Ripple is pretty transparent about how many XRP they are dumping every month or every year.”

Riccardo Spagni chimed in on the topic of lack of transparency, saying that even ZCash’s reward model is more transparent compared to ethereum’s pre-mine model, adding:

“I mean, you know everything’s suboptimal but certainly like the ZCash crowd has at least tried to make some effort of transparency to their detriment in some instances.”

Charlie Lee also pointed out that the Ethereum Foundation lacks transparency to the extent that the wider community has no idea how it allocates its funds, how much funds it currently owns, its processes and all the people that are part of it.

Currently, Litecoin Foundation has officially started the development of the Mimblewimble privacy protocol. Litecoin Foundation has donated $18,500 worth of cryptocurrency to the dedicated development fund meant to sponsor Grin developer David Burkett. This fund is intended to expand to $72,000.

Although 2019 did not end well for LTC, this year has started on a brighter note. So far this year, LTC has gained over 35 percent over the last few days. It has, however, retraced to $56 at press time amidst a market-wide correction.

Posted: January 29, 2020

Litecoin creator, Charlie Lee has been vocal about LTC becoming a privacy coin in the near future. Lee had on-boarded Grin developer, David Burkett to implement the MimbleWimble [MW] protocol and use extension blocks for scalability and privacy on the network. Noting fungibility as one of the important properties of money that had been missing from Litecoin, Lee said in a recent interview that the implementation of MW protocol might get them halfway there.

Burkett, who had been working on developing the extended MW block announced to the community that the project began on 29 December 2019. Lee added that the integration of MW protocol will be introduced as a soft-fork. Scalability has been the main concern for most coins on the blockchain, but according to the LTC creator, MW scales better than Bitcoin.

Lee said:

“So nice thing about MimbleWimble is that it scales really well.”

Claiming that the protocol does not sacrifice its scalability to provide privacy and fungibility, he added:

“In some sense, it actually scales better than Bitcoin [and] Litecoin today because of the ability to do compact transactions, to throw away inputs and outputs, the way it’s designed is actually very good for scalability and it’s quite impressive how it works.”

Burkett had informed the community about his plans to restructure the core logic to be shared between Grin++ and Litecoin, including logging, serialization, crypto, error handling, and common data structures. The developers’ further plans for Litecoin in the new year included determining building methods, defining all LTC models, and moving the database implementation over to libmw-core which is the partial redesign of Grin++.

Posted: February 12, 2020

Though Bitcoin is quite heavily misadvertised as an anonymous payment network, it is actually one of the more transparent crypto-networks to transact on. In the early days of cryptocurrency, when KYC and AML regulations weren’t as strict as they are now, it was easier to conduct Bitcoin transactions which couldn’t be traced back to criminal activities or malicious intent. Today, while Bitcoin isn’t used as much for private transactions, multitudes of privacy coins like Monero and Dash have stepped in to fill the void.

Monero, specifically, has regulators worried due to its ability to make transactions almost impossible to trace. In recent years, extensive research has been conducted into the traceability of such privacy coins and so far, no unexacting methods of monitoring their transactions have come to light, with usage only rising.

According to TokenInsight’s annual market report, Monero was the most widely used privacy coin in 2019. Further, Monero’s dominance rose from 35% to 50% over the year and combined with Zcash and Dash, represented 90% of the privacy coin market capitalization.

2019 also saw the launch of two privacy coins utilizing the MimbleWimble protocol — Grin and Beam, both of which saw increases to their market caps over the year. However, classic privacy coins like PIVX and NavCoin continued to decline.

Interestingly, for both Grin and Monero, the top two mining pools represented more than 50% of the networks’ hashrates.

With privacy coins being increasingly looked at as vehicles to launder money, it seems unlikely that restrictions around their use and sale will loosen in the foreseeable future. And while these cryptocurrencies do have other use-cases such as confidential business transactions and financial data protection, it seems unlikely that regulators will relax their stance on anonymous transfers of value.

Last year, Monero was delisted from several cryptocurrency exchanges due to its alleged violation of the FATF’s ‘travel rule.’ With so many restrictions being placed on these coins, their future might be bleaker than previously thought.

However, popular cryptocurrencies are seeing developments being made towards providing optional privacy for transactions on their networks. 

Litecoin has already begun the development of an implementation of MimbleWimble extension blocks, while Ethereum is working on using zero-knowledge proofs to include the ability to conduct private transactions on the blockchain.

In this regard, even though privacy coins might continue to receive increased scrutiny from regulators and policymakers, anonymous transactions might become more popular than previously thought.

HodlX Guest Post  Submit Your Post   A core ideology in the cryptocurrency space is a consistent commitment to privacy. But until privacy coins deliver easy-to-use, efficient solutions at scale, privacy will remain a privilege reserved for the crypto-savvy.

For individuals seeking to reject government or other third-party surveillance in their financial and business dealings, end-to-end encryption is a must. However, privacy coins universally lack a comprehensive approach that can aid users in performing other necessary functions like private messaging, file sharing, and data messaging.

Monero is routinely seen as the gold standard of the privacy niche, and for good reason. It’s the longest running of the major contenders, boasts the largest market cap, and has successfully protected XMR transactions from unwanted eyes for years. But that hasn’t stopped Monero users from being identified and reprimanded, over and over again.

Now, the purpose is not to condone criminal behavior, or argue over what constitutes a crime – criminals should be arrested. But the fact that individuals using Monero for illicit purposes are routinely uncovered and detained suggests that XMR isn’t adequately serving its users. By tracking on-ramps in and out of Monero, channels of communication, web activity, and so on, Monero users can forfeit their anonymity even if they use the coin exactly as intended.

The recent Monero website hack, in which a malicious actor planted a coin stealer on the site, proves that anyone can be tampered with, despite how knowledgeable they are of crypto. Centralized solutions in use alongside Monero and other privacy coins aren’t perfect, as the massive, recent NordVPN hack highlights.

And if we take a step further back, how accessible is Monero itself to the average individual? Despite over a decade of existence, cryptocurrency across the board is incredibly inaccessible for the average individual. XMR and coins like it carry an even larger learning curve. Realistically, what percentage of the population is equipped to properly utilize Monero and supplementary services to adequately protect their anonymity? I’d argue the figure is well below 1%. And with the ongoing trend of exchanges delisting the “purely privacy” coins, that figure may continue to dip lower still.

For privacy coins to carry out their intended purpose, they need to build out comprehensive, user-friendly applications that average Joe can wrap his head around.

Opal Coin: Before Its Time

A holistic approach to privacy isn’t a foreign concept to the niche. Once upon a time, there was a little known privacy coin by the name of Opal. Launched in 2014, Opal was situated as a suite of privacy utilities that were all housed in the Opal wallet. Alongside hidden addresses and shielded transactions typical of most privacy coins, you could also partake in on-chain private messaging. From a single location, you could negotiate dealings and settle transactions in a completely decentralized, secure manner.

Unfortunately, this philosophy wasn’t widely regarded as necessary for the privacy space. Although there were other intended features to encompass within the wallet, development largely dried up within the next year as the team and community pursued different ventures. For all intents and purposes, Opal and “holistic privacy” were good as dead.

Broadening Utility

Either in response to Monero, or as a reflection of the growth of the industry as a whole, there are a number of competing privacy coins that do emphasize greater utillity. Zcash is perhaps the most appropriate example. Like Monero, Zcash is sufficiently private for users looking to deal in encrypted currency transactions.

However, Zcash broadens the scope of its “transactions” through the incorporation of private smart contracts. Smart contracts are the industry standard for the nuanced transaction of data on-chain. When applied to a privacy coin, this means users can deal in much more than just units of currency: they can store files, lock currency, establish escrow, alongside more nuanced potential applications like decentralized autonomous organizations.

Zcash also employs “flexible privacy”. Users can opt for public transactions, which may be necessary for auditing and compliance purposes. They can similarly verify activity through zk-SNARKs without revealing contents. In order for privacy coins to see legitimate usage at the global scale, they must encompass these broader functionalities.

Overcoming the Impossible Trinity

There is currently an “impossible trinity” of utility, sufficient privacy, and scalability that privacy coins across the boards are succumbing to. Most projects are building out under the preconceived notion that only two of these qualities can be appeased.

Monero is sufficiently private and scales well enough, but lacks utility for more comprehensive use per the possibilities suggested above. Grin has taken the same approach. Verge is quick and offers several features, but does so at the sacrifice of the adequacy of the privacy it encompasses. Zcash is pushing towards utility, and many will agree ZEC is sufficiently private, but the resources required for various privacy activities, like contracts, suggests the network won’t succeed at worldwide scale.

Enigma is one project looking to overcome this “impossible trinity” at the application layer. The functionality of Enigma reflects the ability to use “secret contracts” across existing blockchain networks. In essence, this will allow users to transmit and interact with data on-chain in a secure, untraceable manner.

Essentially, Enigma is providing the “privacy” for networks that otherwise embody utility and scalability. As major chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin continue to improve and evolve, the impact Engima enables as its underlying chains become more capable similarly grows.

At the protocol level, Beam is also taking on a more comprehensive approach. Like Grin, Beam is constricted by its MimbleWimble architecture, which confines network activity as solely currency transactions. Unlike Grin, however, Beam has placed ample resources and capital to broaden the utility and usability of the project.

While Grin continues to be very barebones, with users relying on a spartan command line wallet, Beam is putting a major emphasis on usability. They’ve built interactive wallets on a number of platforms, and atomic swap capabilities provide users more autonomy in bringing funds on-and-off Beam, without as much reliance on exchange offerings. Additional features like tokenized assets in the pipeline, combined with interoperability initiatives, further expand the utility of the coin.

Lastly, a newer contender, Stegos, has an ambitious bottom-up approach that may prove fruitful for the broader niche. Like Grin and Beam, Stegos utilizes aggressive transaction pruning for a far more lightweight, scalable blockchain. But beyond that, Stegos approach is a direct opposite: instead of completely restricting the functionality of transactions, Stegos expands network activity to broaden transactions as a system for fast data messaging.

In the same capacity that an amount of tokens can be sent, users can similarly send messages, like Opal, alongside media, data, and whatever else. The team is looking to create a one-stop mobile app that will allow users to participate in encrypted, on-chain messaging, and interact with network dapps. This is only possible because the network is lightweight enough for smartphones to act as full nodes, which enables them to whichever functionalities are available for desktop alternatives.

An Innovative Future

The above coins, along with other initiatives that make up the privacy players of the current generation of “blockchain 3.0”, suggest that the usability solution in the niche is a matter of “when,” rather than “if”. The future should be private. Down the road, everyone will be able to maintain complete digital anonymity through the utilization of privacy coins.

How far out we are will only be revealed with time. All will depend on when projects across the board shift their approach to focusing on how to build a platform that can do it all properly. The current philosophy of figuring out the best way to do what is possible through existing infrastructure is a fruitless endeavor.

 

Posted: March 3, 2020

Litecoin has been working towards incorporating aspects of privacy in the near future over the past year, with the foundation working towards improving the privacy of transactions for its users. In order to do that, the foundation introduced an extended Block [EB] and the Mimblewimble upgrade. For this purpose, Litecoin’s Charlie Lee had on-boarded Grin developer David Burkett.

Burkett, who has taken the lead on such upgrades, has finally given a deadline to the community for the testnet launch. According to his latest progress update, Burkett noted that the Mimblewimble testnet launch will take place by the “end of Summer” or August. The note read that the testnet will include all block & tx validation rules, basic p2p messaging, transaction pool, syncing, and the ability to mine blocks.

It added,

“This will NOT include a usable GUI wallet for casual users to test it out. Transactions will likely need to be created manually at first, or via a cli or automated tool.”

Lee had previously noted that fungibility is one of the most important properties of money, going on to add that it had been missing from LTC. However, with MW protocol, the coin just might be able to achieve it.

In the January update, Burkett had shared means to support “non-interactive transactions” on MW. According to the latest update, there have been some changes in the design iteration, with the issues found with the first write-up resolved and now turned into a Litecoin Improvement Protocol [LIP]. However, Burkett noted that it will take some time before the LIP has sufficient reviews and is accepted.

The fact that the testnet launch finally has a tentative timeline is good news for the Litecoin community, especially since the altcoin has been under a lot of bearish pressure in the market lately.

Litecoin [LTC] had performed exceptionally at the beginning of 2020. The digital silver had registered 98.71% growth in its price, but the bear attack in mid-February caused the coin to slip by 31.14%. At press time, the coin was valued at $57.421. That being said, the hash rate of LTC has been climbing since the beginning of January and at press time, the hash rate was reported to be 175.41 TH/s, while the mining difficulty also climbed to 6.40 TH/s. This suggests that despite its inconsistent performance this year, the Litecoin network remains in good health.

The latest announcement will only contribute to the network growing stronger.

In brief Tim Draper gains 40% on his Aragon investment in just one month. Draper's top picks include Tezos, Bancor, Maker, ANT, Spacecash, Grin, AXE. He hopes Aragon's judicial system will be a game-changer in the legal sector. Last month, venture capitalist and Bitcoin evangelist Tim Draper bought one million Aragon (ANT) for $1 million. This was at a price of $1 per coin—even though the coin was worth $0.70 at the time.

Now the coin’s price has shot up to $1.40, netting him a 40% return in just weeks—at least on paper. He would be hard pressed to sell so many coins given the token’s low trading volume. But, either way, Draper isn’t planning on selling.

“I bought for a reason. I want to drive more usage of decentralized government services. I have no interest in selling,” he told Decrypt.

Draper wants to take partThe Aragon platform provides the tools to create decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). At present, the project has facilitated the creation of over 1,000 DAOs since launching in 2018.

Draper now controls a hefty sum of ANT’s total supply—2.5% to be precise. As a result, the crypto entrepreneur not only sits on Aragon’s advisory board but can also participate in its forthcoming judicial system.

“I like their model of creating a totally decentralized judicial system. Draper told Decrypt. “This is much needed. Eventually, this will be a big time saver and money saver from the runaway lawyer system we currently have.”

At present, the project team is focused on its newly devised Aragon court—a digital judicial system for DAOs within the project’s governance.

ANT—Aragon’s native cryptocurrency—is utilized within Aragon’s network governance. Holders of ANT will use their tokens to participate in forthcoming court proceedings. The first of which, came into session back on February 10, involving the mock trial of Ethereum classic developer Yaz Khoury.

Tim Draper is no stranger to significant crypto investments. He’s cited as one of the earliest investors in Bitcoin, snapping up nearly 30,000 BTC at a U.S marshalls auction back in 2014. The auctioneered BTC was worth $632 apiece at the time—a fortune presently valued at over $262 million.

“Of course you know I am a big Bitcoin supporter. I like all the coins that still have a team working hard to make them succeed. Tezos, Bancor, Maker, ANT, Spacecash, Grin, AXE, all have teams dedicated to them making them grow and succeed,” he explained.

Let’s hope none of them get the AXE.

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Developer Predicts Litecoin Mimblewimble Testnet Launch by September

Remaining Anonymous: Which Crypto Privacy Solution Works Best?

What makes good money in the Information Age? The quality of a monetary product is primarily attributable to it being (1) recognizable, (2) scarce, (3) censorship-resistant, (4) durable & indestructible, (5) extensible, (6) salable, (7) portable, (8) fungible, (9) private and (10) divisible.

The greatest disruptive innovation in monetary history was published on October 31, 2008 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System which outlined a tamper-proof, decentralized peer-to-peer protocol that could track and verify digital transactions, prevent double-spending and generate a transparent record for anyone to inspect in nearly real-time.

As shown with Bitcoin over the past decade the market takes a monetary product as it currently is along with speculation of what it may become instead of what it was.

It took approximately eight years before a similar disruptive monetary innovation was published when the pseudonymous Tom Elvis Jedusor placed the original MimbleWimble white paper on a Bitcoin research channel and then disappeared.

In the 49 page formal math proof published in 2018 titled Aggregate Cash System: A Cryptographic Investigation of Mimblewimble [https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/1039.pdf], Fuchsbauer, et. al. concluded, “In this paper, we provide a provable-security analysis for Mimblewimble. We give a precise syntax and formal security definitions for an abstraction of Mimblewimble that we call an aggregate cash system. We then formally prove the security of Mimblewimble in this definitional framework. Our results imply in particular that two natural instantiations (with Pedersen commitments and Schnorr or BLS signatures) are provably secure against inflation and coin theft under standard assumptions.”

A Mimblewimble based coin enables greater network scalability, privacy and fungibility than legacy blockchain protocols. All transactions on the base layer use CoinJoin with Confidential Transactions and signature aggregation. Whale alerts are not even possible with extremely scalable ghost money. But as with everything there are trade-offs in fundamental characteristics that each monetary product must make.

In a 2016 podcast Bitcoin core developer Peter Wuille stated,

“Introducing Mimblewimble into Bitcoin in a backwards-compatible way would be a difficult exercise. It may not be impossible, but it would be hard. I think the way if people were experimenting with this, I would expect it to be an experimental separate chain or sidechain. In a sidechain we would not introduce a new cryptocurrency but it would be a separate chain. There are some downsides to Mimblewimble. In particular, it does not have a scripting language…a scripting language is very neat to play with, but it has a privacy downside. Mimblewimble takes this to the other side where you have very good privacy but at the expense of no other features any more.”

Fortunately, there has been significant research done since then and with Mimblewimble these types of scripts and applications are possible: Multi-Signature transactions, time locks, atomic swaps, and hashed time-locked contracts which are the building block of payment channels and Lightning Network.

In January 2019 GRIN and BEAM both launched to extreme anticipation as Mimblewimble base layer coins. However, both have extremely low stock to flow ratios and GRIN does not have a supply cap.

On January 18. 2019, before GRIN launched a developer opened an issue on Github about GRIN’s emission rate and supply cap but was summarily dismissed. Because of GRIN’s lack of interest in a supply cap the developer interpreted that as a green light to experiment with a sounder monetary policy.

In February 2019 MWC was announced as a fork of GRIN. The initial stock of both BEAM and GRIN were created by mining which was highly inflationary. For software development funding, GRIN relies on donations and BEAM allocates part of the block reward to a foundation.

In October 2019 a Bitcoin and MWC atomic swap was completed on testnet.

In November 2019 MWC mainnet launched as an experimental separate chain and has functioned flawlessly according to the consensus rules ever since. The consensus rules provide for a total of 20,000,000 MWC. 10,000,000 will be proof of work mined and the initial stock of 10,000,000 were created in the genesis block.

The MWC initial stock was distributed differently than either GRIN or BEAM by using these three ways: (1) 2,000,000 to the developers for software development work immediately after the genesis block was mined; (2) 6,000,000 about a month after mainnet launched via an airdrop program that has primarily gone to the most grizzled and sophisticated veterans in the crypto-industry: Bitcoin holders who registered with more than 148,000 BTC at the bottom of the bear market between April and July 2019. Some were unclaimed and will either be burned, airdropped or added to the HODL program; and (3) 2,000,000 will be distributed over the infancy years of the project via a HODL program to those who continue to hold MWC. Registration is functional and over 6.7m of 8m MWC are registered. Registered MWC are still fully liquid and can be moved at the user’s discretion.

The MWC developers have stated in the Roadmap, “There are many potential places development resources can be allocated and they will be chosen based on market needs with highest priority given to requests that will primarily benefit and come from the buyers and hodlers of last resort.”

Just because a new monetary product is created does not mean that the market ascribes it any value. Such was the case from January 3, 2009 to January 2011 where Bitcoin traded at less than $0.25.

And such was the case on December 2, 2019 when the MWC airdrop began to be distributed. On December 3rd MWC hit an all-time low of about $0.25 or a market cap of less than $2m.

Bitcoin has clawed its market cap from nothing. Likewise, MWC was nearly worthless, nevertheless, a heartbeat was detected and the speculation network effect started. Some people have started to acquire and hold MWC just in case it might catch on. It seems that fundamentally good products always do eventually.

The MWC difficulty algorithm is based on pure proof of work. Inherited from GRIN was the use of C29 and C31 and, in the future, C32 and C33. Under the consensus rules C29 is scheduled to phase out around November 2019 at a rate of 1% per week. Pure proof of work, which the MWC team considers a superior form of security compared to alternatives like proof of stake, requires a tradeoff between emission rate and security.

As MWC’s price began firming the decision was made unanimously by all interested stakeholders to hard fork MWC, remove the C32 and C33 parts of the consensus code and rapidly harden the MWC emission rate. This would leave MWC the sole coin on the C31 algorithm.

An algorithm for which there is an ASIC designed but not put into production. On January 17, 2020 Innosilicon announced,

“We are sorry to inform you that our Grin product G32 GPU ASIC fabrication has not been supported well by the foundry… so we have to put this production on hold till future clearance. Innosilicon invested huge amount of R&D dollars to complete the innovative CC31/CC32 Grin GPU ASIC design to our satisfaction because we believe in Grin and its core team.”

On March 31, 2019 the MWC hard fork went flawlessly and on April 7, 2019 the emission rate decreased by approximately 75%. The stock-to-flow changed from 6.4 to 25.7. By February 2021 the MWC stock-to-flow will be over 62.

Although still in its infancy, MWC has been consistently trading above a $100m market cap with a monthly mining emission of around $500,000. By market capitalization, this makes MWC the #3 privacy coin behind Monero and Zcash and in the top-15 proof of work coins around Ravencoin and Decred. But in nominal numbers, MWC is minuscule compared to Bitcoin’s $90m of weekly emissions.

MWC is designed to be extremely complementary to Bitcoin and atomic swaps will only strengthen that relationship. Bitcoin can function as an extremely effective monetary VPN.

There seems to be significant information asymmetry regarding Mimblewimble and even the existence of MWC . As a result, it will be very interesting to see how the market responds to this six-month-old monetary product. When performing economic calculation the profits will go to those who calculate correctly and the losses to those who calculate incorrectly. The order book will be the arbiter of opinions.

After all, in an era of pandemic lockdowns, infinite bailouts, rising inflation, draconian wealth taxes and other financial, political and geo-political turmoil it just might be that the market is interested in a monetary product that delivers on being extremely scarce scalable ghost money.

Crypto markets holding on to weekend gains; Bitcoin still dominating, XRP moving up, ETH retreating slowly. Market Wrap Crypto markets have held on to weekend gains and there has been no typical ‘Red Monday’ reaction so far. Bitcoin’s surge to new 2019 highs has buoyed up markets and several altcoins have also gained. A number have fallen however, but in general total market capitalization is high and holding above $280 billion.

Bitcoin traded above $9,300 twice yesterday marking a new high for thirteen months. A pullback dropped BTC price back to high $8,000s but it quickly recovered during Asian trading today to reach $9,200 again at the time of writing. Technical indicators and historical highs show a lot of resistance at $9,600 which will need to be broken for BTC to hit five figures.

Ethereum got a weekend boost reaching $278 but it has not been able to follow Bitcoin and hold those gains. ETH is down 2 percent since yesterday dropping prices back below $270. The longer term trend for ETH is still up though so more momentum could take it to $280 this week.

The top ten is pretty mixed during Asian trading on Monday morning. XRP is showing a little progress with a further 2 percent added taking it to $0.429. Litecoin has remained flat following its epic rise last week and is still at $135 and the rest are level with yesterday’s prices.

Top twenty movements are also mixed with Cosmos and Tezos getting the best performance adding over 4 percent each to reach $6.54 and $1.33 respectively. NEO has added almost 3 percent and NEM is back in the big twenty with a 5 percent gain. As above, the rest are pretty flat this morning.

FOMO: A Smiles For Grin Entering the crypto top one hundred with a 12 percent push is Grin, a private lightweight blockchain based on mimblewimble. The only thing that could be driving momentum is an approaching hard fork next month. Bytom is the only other double digit altcoin today with 11 percent added, BitTorrent token is third gaining over 8 percent.

There are no big dumps going on as markets remain flat on the day. At the bottom of the pile right now is Dent, MaidSafeCoin, and KuCoin Shares dropping 5-6 percent.

Total market cap 24 hours. Coinmarketcap.com Total crypto market capitalization is at $284 billion, holding gains but remaining flat over the past 24 hours. Since last Monday crypto markets have gained a solid 16 percent, driven largely by Bitcoin. Over the same period daily volume has jumped from $60 to $75 billion. Bitcoin dominance is also up to 57.3 percent as it continues to eat into lack luster altcoins.

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 have hit a new 2019 high; Bitcoin dominating, ETH, BNB and XMR moving, LEO enters top twenty.  Market Wrap It has been another fruitful Friday in crypto land. Markets have hit a new high for the year and as usual it is Bitcoin driving them. A total market cap top of $300 billion was touched a few hours ago as BTC broke through resistance once again surging to a new 13 month high.

The move came a few hours ago during early Asian trading. This time it wasn’t a ‘Bart type spike’ but a gradual grind up through the resistance at $9,600 and on towards an intraday high of $9,800. Since then gains have mostly held as Bitcoin remained around $9,700 with plenty of talk about a further move to $10k today or over the weekend.

Ethereum also got a boost this time as a 4 percent climb lifted it to $280. In comparison however ETH is still way down, over 80 percent of ATH compared to BTC which is now close to 50 percent. There is no doubt that Ethereum will crack $300 and make bigger gains when altseason kicks in but at the moment the going is slow.

Altcoin Outlook The crypto top ten has not reacted with the usual fervor and aside from Binance Coin adding 6 percent nothing else has really moved much. There is a little green with Bitcoin Cash and EOS adding 2 percent each but others such as BSV are falling back.  There has been no movement on XRP, LTC and XLM.

The top twenty is equally lethargic aside from Monero which is still climbing with a further 6 percent today to reach $108. The Bitfinex transparency initiative UNUS SED LEO has arrived on the scene as CMC has just registered a market cap of $1.8 billion jumping it straight into 14th place above Dash. LEO tokens were trading at $1.84 at the time of writing. The rest of the altcoins are up a percent or flat at the moment.

FOMO: Egretia Climbing Higher Today’s top performing crypto top one hundred altcoin is Egretia again as entertainments based token surges 24 percent. A listing in Singapore’s BiUP exchange may have driven some of the momentum for EGT as the team rejoices.

Breaking News: Egretia is currently ranked 77 as per CoinMarketCap!!! EGT has seen the highest gain, growing almost 30% over the past 24H! More info, welcome to join us on telegram : https://t.co/G8oBPqZT64

#egt #blockchain #cryptocurrency #coinmarketcap pic.twitter.com/N0FoeUHwvj

— Egretia (@Egretia_io) June 21, 2019

Nash Exchange is getting a 12 percent boost today and Vestchain has made ten, these are the only three cryptos in double digits. Waltonchain and Grin are at the other end of the list dumping 10 percent each.

Total market cap 24 hours. Coinmarketcap.com Total crypto market capitalization surged almost $15 billion to top out at a new 2019 high of $300 billion a few hours ago. A slight correction has dropped markets back to $297 billion at the moment but things are still bullish. Bitcoin is the only thing driving market gains at the moment as dominance increases to 58 percent in its push to five figures.

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.