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5 July 2026 | 14:33 Nine of the ten largest privacy-focused cryptocurrencies closed the week green, with gains reaching 27%, extending one of 2026's most persistent sector narratives.

Key Takeaways Humanity led the category with 27.61% weekly gain. Tezos rose 19.86%, Zcash added 18.38%. Zcash’s Ironwood upgrade targets July activation. Canton was the only top-10 decliner. What Counts as a Privacy Coin The category is broader than the classic image of anonymous digital cash. At the basic level, privacy coins are cryptocurrencies designed to conceal some or all transaction details, the sender, the recipient, the amount, or all three, using cryptographic techniques such as zero-knowledge proofs, ring signatures, and stealth addresses. On a transparent blockchain like Bitcoin’s, every transaction is permanently visible and traceable by anyone; privacy coins exist to close that gap, serving users who treat financial confidentiality the way traditional banking treats it: as a default, not a luxury.

The practical use cases run wider than the reputation suggests. Individuals use them to shield savings and salaries from public view, businesses use them to keep supplier payments and payroll confidential from competitors, and users in surveillance-heavy or capital-controlled jurisdictions rely on them where visible crypto holdings carry personal risk. The same technology also has a compliance-friendly face: selective disclosure lets a user prove a payment happened to an auditor or tax authority without exposing their entire financial history to the world.

CoinMarketCap’s privacy coins data reflects that range, spanning three distinct types of projects. The first is true privacy coins, Zcash, Monero, Dash, where hiding transaction details is the core product. The second is major chains that added optional confidential features, such as Litecoin and Tezos. The third is zero-knowledge infrastructure, where the same cryptography serves scaling, identity, or institutional data protection rather than anonymity, and this is where traditional finance has quietly entered the category.

Canton, built by Digital Asset, is the clearest example: its privacy-enabled network is used by major financial institutions, with participants across banking and market infrastructure, because banks cannot legally broadcast client positions on a transparent ledger, confidentiality is a regulatory requirement for them, not a preference. The distinction matters when reading the week’s numbers: regulators treat anonymity-by-default coins and permissioned confidentiality very differently, and the buying was not concentrated in one type. It spread across all three.

The Week’s Numbers Humanity Protocol led the category with a 27.61% gain. Tezos rose 19.86%, followed by Zcash at 18.38%. Midnight gained 9.16%, Chainlink added 8.77%, and Dash climbed 7.43%. Starknet, Monero, and Litecoin advanced 5.08%, 4.33%, and 4.03%, respectively. Canton was the only top-10 decliner, falling 7.96%. The overall crypto market gained roughly 5%, meaning most assets in the category outperformed the broader market. The Core Privacy Coins Zcash (ZEC, $455) pioneered zk-SNARK encryption, letting users choose between transparent and shielded transactions that hide sender, recipient, and amount. Its rally has an on-chain anchor: over 30% of the circulating supply now sits in the shielded pool, an all-time high per CoinGecko, indicating the privacy features are actually being used rather than merely traded.

The asset also carries the sector’s most prominent institutional storyline. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes made ZEC his fund Maelstrom’s largest holding outside Bitcoin, calling it “Bitcoin with complete privacy,” before liquidating the entire position in June when the Orchard pool vulnerability was disclosed, noting he may buy back in if his supply-integrity concerns prove unfounded. That is precisely what the next catalyst addresses: the network finalized its Ironwood upgrade plan targeting July activation, designed to restore verifiable supply integrity, making this month a direct test of whether the sector’s most-watched exit reverses.

Monero (XMR, $322) is the maximalist version: privacy is mandatory, not optional. Ring signatures, stealth addresses, and confidential transactions obscure every transfer by default, which makes XMR fully fungible and also explains why it faces the heaviest exchange delistings. A recent analyst outlook via CryptoRank frames the trade-off: models project a $400–$600 test if a privacy-driven cycle materializes, against structural headwinds from FATF Travel Rule enforcement, with a mid-2026 network upgrade reducing transaction sizes as the next milestone.

Dash (DASH, $34.8) is the lightest touch of the three, offering opt-in mixing through PrivateSend built on CoinJoin, while functioning primarily as a payments network.

The Privacy-Enabled Majors Litecoin (LTC, $44.6) earns its category spot through MWEB, the MimbleWimble Extension Blocks upgrade that added opt-in confidential transactions to one of crypto’s oldest payment chains. Tezos (XTZ, $0.25), this week’s second-best performer, supports Sapling shielded transactions, the same cryptographic family Zcash developed, at the protocol level. Chainlink (LINK, $7.8) is the least intuitive entry: it appears via DECO, its zero-knowledge oracle technology that lets users prove facts about private data without revealing the data itself, privacy as infrastructure rather than anonymous money.

The Zero-Knowledge Infrastructure Wing Starknet (STRK, $0.03) uses STARK proofs to scale Ethereum, with the privacy potential of the underlying math still largely unexploited. Midnight (NIGHT, $0.033) is a data-protection chain from the Cardano ecosystem, built for selective disclosure so businesses can use blockchains without exposing sensitive records. Humanity Protocol (H, $0.07), the week’s top gainer, applies zero-knowledge proofs to identity, verifying personhood through palm biometrics without exposing the biometric data. Canton (CC, $0.14), the week’s lone decliner, is the institutional outlier: a privacy-enabled network built by Digital Asset and used by major financial firms, where confidentiality serves compliance rather than anonymity.

Why the Sector Is Moving The rotation has a coherent logic. Financial surveillance is expanding, tax authorities increasingly parse transparent blockchains directly, and transparent-chain holdings are trivially traceable, which converts privacy from an ideological preference into a practical hedge.

The thesis has prominent backers: Hayes declared privacy the dominant crypto narrative of 2026 in his essay “Suavemente,” arguing AI-driven chain analysis is eroding pseudonymity, and Naval Ravikant, CEO of AngelList, has publicly backed Zcash with similar framing, per Yahoo Finance.

The shielded-supply growth in Zcash is the cleanest evidence that demand is functional, not just speculative. At the same time, the category carries a permanent discount: MiCA-era compliance rules restrict how European exchanges handle shielded transfers, and privacy-by-default assets like Monero remain delisted from several major venues, which caps liquidity precisely when demand rises.

The week’s pattern, with identity and ZK-infrastructure projects outperforming the classic privacy coins, suggests the market could be buying the broader confidential-computing thesis rather than just anonymous payments. That is the more durable version of the trade: infrastructure privacy faces far less regulatory friction than transaction anonymity while riding the same surveillance narrative. The catalysts ahead are specific and dated, Zcash’s Ironwood activation this month and Monero’s mid-2026 upgrade, which gives the sector something most crypto narratives lack: a calendar. The regulatory ceiling has not moved, but within it, this remains one of the few categories in the market where usage data, upgrade schedules, and price are currently pointing the same direction.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.

Author

Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.

GeneralCelebrating eight years with eight memorable moments in Tezos' history.

10 minute read

June 29, 2026

Eight years. What a journey it’s been. Since June 30, 2018, Tezos has gone from an ambitious idea to a blockchain with 21 protocol upgrades, one of the most recognized digital art ecosystems in Web3, and a roadmap that continues to push the industry forward.

Looking back, there are countless moments that helped shape this journey. Some were technical breakthroughs. Others were community-driven. Some challenged long-held assumptions, while others opened entirely new chapters for the ecosystem.

To celebrate Tezos’ eighth birthday, I wanted to look back at eight moments that, in my opinion, best capture what has made Tezos such a unique blockchain over the years. There are plenty of other milestones that deserve to be mentioned, but these are the eight that made my list.

Happy Birthday, Tezos. Now, let’s take a trip down memory lane.

1. The Launch: Proving Proof of Stake Could Work #When Tezos launched in 2018, it did so with Proof of Stake at its core, at a time when most major blockchains still relied on Proof of Work.

While the concept had existed for years, Tezos became the first major blockchain to show that Proof of Stake could successfully secure a public network at scale. It also introduced delegation, allowing users to participate in securing the network and earn staking rewards without giving up custody of their tez.

Eight years later, it’s hard not to appreciate just how ahead of its time Tezos was. Many of today’s leading blockchains now launch with Proof of Stake, while others have abandoned Proof of Work in favor of it. What was once considered an ambitious design choice has since become the direction much of the industry has taken, and Tezos led the way.

2. Athens: The First Self-Amendment #Probably my favorite upgrade because it reminds me of home.

For years, hard forks had been the blockchain industry’s way of introducing major protocol changes. While they often brought improvements, they could also split communities, create competing chains, and leave users choosing sides.

Tezos set out to change that.

In May 2019, the activation of Athens turned one of Tezos’ boldest ideas into reality. Instead of hard forking, the network successfully upgraded itself through its on-chain governance process, marking the first successful self-amendment of a blockchain.

Seven years later, Athens remains, in my opinion, one of the defining moments in Tezos’ history. It demonstrated that a blockchain can evolve without fragmenting its community or splitting into competing networks.

3. Tenderbake: Changing the Heart of Tezos #Athens showed that Tezos could evolve without hard forks. Tenderbake took that idea to a whole new level.

When the Ithaca 2 upgrade activated on April 1, 2022, Tezos introduced Tenderbake and did something that very few blockchains have ever attempted. It replaced its consensus mechanism while the network was live. Considering that consensus is the very component responsible for keeping a blockchain running, that’s about as fundamental a change as you can make.

Tenderbake didn’t just change how the network reached consensus. It also introduced deterministic finality, improving transaction certainty for users and creating the foundation for many of the network improvements that followed, including the huge reductions in block times and finality that we have today.

More than anything, though, Tenderbake reinforced one simple idea. On Tezos, no part of the protocol is untouchable. If something can be improved, it can evolve through on-chain governance and self-amendment, even the governance process itself, as we had seen with Edo.

4. Kathmandu: Protocol-Funded Development #This next one is a little different. In fact, there’s a good chance many of you don’t even remember it.

With the Kathmandu upgrade, an independent community developer contributed a piece of code that became part of the protocol. Along with that contribution came an invoice. Once the proposal was approved and activated, the protocol itself automatically paid the agreed 3,000 tez to the contributor.

The amount itself wasn’t really the point. It was the fact that a protocol amendment didn’t just introduce new code, it also rewarded the person who wrote part of it. It’s a small detail in the grand scheme of things, but one that has always stuck with me. Mainly because, although protocol development has always been funded by Tezos Foundation, it was a reassuring reminder that another path already exists should it ever be needed.

5. The First Major Governance Test #One of the original promises of Tezos was that disagreements over protocol upgrades wouldn’t have to end with hard forks and competing chains. In 2022, the Ithaca upgrade proposal became the first real test of that idea.

After concerns were raised during the Exploration period, the original Ithaca proposal was rejected. Rather than splitting the community, protocol developers went back, refined the proposal, and returned with Ithaca 2. This time, multiple competing versions entered the governance process, sparking one of the most active and contested voting periods in Tezos’ history, with passionate debates and different parts of the community backing different paths forward.

In the end, the governance process did exactly what it was designed to do. A proposal was selected, compromises were made, and development moved forward without creating competing chains or splitting the community. Years later, Oxford followed a similar path, with community feedback leading to refinements before the redesigned Adaptive Issuance was eventually introduced in ParisB. All these moments helped to improve the feedback loop between protocol developers and the rest of the community, turning disagreements into discussions that ultimately led to better protocol upgrades.

6. A New Era for Staking with ParisB #And speaking of ParisB, that brings us to the next moment on the list.

The ParisB upgrade introduced the biggest overhaul to Tezos’ staking model since the network launched. It introduced a new staking role alongside delegation, rebalanced how rewards are distributed between active stakers and delegators, and introduced Adaptive Issuance, allowing the protocol’s tokenomics to adjust dynamically based on network participation.

The goal was to encourage more users to actively stake their tez and strengthen the economic security of the network. The results have been hard to ignore. At the time the overhaul was introduced, around 7.5% of the total supply was actively staked. Today, that figure has grown to more than 29%, with participation continuing to increase.

Interestingly, while much of the industry has gradually adopted the staking model that Tezos helped pioneer, Tezos itself didn’t stand still. The staking overhaul pushed the model even further, introducing greater flexibility, accessibility, and stronger incentives for securing the network.

7. Real Adoption: The hic et nunc Moment #Of course, I couldn’t leave hic et nunc off this list. It’s impossible to talk about the history of Tezos without talking about art and the incredible community that formed around it.

At a time when high gas fees on Ethereum had become a major barrier for artists, hic et nunc offered something different. Thanks to Tezos’ low transaction costs, artists from around the world could finally afford to mint and collect on-chain. For many, it wasn’t just their first experience with Tezos, but their first meaningful experience with blockchain technology altogether.

The NFT boom eventually faded, but the Tezos art community didn’t. While hic et nunc eventually gave way to community-driven efforts like Teia, alongside platforms such as Objkt, the culture it helped spark continued to grow. Today, the Tezos art scene remains one of the strongest and most active in the industry, with artists, collectors, galleries, and exhibitions continuing to thrive years after the hype has moved on.

To me, that’s what makes hic et nunc one of the defining moments in Tezos’ history. It brought thousands of new people to Tezos through creativity, helping establish an artistic identity that has made the Tezos art scene second to none.

8. Tezos X: The Next Chapter #And finally, I wanted to end this list by looking ahead.

At TezDev 2024, the Tezos X proposed roadmap was unveiled, outlining one of the most ambitious visions in Tezos’ history. Instead of focusing on a single protocol upgrade, it presented a long-term direction for the network, built around Smart Rollups, the Data Availability Layer, and a modular architecture designed to deliver massive scalability without compromising decentralization or on-chain governance. The roadmap has since evolved, but this was the moment when that journey began.

Since then, that vision has gradually been taking shape. The Data Availability Layer was activated on mainnet, Etherlink launched and continued to mature, and Tezlink emerged on testnet in preparation for Tezos X, which is now just around the corner. Together, they will introduce a shared execution layer where different runtimes can interact with extraordinary composability. At the same time, projects like TzEL are exploring entirely new possibilities made possible by this evolving architecture.

The unveiling of the Tezos X proposed roadmap felt like the natural final moment for this list because it marked the beginning of a completely new chapter for the protocol that is still being written.

So there you have it. These are the eight moments I chose to celebrate Tezos’ eighth birthday. I’m sure everyone would come up with a different list, and that’s part of what makes this ecosystem so special. Tezos has so many sides, so many stories, and so many important milestones that you could probably write an entire book about them.

As for me, I genuinely believe the most exciting moments are still ahead of us. If the first eight years have taught us anything, it’s that Tezos has never been afraid to challenge itself, evolve, and try things that few other blockchains would even attempt. I can’t wait to see what this list looks like another eight years from now.

Now I’d love to hear from you. Which moments would make your list? Did I leave out one that you think absolutely deserves to be there? Let me know, I always enjoy seeing how other people experienced the Tezos journey.

Happy Birthday, Tezos. Here’s to many more years of innovation, creativity, and continuous evolution.

Built by Tezos R&D hub Trilitech, the new web app brings tokenized rare earth metals on-chain alongside gold and uranium as AI-driven industrial demand intensifies.

Metals.io, a new commodity tokenization platform built in the Tezos ecosystem, went live on Monday, giving users access to tokenized gold, uranium, and a basket of rare-earth metals through a single web application.

Developed by Trilitech, a London-based Tezos R&D hub, the platform launches with three assets: xU3O8 tokenized uranium, VNX Gold (VNXAU) — a gold-backed token representing allocated bullion held in Liechtenstein vaults — and the RARE token from Noemon Tech, which offers exposure to a diversified basket of five strategic metals, including hafnium, rhenium, indium, neodymium oxide, and praseodymium oxide.

The platform leverages Tezos' smart-rollup technology, which the team says delivers sub-50ms latency for near-instant transaction confirmations.

Metals.io extends the same underlying technology as uranium.io, a tokenized uranium trading platform that launched on Etherlink — the EVM-compatible Layer 2 powered by Tezos — in December 2024.

"Commodity markets are global and indispensable, yet access to them remains fragmented and layered with intermediaries," said Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos. "As the AI revolution accelerates, energy and critical materials are becoming core economic constraints. Tokenization streamlines ownership and transfer of these assets at a global scale."

Tokenized RWA BoomThe launch comes as tokenized gold has emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments in the broader real-world asset (RWA) sector. The tokenized commodities market stands at approximately $7 billion, according to RWAxyz, with gold-backed tokens still dominating the category.

Tether Gold (XAUT) and Paxos Gold (PAXG) remain the dominant players, controlling more than 95% of the tokenized gold market. Tether recently expanded XAUT to BNB Chain as it pushes its gold-backed token across multiple ecosystems.

Where Metals.io looks to carve out a niche is in its rare earth and industrial metals offering — a category that has seen less tokenization activity than gold despite surging demand.

In February, President Trump signed an executive order creating a $12 billion critical mineral stockpile — dubbed "Project Vault" — backed by a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and $2 billion in private sector financing.

The RARE token from Noemon Tech provides exposure to this space. "The current rapid pace of innovation in the AI sector and several other related fields is having a knock-on effect on demand for metals and materials that are critical to these endeavors," said Dimitrios Kavvathas, founder of Noemon Tech. The token provides exposure to elements like hafnium and rhenium, which are essential in semiconductor manufacturing, jet engines, and other high-tech applications.

Meanwhile, the broader tokenized RWA sector continues to grow rapidly. Tokenized RWAs crossed $20 billion in on-chain value in early 2025, and the figure has continued climbing since then. Ethereum alone now hosts over $15 billion in tokenized real-world assets. However, the sector still faces structural challenges — a December report from RWAio estimated that blockchain fragmentation is costing the tokenized asset market between $600 million and $1.3 billion annually due to cross-chain price discrepancies and transaction friction.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

At TezDev 2026, Arthur Breitman reiterated his longstanding belief that crypto’s next frontier is tokenized commodities, unveiling uranium and metals tokens as the start of a broader ‘periodic‑table roadmap’.

Summary

At TezDev 2026, Arthur Breitman said commodities are a better blockchain fit than securities, citing clearer spot regulation. Uranium.io and Metals.io launched with xU3O8, a tokenized uranium product on Etherlink, as the first element in a broader metals pipeline. Trilitech’s Head of Commercial Applications Ben Elvidge said the periodic table will serve as Metals.io’s product roadmap as it expands into alloys and other rare‑earth assets. What if the future of on-chain science were built directly on the periodic table, with each element not just a chemical symbol but a programmable asset, a collateral primitive, and a market in its own right?

If every element is a programmable asset, then the periodic table stops being a chart in a lab and becomes the primitive layer for on‑chain markets, governance, and even scientific experimentation. The open question is whether crypto is ready for that level of physical entanglement, or if it is still more comfortable trading abstractions than rebuilding the world’s material ledger from hydrogen up.

Tezos’ Breitman wants to bring the periodic table on-chain At TezDev 2026, held during ETHCC in Cannes last week, Tezos co‑founder Arthur Breitman told an audience of onlookers that his thesis re: the next frontier for crypto isn’t gaming or NFTs, nor even just commodities, but rather the entire periodic table itself.

“Commodities are super interesting because the regulatory status of spot commodities in most countries is much more amendable I would say to work on a blockchain than it is for securities,” he said, drawing a clear distinction between speculative crypto assets and the physical underpinnings of industrial economies.

Breitman’s comments framed the launch of Uranium.io and Metals.io as the first coordinated attempt to tokenize the periodic table — beginning with uranium, gold, and strategic base metals. “Base metals I think are really interesting. So things like cobalt, cadmium, some precious metals as well. I think there’s still some interest here. Copper, lithium, all of that. There’s an interesting play here,” he told the audience, arguing that on‑chain representations of real commodities could evolve into a programmable collateral layer for global markets.

The flagship uranium token, xU3O8, represents physical yellowcake held in custody and traded 24/7. “Now that it’s tokenized on Etherlink, on top of that perhaps when there’s more liquidity you can imagine perps which is a nice innovation from the DeFi world,” Breitman added, naming uranium as the first element in a wider pipeline of commodities expected to follow.

He connected this to a foundational principle: “There’s an opportunity to create something that doesn’t exist as opposed to trying to replace other systems and there’s a better fit in terms of the technology and the regulatory climate.” Rather than retrofit blockchain to equities or bonds, Breitman’s vision builds markets where none previously existed — in his words, for “long‑tail commodity markets which are underdeveloped.”

Among so-called real-world assets, commodities have traditionally not been seen as the best tokenize, until now. Hyperliquid, with its 24/7 commodities perp trading, turns “outcomes” and commodity exposures into standardized on‑chain contracts that trade 24/7 instead of on banker’s hours. As Bloomberg noted, Hyperliquid’s commodity perpetuals have become a venue for off‑hours hedging in gold and oil, suggesting that once the rails exist, long‑tail commodities don’t just list — they light up with liquidity in the gaps where traditional venues are still dark.

Hyperliquid, Uranium.io, and what Tezos is building are pointed at the same target—on‑chain commodities—but they are attacking it from almost opposite ends of the stack. Hyperliquid is first and foremost a trading machine: it abstracts real‑world underlyings into standardized, cash‑settled instruments and lets users lever up on 24/7 perpetual exposure, with no necessary pretense that any given position is redeemable for a drum of oil or a drum of uranium.

By contrast, Uranium.io and Metals.io are trying to start from the barrel, not the chart: custody first, legal title first, then tokenize that claim and only later plug it into perps, lending, or structured products.

That makes Hyperliquid a venue for price discovery and speculation on top of “commodities as a data feed,” while the Tezos approach wants the token to be the legally enforceable wrapper around the underlying metal itself.

That market intuition, Breitman said, is not lost on veterans of physical trading. “A lot of the people I know that got really early into Bitcoin — I meanback in 2012 — were people who were commodity traders. Commodity traders understand supply and demand,” Breitman noted during a later panel.

A roadmap built from elements Bem Elvidge, Head of Commercial Applications at Trilitech, echoed Breitman’s push: “the periodic table… is actually going to be our product roadmap,” he added. What began with uranium and gold will not be expanding into alloys, rare‑earth oxides, and other verifiable assets intrinsic to the modern industrial base, Elvridge and Breitman said.

For Breitman and those building on Tezos, the promise is straightforward but profound: to bring real‑world metals — tradable, divisible, liquid — onto open ledgers.

But the unresolved tension is whether the future belongs to exchanges that treat commodities as continuous, model‑driven payoff streams, or to asset rails that insist every token maps cleanly back to a warehouse, a regulator, and a stack of shipping documents.

Moreover, even as real‑world assets march on‑chain, the industry still has not answered who actually bears the risk when volatile spot markets collide with immutable code and fragmented regulation. If the periodic table is the roadmap, the unresolved question is whether tokenization is genuinely re‑wiring commodity finance or just rebuilding the same concentrated, opaque structures on a faster settlement rail.

Analyst: Micron’s financial report indicates short-term fluctuations can be ignored as long as earnings prospects underpin its high valuation.

Senior Market Analyst Daniela Hathorn stated, "As Micron Technology's earnings report once again confirms that the AI investment cycle remains solid, the U.S. stock market has recouped some of its losses. This has boosted market sentiment across the entire semiconductor sector—after high-growth individual stocks underperformed earlier—indicating that as long as profit prospects continue to support high valuations, investors are still willing to overlook short-term fluctuations."

9 minutes ago

Circle partners with Nomura Securities to enter the Japanese yen foreign exchange settlement service market.

Stablecoin issuer Circle plans to collaborate with Nomura Securities to launch instant foreign currency settlement for Japanese corporate clients as early as 2027. The initiative will enable large cross-border transactions to be completed immediately, aiming to boost cross-border investment and trade. This will mark the first entry of a major stablecoin issuer into Japan’s corporate transaction market, allowing companies to convert yen into US dollar-denominated stablecoins for investment and instant transfers.

9 minutes ago

Institutions' Preview: Overview of US May Core PCE Price Index Monthly Rate

The US May core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index monthly rate will be released tonight at 20:30 (UTC+8). Below are the forecasts from multiple institutions: Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation: 0.2%; Royal Bank of Canada: 0.2%; JPMorgan Chase: 0.3%; Goldman Sachs Group: 0.3%; Bank of Montreal: 0.3%; Moody's Corporation: 0.3%; Standard Chartered: 0.3%; UniCredit: 0.3%; ING Group: 0.3%; HSBC Holdings: 0.3%; BNP Paribas: 0.4%; Wells Fargo: 0.4%; Capital Economics: 0.4%; Citigroup: 0.4%; Deutsche Bank: 0.4%; Nomura Securities: 0.4%; Pantheon Macroeconomics: 0.4%; Société Générale: 0.4%; Scotiabank: 0.4%; Morgan Stanley: 0.4%

9 minutes ago

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).

9 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.

9 minutes ago

FeaturedGeneralThe Tezos X roadmap is about to become reality. First up: EVM and Michelson apps sharing one ledger.

9 minute read

April 27, 2026

This is a joint post from Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and Functori.

When first introduced in 2024, the ‘Tezos X’ roadmap described an ambitious vision for Tezos:

A next-generation blockchain architecture with multiple tool stacks running as a single system, starting with EVM and Michelson. High performance, full composability, and broad interoperability.

Fast forward to 2026: the prerequisites are in place, priorities have been sharpened by market signals, and we are happy to announce that the architecture enabling EVM and Michelson to run together as one system is about to ship – starting with a testnet in April.

This blog post covers:

A recap of Tezos X

What’s coming (and when)

Milestones reached

How priorities changed

Tezos X, a recap #Tezos X is a new execution layer for Tezos. It’s where transactions run and smart contracts live – designed to remove friction for users and expand what builders can ship.

For users, Tezos X offers experiences that simply work. Imagine an artist listing an NFT priced in tez on a marketplace written in Michelson (Tezos’ native smart-contract language). A buyer wants to pay in USDC, held by an EVM smart contract. On Tezos X, both contracts share the same chain and the same ledger, so the swap and the purchase settle atomically in a single transaction. No bridge, no wrapped tokens.

For builders, Tezos X offers new designs and frictionless development. A Michelson contract can call an EVM contract (and vice versa) inside one transaction, letting a single app tap user bases and liquidity that used to be siloed. Contracts deployed on the Michelson runtime can also be formally verified – mathematically proven to behave as specified – for extra assurance in audit and in production. EVM developers bring existing Solidity contracts and tooling directly. Michelson developers keep working as they do today – no rewrite needed.

Under the hood, Tezos X is an enshrined, non-custodial rollup: a fast execution layer that settles back to Tezos Layer 1 for security, built into the Tezos protocol itself, with users always in control of their assets and free to exit.

What’s coming now #The execution layer will initially offer two interfaces:

EVM (Etherlink)

Michelson (available on the Tezlink Shadownet testnet)

It will be introduced as an Etherlink upgrade proposal that adds a Michelson interface, effectively evolving Etherlink into the execution layer.

This approach makes the execution layer instantly EVM-compatible, while the Michelson interface brings compatibility with Tezos’ Layer 1. The architecture enables additional interfaces in the future (for example JavaScript), and more will come.

The planned launch of Tezos X was also covered by Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman in a keynote at the TezDev conference in March 2026. It’s recommended viewing for a high-level update on current protocol and ecosystem developments.

A frictionless path for existing Tezos apps #The Michelson interface offers a way for existing Tezos applications built on Layer 1 to get the benefit of Tezos X.

The vast majority of Michelson contracts can be redeployed as-is and work out of the box.

Developers can keep using the wallets, connectivity libraries, explorers, and other tools they already rely on, thanks to each interface’s interoperability with its origin ecosystem.

Etherlink tools for Layer 1 interoperability (bridges, fast withdrawals) will be extended to include the Michelson interface.

Layer 1 itself continues to evolve toward a lean, fast consensus layer, supporting the existing ecosystem and with XTZ and FA tokens easily transferable to and from the execution layer.

The timeline #The expected near-term timeline is the following:

May 2026: Testing. A new testnet launches with Michelson and EVM interfaces on a single shared ledger. This is the first chance to test native atomic cross-interface calls between Michelson and EVM contracts in practice. Developers will be encouraged to deploy, test, and break things.

June 2026: Etherlink governance vote. After testnet validation, an Etherlink upgrade proposal is submitted to bakers. If approved, Tezos X becomes a reality on mainnet, starting with Michelson and EVM interfaces – live and fully composable.

H2 2026: RISC-V migration. The rollup engine migrates from WASM to RISC-V, enabling more runtimes, JIT compilation, and more predictable gas accounting. Critically, it makes adding new interfaces significantly faster, opening the door to mainstream programming languages later.

Milestones reached #The launch of Tezos X on mainnet builds on numerous improvements and innovations introduced since 2024.

Layer 1 has been continuously optimized for speed, efficiency, security, and decentralization. Block time has been reduced to now 6 seconds, while the staking UX and economics have been improved and fine-tuned. In short, Layer 1 is rapidly becoming a fast, lean consensus layer for Tezos X.

The Data Availability Layer (DAL) has been launched, putting a check mark next to a major milestone on the roadmap. The DAL ensures that Tezos has the bandwidth required for publishing millions of transactions per second, while security and integrity remains guaranteed by Layer 1. The bandwidth is continuously being improved – an upgrade to 10 MB/s is part of the upcoming Ushuaia protocol proposal.

The launch of Etherlink was another key milestone. Besides the added EVM interface for Tezos, Etherlink, Smart Rollup technology offers execution scalability far beyond what can be achieved on Layer 1, while still being non-custodial and governed by Tezos bakers. Etherlink has in many ways been a prototype for Tezos X, with much of the innovation implemented here first.

Priorities: what moved up, what moved down #Though the roadmap and vision have been broadly stable since 2024, priorities have been adjusted in response to market signals.

Some work has moved up on the agenda – and some things have been added – due to necessity or demand, while other items remain on the agenda but are no longer part of the near-term path.

Note that any property mentioned for Etherlink will carry over into the unified execution layer, should the upgrade proposal be adopted.

What moved up

Throughput: During 2025, Etherlink’s maximal throughput was increased almost 14x to 27 Mgas/s (~1300 TPS), with experiments showing further potential for significant increases.

Latency: Work on latency has already enabled 10–20x faster confirmations than originally envisioned, from “subsecond” to milliseconds. Etherlink now offers instant confirmations via a sequencer, enabling 50ms latency today and further reductions in the future.

MEV protection: The instant confirmations provided by the sequencer also offer guarantees about transaction order and the result of the next block, effectively providing MEV protection.

BLS signatures: This signature scheme was introduced to enable signature aggregation, supporting Layer 1 optimization and DAL integration, and bringing protocol-native multisig functionality.

What moved down (for now)

JavaScript interface: The absence of strong demand at this stage means that enabling a JavaScript interface (Jstz) in Mainnet is no longer a near-term priority. An important milestone, the RISC-V migration—required to support additional runtimes such as JavaScript—is targeted for H2 2026, as mentioned above.

Blind sequencer: The current sequencer is decentrally governed by Tezos bakers, holds sequencing power only, and can be replaced by vote. On-chain settlement adds censorship-resistant finality in seconds. Our market analysis indicates that, at this stage, the ultra-low latency achievable with this approach is a stronger value driver for network participants than alternative architectures with higher latency.

Data Availability Sampling: Sampling enables higher scalability by establishing security about available data without requiring an honest majority of nodes to download everything. However, at 10 MB/s bandwidth, the DAL supports plenty of throughput for the near future, and sampling is therefore not a near-term priority.

Finally, an initially envisioned automatic upgrade of Layer 1 apps to the execution layer has been dropped. Instead, app maintainers can move ad hoc, supported by tooling to make the process smooth.

From “canonical rollup” to “execution layer” #Some readers may have noticed that “execution layer” has replaced previous talk of a “canonical rollup”.

While “canonical rollup” partly captures the role Tezos X has in the Tezos architecture in a technical sense, the term “canonical” is not an intuitive descriptor for most people. Also, “rollup” carries Ethereum L2 connotations that don’t match what Tezos X represents:

Ethereum’s L2 landscape is fragmented into largely independent and custodial chains with varying security assumptions, offering limited integration with Ethereum’s Layer 1 and each other.

Tezos X is a unified, single-chain experience for both developers and end users, enshrined in the protocol. No new tokens or controlling entities are involved. The system remains entirely non-custodial.

We believe that “execution layer” better reflects the tightly integrated nature of the architecture, and it sums up the role well: the natural home for applications on Tezos.

Beyond blocks and chains #If the Tezos X roadmap laid out an ambitious path for Tezos, this update marks the point where that path becomes reality.

It is an opportunity for developers and entrepreneurs to think bigger, draw on the best of the EVM and Michelson worlds, and deploy the next generation of Tezos-powered applications and products.

We look forward to supporting builders in exploring the new possibilities through documentation, tutorials, tools, sparring, and other help that makes the path to great products as frictionless as possible.

The long-term belief hasn’t changed. Blockchains should fade into the background. People should use applications that happen to be powered by Tezos, not “use a blockchain” as a primary act. A seamless experience resting on uncompromising security.

Tezos X is what makes it practical: a fast, multi-language, highly composable execution layer secured by a battle-tested, self-amending, and censorship-resistant Layer 1.

FeaturedGeneralThe first public testnet where Michelson and EVM interact through a shared ledger

6 minute read

May 4, 2026

The Tezos X Previewnet is now live, giving builders their first public environment where the EVM and Michelson interfaces come together in a way that hasn’t been available before.

This testnet offers the first opportunity to experiment with applications that can interact across both environments as part of the same flow.

With that now available, developers can start deploying, testing, and seeing what this new model actually makes possible.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s being introduced here, why it matters, and how you can start experimenting with it.

One System, Not a Set of Workarounds #If you look at how most ecosystems are evolving, they tend to solve problems by adding more pieces.

Different environments, different layers, different chains, each doing its own thing. It works, but it also creates fragmentation. Assets live in one place, applications in another, and moving between them becomes part of the experience, often adding extra complexity, and in many cases, additional risk. Tezos X takes a different route.

Tezos X is designed to reduce that friction by bringing those environments closer together from the start. Within Tezos X, a single shared ledger can be addressed through both the EVM and Michelson interfaces. That design enables native atomic composability.

Native atomic composability is what allows contracts across different environments to interact natively within a single transaction so that either all actions succeed or none do, without requiring intermediary steps like bridging or wrapping assets.

For example, imagine a ticketing platform built with Michelson, where tickets are priced in tez. A buyer comes in holding USDC in a MetaMask wallet on the EVM side. Normally, that means extra steps, swapping, bridging, wrapping, and moving assets across boundaries before anything can actually happen.

Here, those boundaries don’t exist within the system. The EVM user can interact directly with the Michelson contract, and the payment and the purchase can happen together, in a single transaction, executed atomically. All-or-nothing. No bridging, no wrapping, no loose ends.

One action, one result. That’s where things start to get interesting when you’re building.

What This Actually Changes for Builders #Up until now, building usually meant committing to one environment. You pick your stack, your tools, your ecosystem, and everything follows from that.

With Tezos X, that trade-off starts to disappear.

If you’re already building with Solidity, you can keep doing exactly that. Same tooling, same workflows, same mental model. But now, you also have access to the Michelson side when it actually makes sense to use it. At the same time, if you’re building with Michelson, you’re no longer operating in a more isolated environment. You can tap directly into EVM-based users, assets, and liquidity without relying on external bridges or separate deployments.

That opens up a different kind of design space.

Some parts of your app can stay EVM-shaped, flexible, familiar, and easy to work with. But for parts where guarantees really matter, like how assets are handled or how certain rules are enforced, you can lean on the Michelson side.

Michelson contracts can be formally verified, meaning their behavior can be mathematically proven to match what they’re supposed to do. While this is something that can be done with EVM contracts too, it’s generally much easier to do in Michelson, as it was built from the start with formal verification in mind and you can even prove properties that are significantly harder to establish in EVM-based systems.

You don’t need to go deep into the theory to see the value, it simply gives you stronger guarantees where it counts. And with AI-assisted tooling putting formal methods within reach of almost any builder, it is becoming far easier to make use of those guarantees in practice. In an industry that keeps getting reminded how expensive smart contract failures can be, those guarantees are becoming much harder to overlook.

So instead of forcing everything into one model, you can start designing applications where both environments work together within the same transaction flow.

What Comes Next #Once you start thinking about it this way, the next step is seeing how it holds up.

This phase is about seeing how these interactions behave in real conditions, what feels intuitive, what breaks, and what needs to change before anything moves further. It’s where assumptions meet actual usage, and where things become clearer once people start building with it. How builders use it, and where it breaks, will shape what moves forward to mainnet.

And that next step isn’t far off. Following this phase, an Etherlink governance proposal is expected around June 2026. If approved by bakers, Tezos X moves to mainnet with both the EVM interface and the Michelson interface live and fully composable from day one.

If you want to get a broader picture of how all of this fits together, the Tezos X roadmap update goes into more detail on the direction of the project and what’s coming next.

Getting Started #At this point, the most useful thing isn’t another explanation, it’s actually using it. The testnet is live, the environment is there, and this is where builders come in.

Try things out, deploy something small, and see how it behaves. Push it a bit, break a few assumptions, and get a feel for how these interactions work when you’re actually building with them. And if something doesn’t work the way you expect, you can share feedback or ask questions in the dedicated Tezos X channel in the Tezos Discord.

If you want to get started, you can find everything you need here:

Tezos X Previewnet dashboardDocumentation

In brief Tezos launched TzEL, a post-quantum privacy system for blockchain payments on testnet. Arthur Breitman accused parts of the Bitcoin community of dismissing legitimate quantum risks. The project aims to protect encrypted blockchain transaction data from future decryption attacks. While practical quantum computers capable of breaking modern cryptography do not yet exist, Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman said some pockets of the crypto industry are treating quantum computing like a conspiracy theory while ignoring a legitimate threat to blockchain privacy.

The warning comes as Tezos launches TzEL, a post-quantum privacy system on testnet designed to protect private payments and encrypted transaction data from future “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks. Breitman said Tezos is acting with “a sense of urgency,” while parts of the industry remain complacent about quantum threats in his view.

“Some projects are barely maintained and won’t be upgraded at all; but the important ones will be upgraded, mostly in a timely fashion,” Breitman told Decrypt.

Breitman took particular issue with some in the Bitcoin community promoting what he described as pseudo-scientific theories about quantum computing.

“There are Bitcoiners being applauded on stages for half-baked crank theories about quantum mechanics that fly in the face of established physics,” he said.

The cultural debate centers on whether blockchain networks should begin preparing now for a future where quantum computers could break the elliptic curve cryptography widely used across crypto today.

The concern is especially acute because blockchain data is permanent. By design, transactions and other data are stored publicly on-chain indefinitely, creating the potential for what security researchers call a “harvest now, decrypt later” attack.

In such a scenario, attackers collect blockchain data in the form of public keys and store them until quantum computers become powerful enough to break the cryptography protecting them, thus exposing private keys and allowing for funds to be stolen.

One challenge facing post-quantum privacy systems, however, is scale. Quantum-resistant zk-STARK proofs are substantially larger than the proofs used in many existing blockchain privacy tools, creating storage and throughput problems. Breitman said that Tezos is equipped to handle that challenge.

“Post-quantum shielded transactions can take up a lot of space,” he said. “Tezos has a functioning data availability layer that can absorb them without increasing the load for consensus nodes.”

The project remains experimental, and Breitman said several steps still need to happen before broader deployment. He added that Tezos has also started introducing post-quantum signature support for user accounts as part of a broader effort to prepare the network for future threats.

“The fact the encrypted memo can be decrypted in the future means there is value in switching early,” Breitman said. “Work to make the entirety of Tezos post-quantum is active and ongoing.”

Breitman argued the industry still has time to prepare for quantum threats, but warned that developers are underestimating how quickly that window could close. His comments also come as recent reports from quantum security firm Project Eleven warned that “Q-Day,” the point at which quantum computers become capable of breaking modern cryptography, could arrive as early as 2030.

“The main risk is complacency among developers,” he said. “Elliptic curve signatures won’t be broken in a few months, but there’s a good chance they’ll be broken in a few years. That leaves enough time to upgrade, but not enough to quibble.”

Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

14.05.2026 - 16:36

Update: 14.05.2026 - 16:36

Recently, Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins have been warned that the quantum computing threat poses a significant risk and that urgent action is needed.

While many altcoins have taken significant steps in this regard, the latest move comes from Tezos (XTZ).

Tezos has launched TzEL, a post-quantum privacy system for blockchain payments, on its testnet.

Speaking to Decrypt, Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman emphasized the importance of prioritizing the treatment of quantum risk, while also criticizing some groups.

At this point, Breitman stated that some segments of the crypto industry are treating quantum computing like a conspiracy theory, ignoring a legitimate threat to blockchain privacy, and underestimating the real threats it poses.

Breitman stated that Tezos acted “urgently,” while some parts of the industry, in his opinion, remained indifferent to quantum threats.

According to Breitman, the quantum threat should be a very serious concern. This is because blockchain data is persistent. By its very nature, transactions and other data are stored publicly on the chain indefinitely. This creates the potential for what attackers call a “collect now, decrypt later” attack. In such a scenario, attackers collect blockchain data in the form of public keys and store them until quantum computers become powerful enough to break the encryption protecting them.

Breitman concluded by stating that the project is still in the experimental phase and that several more steps need to be taken before it can be deployed on a wider scale. He also added that Tezos has begun offering post-quantum signature support for user accounts as part of its efforts to prepare the network for future threats.

“Work to fully transform Tezos into a post-quantum state is active and ongoing.”

*This is not investment advice.

Follow our Telegram and Twitter account now for exclusive news, analytics and on-chain data!

PANews reported on May 15th, citing Cointelegraph, that Tezos ecosystem developers have launched a prototype private blockchain payment testnet called TzEL, designed to withstand future quantum computing attacks. This prototype uses post-quantum cryptography and zk-STARK proofs to protect transaction data and encrypted payment metadata, preventing "collect first, decrypt later" attacks. TzEL leverages Tezos' data availability layer to handle the larger proof size (approximately 300KB) introduced by post-quantum cryptography, which was one of the main technical obstacles to building scalable on-chain quantum-resistant privacy systems. TzEL is currently running on the Tezos testnet and is still under development; the transition of the Tezos ecosystem to quantum-resistant cryptography is still in its early stages.

Table of contents

Quick Answer: Tezos (XTZ) is trading near $0.33–$0.40 as of May 2026, down approximately 96% from its all-time high of $9.12 (October 2021). Analyst forecasts for 2026 range from $0.362 (Changelly conservative) to $2.46 (Coinpedia bull case). For 2030, projections span from $0.217 (Changelly base model) to $5.00 (Cryptopolitan bull). Key catalysts include the Tezos X scalability upgrade in H1 2026, Etherlink’s EVM-compatible Layer 2 growth, the Seoul protocol upgrade (September 2025), and Fortify Labs’ $1.3M startup accelerator open to Tezos and Etherlink builders.

Key Takeaways:

XTZ trades ~96% below its October 2021 ATH of $9.12; ranked #97 globally with a $380M+ market cap Tezos X — a major scalability upgrade improving transaction speed — is in H1 2026 deployment Seoul upgrade (September 19, 2025): native multisig, aggregated attestations, one-click un-staking Tezos Art Ecosystem sold 500K+ NFTs in 2025; 243,000+ museum visitors introduced to blockchain art 2026 base case consensus: $0.36–$1.10; bull case $2.46 requires Etherlink and Tezos X adoption momentum What Is Tezos (XTZ)? Tezos is an open-source Layer 1 blockchain built for smart contracts and decentralized applications, founded by Arthur Breitman and Kathleen Breitman. Its mainnet launched in September 2018 after one of the largest ICOs in history — raising $232 million in 2017. Tezos operates on a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and is notable for its self-amending protocol: the blockchain can upgrade itself through an on-chain governance process that does not require hard forks.

XTZ is the native cryptocurrency used for transaction fees, staking (“baking”), governance participation, and delegation rewards. Token holders who stake XTZ (called “bakers”) earn rewards for validating blocks — currently approximately 4–6% annually — while holders who delegate to bakers earn similar yields without running infrastructure.

Tezos has completed 19 protocol upgrades since mainnet launch, with the 19th upgrade (“Seoul”) activating on September 19, 2025. The upcoming Tezos X upgrade in H1 2026 is its most ambitious scalability milestone — improving transaction throughput while maintaining the security model that has kept Tezos hack-free since 2018.

The Etherlink Layer 2 is Tezos’ strategic expansion into EVM compatibility: an optimistic rollup on Tezos that allows Solidity developers to deploy Ethereum-compatible smart contracts, bridging Tezos’ governance and security with Ethereum’s developer tooling and DeFi ecosystem.

According to CoinMarketCap, XTZ has a circulating supply of approximately 1.01 billion tokens and a market capitalization of approximately $380–400 million as of May 2026.

How Does Tezos Compare to Other Smart Contract Layer 1s? Tezos occupies a niche focused on governance, formal verification, and long-term institutional adoption rather than speculative DeFi velocity.

FeatureTezos (XTZ)Ethereum (ETH)Cardano (ADA)Algorand (ALGO)ConsensusProof-of-StakeProof-of-StakeProof-of-StakePure PoSHard forksNever (self-amending)MultipleMultipleRareSmart contractsYes (Michelson + Ligo)Yes (Solidity)Yes (Plutus)Yes (Python/TEAL)EVM compatibilityEtherlink L2NativeNoNoMarket cap (May 2026)~$380M~$290B~$17B~$700MBlock time10 seconds~12 seconds~20 seconds~3.3 secondsProtocol upgrades19 (no hard forks)Multiple hard forksMultipleMultipleNFT ecosystemActive (500K+ sales 2025)DominantGrowingGrowing Tezos’ unique selling point — the no-hard-fork self-amending protocol — has enabled 19 consecutive upgrades without the community splits that plagued Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin Cash. The trade-off is slower developer adoption compared to Ethereum and Solana.

Tezos (XTZ) Price Today and Market Overview MetricValue (May 2026)Price~$0.33–$0.40Market Cap~$380–400M24h Volume~$15–20MCMC Rank~#97ATH$9.12 (Oct 4, 2021)ATH Drop~96%Circulating Supply~1.01B XTZ As of May 2026, XTZ is trading near $0.33–$0.40. Changelly’s current technical data shows XTZ at $0.38, ranked #97 globally, with bearish sentiment at 57% and a Fear & Greed Index near 38 (Fear). Both the 50-day and 200-day moving averages are above current price, acting as resistance.

Despite weak price action, Tezos has been delivering consistent development milestones. Fortify Labs opened 2026 applications offering up to $1.3 million for startups building on Tezos or Etherlink — a seven-month program with two in-person off-sites in Singapore, targeting integration and growth-stage projects. The Tezos Art Ecosystem sold over 500,000 NFTs in 2025, introduced 243,000+ museum visitors to blockchain art at the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI), and staged Art on Tezos Berlin as a three-day digital art festival.

The September 2025 Seoul protocol upgrade introduced native multisig support, aggregated attestations for faster finality, and a simplified one-click un-staking mechanism — keeping Tezos competitive for institutional-grade dApp developers.

XTZ Price History Snapshot YearKey Price Level2018Mainnet launch ~$1.60–$4.002019Declined to $0.30–$1.502020Range $1.50–$3.50Oct 2021ATH $9.122022Bear market; fell to $1.00–$2.002023Range $0.50–$1.102024Post-halving recovery $0.60–$1.70Sep 2025Seoul upgrade; trading ~$0.80–$1.10May 2026Near $0.33–$0.40 Tezos’ October 2021 ATH of $9.12 was driven by the broader altcoin mania and NFT adoption (Red Bull, McLaren F1, DojaCat, Toulouse FC all announced Tezos NFT partnerships). The current price of $0.33–$0.40 represents the deepest pullback since early 2019, approaching levels not seen since shortly after mainnet launch.

XTZ Price Prediction 2026 2026 is potentially transformative for Tezos. The Tezos X scalability upgrade in H1 2026 is the most ambitious technical milestone since mainnet launch, and the Etherlink L2’s EVM compatibility creates a new growth surface.

SourceLowHighNotesChangelly$0.362$0.381Conservative; near current levelsMEXC (5% linear)$0.33$0.36Flat growth modelCoinbird$0.74$1.65Avg $1.22; moderate recoveryCryptopolitan—$0.50Q2 2026 targetCoinpedia$0.70$2.46Bull case; Tezos X + Etherlink neededMargex—$16.35Aggressive bull (5-year horizon figure) Changelly and MEXC represent the floor — XTZ drifting near current levels without a macro catalyst. Coinbird’s $0.74–$1.65 range (avg $1.22) is the base recovery scenario, requiring the Tezos X upgrade to demonstrate visible performance improvements. Coinpedia’s $0.70–$2.46 is the bull case: Etherlink attracting EVM developers, Tezos X improving throughput metrics, and Bitcoin-driven capital rotation reaching mid-cap governance blockchains.

For 2026 planning, the realistic range is $0.36–$1.10. The $1+ zone requires the Tezos X upgrade to generate measurable developer activity and at least one new institutional NFT or tokenization partnership.

XTZ Price Prediction 2027 2027 is the prime post-halving altcoin window. Tezos’ no-hard-fork architecture and institutional NFT ecosystem give it a differentiated narrative for capital rotation.

SourceLowHighChangelly$0.40$0.45Coinbird~$0.80~$2.00Margex$14.06~$18Coinpedia—$3.91Cryptopolitan—~$3.00+ Changelly stays near $0.40–$0.45 — minimal appreciation without a fundamental catalyst. Coinpedia’s $3.91 and Cryptopolitan’s $3.00+ represent a meaningful recovery scenario where Tezos captures developer mindshare via Etherlink and governance-first positioning. Margex’s $14.06 minimum (described as a five-year outlook figure) is the aggressive bull case — XTZ returning to $9 ATH territory — requiring a full-cycle altcoin mania with Tezos at the center.

XTZ Price Prediction 2028 2028 is the next Bitcoin halving year — the historical trigger for Tezos’ largest cycle gains.

SourceLowHighChangelly$0.18$0.27Coinpedia—$6.15Cryptopolitan~$2.00~$5.00 Changelly’s 2028 model declines below current prices — a structural bear case where Tezos loses market share to newer Layer 1s. Coinpedia’s $6.15 treats 2028 as a halving-cycle peak where Tezos’ institutional adoption becomes visible enough to drive meaningful capital inflows. Cryptopolitan’s $2–$5 range is the moderate scenario — XTZ recovering to 2023–2024 trading levels.

XTZ Price Prediction 2029 SourceLowHighChangelly$0.18$0.27Coinpedia—$8.08Cryptopolitan$0.75$4.50 2029 is the late-cycle bull phase. Coinpedia’s $8.08 approaches XTZ’s $9.12 ATH — plausible if Tezos X, Etherlink, and the institutional art/tokenization narrative drive two years of compounding adoption. Cryptopolitan’s $0.75–$4.50 range captures both a moderate recovery and a near-ATH scenario. Changelly’s floor of $0.18–$0.27 remains structurally bearish.

XTZ Price Prediction 2030 2030 is the most debated long-term horizon for XTZ.

SourceLowHighChangelly$0.180$0.267MEXC (5%)—~$0.41DigitalCoinPrice—~$1.45Coinbird—~$3.00+Coinpedia—$9.00+Cryptopolitan$0.55$5.00 Changelly’s 2030 floor ($0.180–$0.267) represents actual decline from current prices — a scenario where Tezos’ governance and security advantages are overshadowed by developer ecosystem deficits. MEXC’s flat $0.41 is minimal appreciation. DigitalCoinPrice’s $1.45 and Coinbird’s $3+ represent base-to-moderate bull scenarios. Coinpedia’s $9+ and Cryptopolitan’s $5 max treat 2030 as a potential full recovery to ATH territory — achievable if Etherlink establishes meaningful DeFi TVL and Tezos becomes a recognized institutional tokenization chain.

What Drives Tezos (XTZ)’s Price? Tezos X scalability upgrade (H1 2026). Tezos X is the most technically ambitious upgrade in the protocol’s history — targeting significant throughput improvements while maintaining the formal verification and security properties that make Tezos attractive for institutional applications. Successful deployment and demonstrable performance improvements are the single most important near-term price catalyst.

Etherlink L2 growth. Etherlink is Tezos’ bridge to Ethereum’s developer base: an EVM-compatible optimistic rollup that allows Solidity developers to deploy on Tezos infrastructure. Growing Etherlink TVL and dApp deployments create a new, measurable demand signal for XTZ.

Protocol upgrade cadence. Tezos’ ability to complete its 19th upgrade without a hard fork is a structural differentiator. Each successful upgrade increases institutional confidence that Tezos can deliver governance improvements at scale — directly relevant to enterprise and government tokenization clients.

NFT and digital art ecosystem. The Tezos art ecosystem processed 500,000+ NFT sales in 2025 and has reached 243,000+ new blockchain users through museum partnerships. Growing cultural relevance drives both developer interest and organic token demand from collectors who need XTZ to transact on the network.

Fortify Labs startup pipeline. The Fortify Labs $1.3M accelerator for 2026 creates a structured pipeline of new projects building on Tezos and Etherlink. If the cohort produces successful consumer-facing dApps, it generates the on-chain activity that translates to organic XTZ demand.

Bitcoin halving cycles. XTZ remains highly correlated with Bitcoin market cycles. The 2028 halving is the next major macro trigger. Tezos’ institutional positioning — rather than pure retail speculation — may provide a more defensible price floor during bear markets but also slower appreciation during bull phases.

Is Tezos (XTZ) a Good Investment? XTZ at $0.33–$0.40 prices it near its 2019 lows — before most of its institutional NFT partnerships, its Etherlink L2, and its current Seoul upgrade. The fundamental case for Tezos is stronger now than at this price level in 2019 by most objective measures: more institutional adoption, more protocol upgrades delivered, more ecosystem infrastructure.

The bear case: Tezos has been unable to break out of its structural narrative problem — it is technically sophisticated but has consistently failed to build the DeFi TVL or developer community depth that its architecture merits. Changelly’s 2030 floor of $0.18 is a credible outcome if Etherlink and Tezos X fail to close the gap with Ethereum L2s and other modern Layer 1s.

For investors who believe governance-first, no-hard-fork blockchains will become the standard for institutional tokenization by 2030, XTZ near six-year lows offers asymmetric exposure to that thesis.

Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry substantial risk.

Where to Buy Tezos (XTZ) Centralized exchanges (CEX):

Binance — XTZ/USDT and XTZ/BTC; highest global liquidity Coinbase — XTZ/USD for US users; available in most US states Kraken — XTZ/USD and XTZ/EUR with strong regulatory compliance KuCoin — XTZ/USDT with competitive fees Gate.io — XTZ/USDT available globally OKX — XTZ/USDT spot and staking options Staking (Baking/Delegation): XTZ holders can delegate their stake to bakers directly in Coinbase, Kraken, or dedicated wallets including Kukai, Temple Wallet, and Ledger. Annual staking rewards are currently approximately 4–6%. Delegation does not lock tokens — delegated XTZ can be transferred at any time. For users committed to long-term XTZ exposure, staking is the recommended approach to avoid dilution from the protocol’s block reward issuance.

Self-custody wallets: The official Tezos-supported wallets are Kukai (web), Temple Wallet (browser extension + mobile), and Umami (desktop). All three support delegation staking directly within the interface.

Frequently Asked Questions What is the Tezos price prediction? For 2026, forecasts range from $0.362 (Changelly conservative) to $2.46 (Coinpedia bull). Coinbird projects a base average of $1.22. MEXC's flat model stays near $0.36. The base case consensus is $0.36–$1.10, with the upper end requiring Tezos X deployment success and Bitcoin-driven altcoin recovery. Above-base scenarios require Etherlink capturing DeFi TVL and new institutional tokenization partnerships.

How high can XTZ go? In a moderate 2030 bull scenario, Cryptopolitan projects $5.00 and Coinpedia targets $9+. DigitalCoinPrice estimates $1.45 for 2030. Coinbird targets $3+. Reaching $5 by 2030 would require XTZ to recover toward its 2021 ATH range — achievable across two halving cycles if Tezos X and Etherlink drive measurable adoption. Changelly's base 2030 model is $0.18–$0.27, representing continued decline.

Will XTZ reach $1 again? XTZ last traded above $1 in late 2024 before the current correction. Coinpedia's 2026 base case targets $0.70–$2.46, making $1 achievable in a moderate recovery scenario. For $1 before year-end 2026, XTZ needs a confirmed close above current 200-day SMA resistance and either the Tezos X upgrade showing visible performance metrics or a Bitcoin-driven broad altcoin recovery. Coinbird's $1.22 average for 2026 represents the most cited realistic $1+ scenario.

What is the XTZ price prediction for 2030? The 2030 range is wide. Changelly projects $0.18–$0.27 (structural decline). MEXC's flat model estimates $0.41. DigitalCoinPrice targets $1.45. Coinbird forecasts $3+. Coinpedia's bull case reaches $9+. Cryptopolitan projects $0.55–$5.00. The most cited realistic planning range for 2030 is $1–$5, depending on whether Tezos X and Etherlink translate into measurable developer adoption through two halving cycles.

What makes Tezos different from other blockchains? Tezos' primary differentiator is its self-amending protocol — it has completed 19 upgrades since 2018 without a single hard fork. This means no community splits, no wasted capital on competing chains, and institutional confidence in long-term protocol stability. Tezos also uses formal verification for smart contracts, reducing exploit risk. The Etherlink L2 provides EVM compatibility without abandoning Tezos' governance model.ShareContentThe theoretical threat of quantum computers to Bitcoin’s cryptographic security now has a dollar figure: $469 billion. That’s the value of 6.04 million BTC, or 30.2% of the total issued supply, whose public keys are exposed on-chain today and could be exploited if a sufficiently powerful quantum compastedQuick Answer: AMP is currently trading near $0.000841, down roughly 99.3% from its June 2021 all-time high of $0.1208. Third-party forecasts for 2026 range widely — from $0.0009 on the bearish end (CoinCodex) to $0.0100 on the bullish end (PricePrediction.net) — with the base-case consensus sitting pasted

Tezos (XTZ) has jumped 6.66% to $0.2514, trading above its 20-day and 50-day simple moving averages on strong intraday buying pressure, according to data tracked by Traders Union. The rally, however, runs into a wall of long-term resistance, with the token still well below its 200-day moving average.

Short-Term Indicators Flash Bullish While Long-Term Trend Resists XTZ’s MACD and ADX both signal ongoing bullish momentum on the prevailing timeframe, and its RSI generates a buy signal, per TradingView chart data. The Ichimoku Kijun line provides immediate support at $0.24035. The Bulls Bears Power indicator also points to strong buyer dominance during the session.

Yet the Commodity Channel Index has moved into overbought territory, and both the Stochastic RSI and Awesome Oscillator return neutral readings. That divergence between short-term strength and medium-term caution suggests the rally may face headwinds. Elevated volatility, a recurring feature in XTZ’s recent sessions, adds to the uncertain setup.

An Analyst Sees Limited Upside Without A Long-Term Breakout Anton Kharitonov, an analyst at Traders Union, noted that Tezos is holding above its 20-day and 50-day moving averages with mixed technical signals. “I remain defensive here,” Kharitonov wrote in his analysis. “Until XTZ/USD overcomes its long-term resistance, the upside looks limited.”

Kharitonov expects sideways movement unless key support or resistance levels are breached. His projected two-to-three-day trading range spans $0.2156 to $0.2574, with a 67% probability assigned to a downward move and only 33% to an upside breakout.

Analysis: A Pattern of Spikes and Reversals The 6.66% gain follows a string of sharp single-day moves in both directions. Tezos surged 10.02% in a prior session before facing heavy selling pressure, and reports of Manchester United sponsorship talks pushed XTZ 7.2% higher earlier this week. Each rally has so far been met with swift retracements, creating a choppy range rather than a sustained uptrend.

That pattern is consistent with low-capitalization tokens caught between speculative catalysts and thin liquidity. Until trading volume deepens or a fundamental catalyst shifts the 200-day moving average, these percentage moves are more noise than signal for longer-term positioning.

Manchester United Link Adds A Speculative Layer Tezos has drawn attention after reports linked it to a potential sponsorship arrangement with Manchester United, contributing to this week’s 7.2% spike.

No formal deal has been confirmed, and the previous session’s selling pressure suggests traders are treating the headline as a short-term catalyst rather than a structural shift. A confirmed partnership could alter that calculus if it brings sustained visibility and transaction volume to the network.

What’s Next? Near-term direction depends on whether XTZ can hold the $0.2156 support floor identified in Traders Union’s projected range. A confirmed break above $0.2574 would signal a potential shift in the short-term trend, while a move below support could accelerate selling toward levels not seen since earlier this quarter.

Resolution of the Manchester United sponsorship reports could also serve as the next meaningful catalyst for the token.

Layer-1 vs. Layer-2: What Is the Difference?

Posted: April 2, 2020

April has begun on a positive note for most altcoins. In less than 48 hours, altcoins across the spectrum have registered gains in their prices. The examples of Tezos, Augur, and Enjin coin are cases in point. Since yesterday, these alts have surged in value, registering price rises up of up to 10 percent.

Tezos [XTZ]

Tezos was in the headlines recently after Coinbase reported that it had migrated its Tezos staking bakery from the United States to Ireland.

At the time of press, Tezos continued to be one of the best performing altcoins, with its trading value increasing to $1.68 while registering an over 10 percent rise in less than two days. If the bullish momentum were to sustain, Tezos will be on track to breach the resistance at $1.79. However, if things take a turn for the worse, Tezos’ supports at $1.5 and $1.4 are likely to come to the rescue of the coin.

At the time of writing, the CMF indicator was just above the neutral zone, indicating relatively high buying pressure. The Stochastic indicator also echoed a similar sentiment as it was firmly placed in the overbought zone.

Augur [REP]

After its massive price drop, Augur was on its way to recover most of its losses. The recent surge saw Augur’s price rise by 4 percent, pushing its price to $10.14. For Augur, if the price were to endure bearish pressure, then there are two supports at $9.8 and $9.5. However, if its upward price action were to continue, Augur would soon be testing the resistance at $11.18.

According to the MACD indicator, the coin underwent a bearish crossover; however, there is the possibility of a reversal since the MACD line was, at press time, heading upwards towards the signal line and may soon go above it. The RSI indicator showed bullish sentiment, as it was moving towards the overbought zone.

Enjin Coin [ENJ]

Enjin Coin, an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency, has had quite an impressive run over the past 24-hours. At press time, ENJ was being traded at $0.092 and it had a market cap of $75 million. In less than 48 hours. the coin managed to increase its price by over 11 percent. For ENJ, there were two strong points of support at $0.084 and $0.080, if the price were to fall. However, if it keeps up the momentum, the resistance at $0.095 would soon be in striking distance.

The MACD indicator for ENJ had undergone a bearish crossover yesterday; however, the MACD line and the signal line looked like they will soon converge. The CMF indicator was showing high buying pressure, generally a bullish sign.

Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. Bitcoin has effectively been flat on the week, recently returning to around where it started the week after briefly interacting with the ever-important $7,400 resistance. Altcoins, interestingly, came into their own this week, with Ethereum, Link, Tezos, EOS, among other top altcoins posting double-digit percentage gains in the past seven days.

Bitcoin’s stagnation over the past week comes as the stock market has mounted a strong comeback, with the S&P 500 rallying 12% from last Friday’s close to Thursday’s close despite 6.6 million new unemployment claims in the U.S. and the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

Despite the non-action, analysts are still bullish on BTC and the rest of the cryptocurrency market. In fact, as reported by NewsBTC previously, BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes said that while he could see Bitcoin revisiting $3,000, his year-end price target “remains $20,000,” which is 180% above the current price.

As to why he thinks this is the case, he cited that the monetary and fiscal solutions that governments and central banks are enlisting to stave off precision:

“Everyone knows the shift is upon us, that is why central bankers and politicians will throw all of their tools at this problem. And I will reiterate, that is inflationary because more fiat money will chase a flat to declining supply of real goods and labour. There are only two things to own during the transition to whatever the new system is and that is gold and bitcoin.”

Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin At $7,000, FATF Regulation, Coinbase Backs Ethereum DeFi Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits Crypto Industry Sees Layoffs: The Bitcoin community and broader crypto space have not been spared in the recent economic carnage. According to a “100% user-generated” list of companies on recruiting/job site Candor, Bitcoin.com, crypto mining firm Bitfarms, and mining hardware manufacturer Bitfury are among the firms in this industry that have begun to lay off staff over the past few weeks. Outside of this, one of the original crypto companies, Factom, has purportedly gone into liquidation, despite securing millions of dollars worth of funding over the past five years and garnering a grant from the U.S. Energy Department. Ethereum DeFi Has Seen Stellar Growth: In a report published April 9th, blockchain analytics site DappReview revealed that transaction volume across Ethereum-based DeFi projects has increased by nearly 800% when comparing Q1 2020’s metrics to that of Q1 2019. Much of this growth was attributed to projects like Maker and Compound — which offer decentralized loans and stablecoin solutions — and derivatives providers like Synthetix and Augur. This growth comes as crypto upstart Thesis and other partners are soon to release tBTC — a project that will act as a decentralized representation of Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain. Analysts expect for the launch of this project to boost DeFi adoption, with both ETH  and BTC holders Bitcoin Cash & Bitcoin SV See Block Reward Halvings: Both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV have seen their block reward halvings pass in the past 72 hours. As a result, both networks saw their hash rates and difficulty drop. The halving resulted in an instant 50% reduction in mining revenues for those operating on the BCH and BSV chain, forcing operators running on tight margins to turn off their machines or mine on other networks. Fewer machines mean fewer computers processing blocks, resulting in slower transactions. South Korea Launches Digital Currency Project: On Monday, South Korea’s central bank, the Bank of Korea, revealed that it has launched a pilot program for testing a digital won, which is slated to run to December 2021.  A release outlining this move said the program will determine if there are a legal case and ample technical capability to launch a digital currency in South Korea. This comes just six weeks after the South Korean National Assembly passed legislation that will provide a comprehensive framework for the regulation and legalization of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin exchanges. Twitter CEO & Bitcoin Bull Jack Dorsey Pledges $1 Billion to COVID-19 Relief: Jack Dorsey announced in a Twitter thread this week that Yesterday, Dorsey announced in a Twitter thread — it’s quite fitting, I must say — that he will be “moving $1 billion of my Square equity,” which purportedly corresponds with around 28% of his total wealth, to a LLC called “Start Small” to “fund global COVID-19 relief.” Start Small existed prior to this outbreak, but this is the first time it has seen mainstream attention. The Bitcoin bull intends to allocate the rest of the donation to the promotion of Universal Basic Income and girl’s health and education, calling both issues critical. Fidelity Sees Growth In Crypto Demand: Fidelity Digital Assets — the crypto services division of Wall Street giant Fidelity Investments, a firm with trillions under management — has confirmed it has seen an uptick in interest. Speaking to Frank Chaparro of The Block, a spokeswoman for the firm said that:
“From a trading perspective, we continue to onboard new clients every month and are seeing significant pipeline growth. […] And in recent weeks, we’ve seen more momentum across our business.”

Photo by Sandro Katalina on Unsplash

Decisively Bullish' Bitcoin Breaks Into A New 6-Week High, Rising Above $7,750

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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EOS Price Prediction 2020, 2025, 2030, 2018

Aeternity is a Blockchain protocol started in 2016, Aeternity Ventures is the investment arm of the project started in 2017. Nikola Stojanow is the Co-Founder of the Aeternity project and is the CEO of Aeternity Ventures.

We at Blockmanity had a chance to interview Nikola on a call recently. We hope you enjoy the interview.

Blockmanity: Hey Nikola, I would love to know more about your background and the story of how you got into this space.

Nikola: To start my journey from the beginning, I was born in Bulgaria and raised in Germany. While I traveled a lot for most parts of my life, I decided to move my base back to Bulgaria for the last couple of years. Before starting AE Ventures in 2017, I worked in the corporate world for a while, specifically in the pharmaceutical sector in Europe, MENA and Asia and Pacific regions. I last held the position of Director, Business Development until I felt a need for change. I entered the realm of blockchain technology with a travel company that was built based on decentralized open source bookings technology where I was involved with fundraising campaigns. The entrepreneurial bug bit me and I moved back to Berlin where I met my old friend Yanislav Malahov, who is now my co-founder at æternity. He was looking for a business guy and invited me to join the æternity team. From there we toiled and managed to build one of the few blockchain unicorns in Bulgaria. 

It was during our journey at æternity that we realized the significance of quality startups and projects adopting our infrastructure and so I created AE Ventures, the company that would do exactly that: incubate, accelerate and invest into startups around the world. 

At that point, Sofia had an incredibly vibrant startup ecosystem that welcomed me and showed how much potential we locally have and how people have the desire to innovate and work towards a positive change and so we decided to set up AE Venture in Bulgaria. That I would say was one of my best decisions as things developed really quickly and strongly, our Starfleet accelerator started growing and is now on several continents. We are building an amazing international team, which is creating a global ecosystem, where people actively collaborate with us around the world, allowing us to be at multiple places, at the same time!

The immense potential and seeing how much need there is for funding and proper mentoring has been my fuel to nurture my desire to do more and help more people to get the chances that we got, when we started off with the Starfleet Program.

Blockmanity: æternity was founded in 2016 and the mainnet launched in late 2018, How has the journey been so far? And how would you describe æternity to those who haven’t heard about it?

Nikola: Yes, we launched the mainnet in November 2018 and since then the race to bring blockchain technology to the mainstream has begun. æternity has been constantly improving and developing, numerous implementations have been made and we are happy to see that the ecosystem is growing. æternity blockchain is a public blockchain protocol that is highly-scalable and is interoperable with several other blockchains. Developers can build dApps or æpps, as we’d like to call it, with several features that include accessing oracles and state channels to use real-world data in a trustless environment. In its essence, æternity aims to solve problems of scalability, and security making it more economical and user-friendly when it comes to accessing the smart contracts on the network.  

Blockmanity: So how is æternity similar and different to other Blockchains like Ethereum, Tezos, etc?

Nikola: æternity is one of the few blockchain protocols that have solved the fundamental problems that lie in archetype protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum -it is decentralized, public, global, censorship-free, tamper-proof transaction technology.

It’s a scalable smart contract platform that can handle more transactions and smart contract calls and has far more advanced features capable of handling an enormous amount of people all over the world.

One of the main differences between æternity and earlier blockchains lies under the hood: æternity is written in Erlang, which is a proven functional language for distributed systems.

Blockmanity: Ok now let us get into AE Ventures, what is the vision for the fund and tell us more about the Starfleet accelerator program. 

Nikola: AE Ventures is built on the vision to enable the creation of decentralized businesses that would be a great improvement on the prevailing systems. With this conviction, we work towards funding blockchain startups from around the world alongside providing them with the advisory and training to built market-ready products that can solve real-world problems. 

This is something we have brought to life through direct investments and with the Global Accelerator Programme for Blockchain startups – Starfleet. With three editions completed over the last two years, we’ve invested over $1.9 million in 18 startups. We are drawn to people who not only build exceptional products that go past the proof-of-concept stage that can be taken to the market, but to those who are solving problems that contribute to the greater good of society.

Blockmanity: At what stage of the startup do you mainly invest in? And do they have to build exclusively on the æternity blockchain to get funded? 

Nikola: We usually like to enter at a seed/pre-seed level and predominantly through the Starfleet accelerator program. We are very industry-agnostic – the only common thread we look at is the use of Blockchain tech and its implementability.  

The participating startups need to build the product entirely or as a part of æternity blockchain as it is one of the most scalable and interoperable blockchains out there. And this way, we can provide the startups with the right kind of help and hand-holding required to build their products. 

Blockmanity: What are the best use-cases for Blockchain that you have seen so far and what use-cases are you excited about for the future?

Nikola: I truly believe that Blockchain has the power to impact every sector. Every Starfleet program reveals interesting use-cases solving real-time problems. It is not surprising that DeFi is developing very rapidly. I expect a huge boom and adoption in this sector. It also makes a lot of sense since blockchain technology serves the financial sector with almost instant transactions at almost no cost. 

In the future, essentially everything might be tokenized. There is a whole other world of opportunities with tokens.

Identity management is another critical segment with a focus on individuals owning their own data and deciding who to share with and for what. With the recent concerns of privacy, we have seen some very interesting use-cases in this aspect as well.

Another sector that I am very keen to explore is bringing in more transparency in political campaigns, voting etc. We have seen political parties collaborate with the open-source blockchain and developer platform in order to optimize the participation processes of citizens in internal voting. This is the need of the hour in every democratic nation and more and more players from the ecosystem should focus on it.

Other interesting applications of blockchain use-cases include banking with fiat on and off-ramps, decentralized exchanges and of course gaming!!

Blockmanity: Could you share some names and numbers from your portfolio of startups you have already invested in?

Nikola: We are proud to say that so far we have invested directly or through our acceleration program more than $2mln in 19 startups. To name a few: WeiDex (Bulgaria) – decentralized exchange for cryptocurrencies, which just recently released their cross-chain atomic swap widget called Jelly. AmpNet (Croatia)- a whitelabel, all-in-one platform for running energy cooperatives and energy communities. Abend (Germany) – the cashless, on-site payments platform aiming to be an “own little economy” for each festival and club around the globe. Cryptic Legends (Serbia/Malta) — blockchain-based, team management game in an awesome ancient fantasy world. SmartCredit (Switzerland) – a platform for crypto-loans creating 2-click consumer credits (money on demand) for the borrower and tools like credit tokenization, credit transferability and interest-bearing to the holder. 

Blockmanity: Recently you teamed up with IBC Media to build a presence and get Indian startups to apply for the program, what is the thought process behind this and what other markets are you targeting? 

Nikola: India has a booming blockchain ecosystem and armed with its strong developer pool and the burgeoning startup ecosystem with over 27,000+ start-ups, there is tremendous scope for a decentralized future. Raghu and his team from IBC Media have shown great potential in tapping the Indian market and identifying blockchain startups with interesting use cases. We had over 175 blockchain-based early-stage startups up registering for the Starfleet India in its first edition, of which we have shortlisted 13 very interesting startups for the Genesis Week. We are hoping to see strong Indian problems being identified and looking forward to solving them with blockchain technology. We are happy to partner with IBC Media to launch the first edition of the Global Starfleet program here in India and look forward to successfully finding these Indian startups gems with a proven capability to build technology products that can scale, and a strong underlying blockchain use case. 

Blockmanity: What is in store for the æternity ecosystem in 2020, what are you most excited about? 

Nikola: I am extremely happy to watch how the æternity ecosystem is growing. All the startups we invested in brought value and some diversity. It is also great to observe how the projects are building partnerships between each other and creating synergy. In 2020, we organized the First Indian edition of our Starfleet accelerator. We are confident that we are on the right place as we are confident that people Developing countries such as India, Kenya, and others in East Africa are discovering and implementing an increasing array of applications for blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology that promises a secure, low fee, peer-to-peer mechanism for verifying and validating information. 

We are also very excited about the development of the blockchain startup which we accelerated as now it is their time to prove their concept.

Blockmanity: If a startup founder is reading this, where can he/she apply for your program?

Nikola: Well, we’ve closed applications for Starfleet India this year and we’re well on our way with the Genesis Week. However, if you’re a startup that has a great product that is built on blockchain, you’re more than welcome to contact us on our website. However, do keep in mind that when you’re pitching your idea you have to be as clear as possible and give us a suggestion of how we can work together to improve your product and perhaps, fund it if it makes it through the selection process. And more importantly, take a good look at the æternity blockchain and do your due diligence. See where it can help your product become a better version of itself; don’t try to force-fit it. 

Blockmanity: Last but not the least, which is your favorite company in Crypto other than your own?

Nikola: Interesting question, but not simple to answer. There are numerous companies that I have been following for some time now, but with the market and interests changing rather quickly, new interesting projects are coming to light more often.

For me, the most interesting Dapps have not been developed yet, as the idea is to have them function in a way, where the user does not need a Ph.D. in Computer Technologies or Cyber Security, in order to use a product. 

Simplicity should be key, without jeopardizing the integrity or security of users and product. If I would have to choose, I would go with either wallets, payment gateways, or products that engage the user to do something, in order to receive tokens (positive incentivization to do good seems to be quite a powerful medium, in order to have a large number of people to positively impact their surrounding).

But as mentioned above, I admire all projects that have a sincere agenda and want to improve or innovate in a space, which has not seen innovation in a long time, as simply building products and having projects succeed is what excited me most in the entire space, rather than a single favorite company.

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

The value of the cryptocurrency Tezos rose by 26 percent last night, the slow-burning result of Coinbase’s announcement that it would reward customers for "staking" the cryptocurrency on its platform. But what does that actually mean?  

In practice, staking allows customers to earn what is essentially interest on any cryptocurrency they hold, rewarding HODLers with a stream of passive income. Coinbase’s estimated annual return for users staking Tezos is 5 percent. 

To earn rewards, customers must first stake Tezos for around 35-40 days, after which they will start to be rewarded with interest every three days. 

Tezos is a proof-of-stake coin, meaning it has no miners. Instead, those who verify transactions stake coins on the validity of the transaction to help keep things running smoothly. Those who stake the coin have the chance to generate new Tezos, and provide the liquidity that underpins the network. Previously, Tezos users had to set up a “baker”—the proof-of-stake equivalent of a “miner”, to earn rewards. This was a relatively complicated process, requiring specialist knowledge. 

On Coinbase, staking rewards are issued automatically, and customers do not have to take any further action to enter into the program. “This makes earning staking rewards much easier,” Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures tells Decrypt.

Tezos, which is similar to Ethereum and allows distributed applications to be built on its blockchain, was started in 2014 by Kathleen and Arthur Breitman, a married couple who had significant fintech experience on Wall Street and beyond. The company raised $232 million in a 2017 ICO in Switzerland—which was a record fundraise at the time. In a long feature about the internecine struggles of the young company, "Inside the Crypto World's Biggest Scandal," Wired said that "the name 'tezos' became crypto-world shorthand for ICO avarice."

The company has since recovered from its governance crisis.

Interestingly, though Coinbase announced the Tezos staking program late morning California time, it didn’t start to surge until around 7:30PM PST. Then it took off like a rocket as traders raced to get in on the action. Carter said he couldn’t find any specific reason that the price jumped so dramatically so late in the day.

“Markets aren’t particularly good at incorporating information,” he said. That's particularly true in the crypto market, which Carter says is especially slow to respond to news.

For Coinbase, encouraging staking of Tezos could supply its exchange with a steady stream of the coin, adding liquidity to its exchange. This is helpful for the exchange, which Carter says is transitioning to being the equivalent of a “crypto native bank with a full custody offering.” Carter says the announcement is “a good incentive to have retail owners of Tezos deposit them with Coinbase.”

(We reached out to Coinbase and Tezos to understand more about the deal and will update the article when we have more information.)

Coinbase’s announcement follows rival cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who launched its own staking platform last month. It supported the following eight cryptocurrencies: NEO (NEO/GAS), Ontology (ONT/ONG), Vechain (VET/VTHO), Stellar (XLM), Komodo (KMD), Algorand (ALGO), Qtum (QTUM), & Stratis (STRAT). Stellar staking has finished, but several more pairings have been added: TRON, Elrond, Fetch.ai, and ONE. 

Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao has previously hinted at Binance’s future support for Tezos staking.

Of course, though stakers might be consistently rewarded with 5 percent of the coin’s value—the value of the individual coin is still subject to fluctuation. Binance estimates that staking Algorand, for example, will yield over 15 percent, but Algorand is a more volatile cryptocurrency. The Algo, worth $0.26—down from highs of $3.28 in June—has netted investors minus 92 percent in returns.

And, as Carter tells Decrypt, staking comes with risks: staking funds on Coinbase requires customers to keep funds on Coinbase. If the exchange—or the customer—gets hacked, then they could lose their Tezos. 

Additionally, Carter says that staking on large exchanges means that “Coinbase and other exchanges will come to own a huge fraction of supply for these staked coins.” This, says Carter, is a potential risk: “the security model ultimately could degenerate into a few large custodial institutions signing blocks.” 

Crypto analyst Eric Wall echoed Carter's caution: “I'd keep a worried eye on this. It's about time Proof-of-Stake really gets battle-tested in the context of a fully matured industry. We’ll soon see which tools and services become popular—then we can work out which threats are the most concerning, the same way we've done for Proof-of-Work.”

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One of the more popular cryptocurrencies, Tezos, has skyrocketed by more than 70% in the past 24 hours. The movement came shortly after it was announced that the largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, will allow Tezos to be staked on their platform and users would receive rewards for it.

Tezos Staking Rewards On Coinbase According to an official announcement from Coinbase, users will be able to stake Tezos (XTZ) on their platform and receive rewards for it.

Staking is not new to Tezos as investors can actually do it on their own. Still, according to Coinbase’s blog, it might be “confusing, complicated, and even risky with regard to the security of your staked Tezos. We are changing that with staking rewards on Coinbase.”

The US-based exchange would reportedly provide an estimated annual return of around 5%. The initial holding period is 35-40 days, and when it’s completed, the rewards will be transferred to each account every three days.

Basically, staking suggests that the investor has a chance to earn income by participating in the network of that crypto. In order to do this, a certain amount of the asset has to be “locked,” and in exchange, the rewards are usually distributed in proportionate extent depending on the supply initially staked. With Tezos, for example, stakers get to vote and decide on major protocol changes and other important developments, as explained by Arthur Breitman in a recent interview with Cryptopotato. 

Interestingly enough, a recent research by Binance showed that over $6 billion worth of crypto is being staked at that moment.

Tezos Price Reacts Following the news, XTZ price was quick to react with a severe surge of over 70% at one point. It jumped from $0.90 to $1.52, and since then, it has retraced to around $1.20. The market capitalization is close to $800 million, and the trading volume has tripled according to Coingecko.

You may also like: Coinbase to Launch Tokenized Stocks For Non-US Customers Coinbase Launches Pre-IPO Perpetual Futures with SpaceX as First Asset Exchange-Owned OP Stack Chains Made Nearly $500M in Onchain Revenue, OP Labs Says XTZBTC Bitfinex. Source: TradingView News coming from major exchanges could sometimes be the reason behind a price movement in the cryptocurrency world in either direction. For example, Kraken recently listed Siacoin, and the price increased with 25%, but when Bittrex delisted ZClassic, it plunged with 66%.

It’s perhaps safe to assume that XTZ’s impressive gains over the last 24 hours are connected to the announcement from Coinbase. However, it’s also worth pointing out that Tezos reached its all-time high in 2017 at $10. With a price of $1.20 per coin now, it means a total decrease of almost 90% since then.

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If you are a follower of the many popular crypto accounts on Twitter you would be hard-pushed to have not seen posts about Tezos.

While many cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin included – have been performing well since the start of the year, Tezos is likely to be the one you hear about the most.

Is there a particular reason for the recent bullishness for Tezos or is this part of a wider trend in the cryptocurrency industry? Let’s start with the basics…

What is Tezos? Tezos completed its ICO in the boom of the cycle raising $232 million in the summer of 2017. Created by husband-and-wife team Arthur and Kathleen Breitman.

Tezos shares similarities to smart contract platform Ethereum. The key difference between the two lays in Arthur Breitman’s belief that Ethereum was beholding to the core developers – an argument that was prescient during the DAO hardfork – and therefore Tezos bases itself upon a self amending nature.

Holders of Tezos can vote for changes to the cryptocurrency and, should the community reach a majority decision, the changes are processed.

The launch of Tezos didn’t go very smoothly though. Issues surrounding lawsuits between members of the Tezos foundation and the Breitmans created headlines. Tezos also had to deal with the issue of whether the cryptocurrency should be classed as a security. This is a common issue with many including Siacoin and EOS which have both recently settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US. For now, Tezos seems to be safe in this regard.

What is Tezos baking? One of the key selling points for Tezos holders is the passive profits that can be achieved by “baking” – a process similar to ‘staking’. In essence, this is equivalent to earning interest in a traditional bank account.

With Tezos being based on a ‘proof of stake’ protocol it allows for users with more than 8,000 Tezos to ‘bake’ Tezos and earn more in return. This process can be achieved by setting up your own node.

Alternatively, Tezos holders can delegate their baking rights with big cryptocurrency platforms such as Coinbase and Ledger offering the service. Ledger is offering an approximate 6% annual yield for baking Tezos through its system.

For many Tezos enthusiasts the ability to ‘bake’ on some of the largest cryptocurrency platforms is one of the key reasons that they see a positive future for the cryptocurrency.

Recent Tezos price rise Tezos has been making waves recently as the cryptocurrency has proven strong in the tumultuous market. Many of the popular traders on Twitter have shown their support for the cryptocurrency and suggested the price is only just beginning to show its true nature.

Since the start of the year Tezos has more than doubled and even got close to the lofty heights of $4 before struggling this week – much the same as the rest of the markets. Unlike many ICOs though, Tezos is intriguing because the price hasn’t struggled comparatively with the other failed projects.

Members of the community believe the option of baking on sites such as Coinbase could prove to be key if new members arrive into the cryptocurrency market, much like they did in 2017. The offer to make passive income, particularly at a time when banks are increasingly offering low interest rates, is an attractive alternative.

Conclusion As supporters of Bitcoin, Ethereum and many others continue to bicker with each other online proclaiming their chosen cryptocurrency is going to change the world, Tezos has quietly gone about it’s own business. Whether it can detach fully from other cryptocurrencies and rise when the market is falling permanently is unlikely though. Bitcoin still plays the leading role as the price signal for the rest of the cryptocurrency market.

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

Will 2020 Be The Year of Staking? Leading Crypt-Assets & Wild Predictions of Staking Space

In a pattern that has been rinsed and repeated countless times this year, crypto markets are crumbling as Bitcoin failed to hold support. The altcoins are still hopelessly tied to their big brother so any pain for it is magnified for them.

Over $20 Billion Exits Crypto Space Over the past 24 hours crypto markets have shrunk to their lowest levels for almost three months. As billions left the space total market capitalization plummeted to $245 billion. All gains since late May have now been wiped out and altcoins are in danger of returning to their crypto winter levels if the rout continues.

total market cap YTD – coinmarketcap.com According to Tradingview.com Bitcoin dominance is still at 71.5% despite a thousand dollar dump. This means that the altcoins have suffered greater losses today, many of them in double digit declines. Bitcoin’s intraday high to low marks a loss of around 9% however the pain is greater elsewhere on crypto markets.

Ethereum, which has seen prices eroding for the past two months, has capitulated below $170 in a 10 percent plunge overnight. A death cross on the four hour chart a few days ago is about to be repeated on the daily chart as the 50 day moving average drops closer to the 200 day MA. This is a major bearish indicator which signals continuation of the down trend.

Development work on the Ethereum network is still ongoing with six new upgrades planned in the Istanbul hard fork slated for mid-October. This has not prevented the bears dumping the asset in panic over big brother’s fall through support however.

There has been little love for XRP either as the Ripple token gets crushed back to a yearly low of $0.25. A lot of bad press and FUD has inspired little confidence in the world’s third largest crypto asset recently.

The rest are faring no better with double digit losses for Litecoin, Binance Coin, EOS, Monero, Cardano, Tron, Dash, Ethereum Classic, Tezos and Chainlink. There are only a handful of low cap altcoins surviving the purge today and they include Golem, SOLVE and HedgeTrade.

The mess has not been missed by industry observers with RT anchor, Max Keiser, commenting;

“#Bitcoin dominance climbs as alt-season fails to materialize and alts resume downward trek to oblivion. BCH and BSV have another 90% drop to go.”

#Bitcoin dominance climbs as alt-season fails to materialize and alts resume downward trek to oblivion. BCH and BSV have another 90% drop to go. pic.twitter.com/muSHYRh6H1

— Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) August 29, 2019

Time to Be Bullish on Altcoins? Some are clinging perilously onto hope however and see opportunity in the misfortune of many crypto assets. ‘WelsonTrader’ tweeted;

“Accumulating some alts within the next 24 hours, as I think we may see a bounce here! Bitcoin may also bounce at support around $9500-$9550! If we break below that, expect a blooody week!”

All eyes are on Bitcoin’s next move as the alts are bound to follow. At the moment it is also clinging perilously onto support around $9,450, but teetering on the edge of a deeper chasm.

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Months ago, Binance announced its Binance US and began to accept deposits from US citizens on September 18, starting with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC) and USDT.

Binance US later grew this number to 19 and according to a recently published blog post written by Binance US CEO Catherine Coley, the company is now considering adding another 18 tokens to those already listed.

In the post, the exchange suggests that its decision to expand its list of supported tokens is borne out of the need to have “the most diverse selection of high-quality digital assets, without high fees.”

This expansion is bound to ensure that all of the exchange’s customers are not denied access to the bigger market with a lot more tokens and competition, ensuring that customers can trade assets with “true utility.”

The tokens currently been considered are Celer Network (CELR), Decreed (DCR), Enjin Coin (ENJ), Fantom (FTM), Icon (ICX), IOST (IOST), Komodo (KMD), OmiseGo (OMG), Harmony (ONE), Ontology (ONT), Ren (REN), Status (SNT), Theta (THETA), TomoChain (TOMO), Tron (TRX), NEM (XEM), Tezos (XTZ), and Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR).

 

The announcement also adds a reminder that all new users will get a $15 bonus when they sign up and will be able to trade free of charge for 30 days as it has been doing since the launch. Because Binance US is unavailable in some US states, the announcement also intimates that the platform is working on expanding access to the states that do not have Binance US access.

On the issuance of these tokens, Coley suggests that the company will take whatever measures it deems fit, to protect against fraud:

“Binance.US recognizes that the ease of issuing blockchain tokens and the perceived lack of regulation could make these tokens targets for abuse. Binanace.US has both legal obligations and moral duties to shield our users from fraudulent blockchain projects and combat financial crimes.”

Coley then concludes by asking the public to do “digital homework” before any decisions are made suggesting that customers are to not only learn about the prospective assets but also about methods being used by Binance.