With the collective cryptocurrency market trading sideways, altcoins are moving helter-skelter. Ethereum, Waves and Augur, three diverse altcoins have moved in different directions, one is is yet to recover, another is trending upwards, while the third is trading flat.
Ethereum
The leading altcoin in the market saw increasing decoupling from Bitcoin earlier in the year, but now the push-and-pull with the leading cryptocurrency is back. Ether, posting a market cap of $14 .1 billion, is trading with a narrow increasingly downward sloping wedge, formed as a consequence of the infamous March 12 drop, when Bitcoin lost almost half its value.
Resistance, for the altcoin, lies quite high at $141, while the press time price was $129. Looking down, the altcoin finds support, closer to its market price at $125.4, which is where the lower bottom of the wedge lies.
Bollinger Bands for Ethereum posit an increase in volatility as the bands are moving further apart. Given that in the last two hours the candlesticks have turned red, the average is now intersecting with the price, if it moves above the price, bearish woes lie ahead.
Augur
Augur, unlike its contemporaries, is trading in an upwards channel, with the price rising since the beginning of the previous week. Owing to the March 12 collapse, Augur had lost almost a third of its value, falling to a low of $7.86. Since then, the upwards channel has pushed the coin as high as $9.86, its press time price.
Since hitting the support of $7.64, the altcoin has seen bullish pulls, allowing it to break resistance after resistance, flipping it into support levels. Two such levels can be charted at $8.24 and $9.54, respectively. Despite the fall on 27 March, REP has managed to steer clear of the drop below the latter support, and now is striving to trade within the upward channel.
MACD line for REP has moved below 0 and has dipped below the Signal line indicating bearish pressures. With the upward channel’s lower-bound trend line close to the price, the coin will face a struggle going forward.
Waves
The Waves platform cryptocurrency, has seen a roller coaster ride since the beginning of 2020, and now is right back to where it started. Since breaking $1 and then $1.5 in February and March, the coin went down with the Bitcoin drop, losing almost 40 percent of its value, and is now trading at $0.815.
Support lines lie at $0.789 and $0.726, while a short term resistance line is present above at $0.962, with the price firmly in between. Since the March 12 drop, the altcoin has seen a visible, albeit weak, upward channel, which is looking to alter given the dropping price since March 27.
RSI for the Waves platform cryptocurrency has been dropping since mid-February, indicating a surging selling pressure, and now is at 40.74 a marginal recovery from 33.9 where it stood on March 14.
The altcoin market has been following Bitcoin’s lead and has suffered immensely. The coins have failed to recover completely and have been undergoing a sideways movement.
Huobi Token [HT]
Source: HT/USD on Trading View
Houbi Token [HT] continued to rise up till March, however, it succumbed to the 12 March attack. The price of the asset was pushed as low as $1.7482, after which it has been trying to resurface. At press time, the value of the coin had reached $3.2535, but a bearish presence was still around as per Awesome Oscillator.
Resistance: $3.5417
Support: $2.3117
At press time
Price: $3.21
Market Cap: $727.45 million
24-hour Trading Volume: $159.34 million
Augur [REP]
Unlike other tokens, REP noticed a sudden spring in its price in January. As correction set in, its value got slashed by more than half but it is still reporting a YTD return of 2.35%. At press time, REP was being traded at $10.13 with its immediate resistance and support marked closely.
According to Bollinger Bands indicators, the market of REP appeared to be volatile as the bands diverged. The trend has switched to a bearish trend as the signal line crept under the candlesticks.
Resistance: $10.84
Support: $8.35
At press time
Price: $9.92
Market Cap: $109.16 million
24-hour Trading Volume: $23.04 million
Verge [XVG]
Unlike the ups and downs in other cryptos, the chart of Verge [XVG] appeared to be pretty simple. The year 2020 started with an upwards stride, but the price has been on a downward spiral since the fall on 15 February. At press time, the coin has been valued at $0.00247 and it reported a negative return of -39.99% in 2020.
The latest bullish appraisal was indicative of the fact that the downturn in the crypto-market was short-lived as the collective market cap sprung to $180 billion. Unfortunately for the bears, a continuation of this upward momentum could potentially help recover the substantial losses incurred by many of these coins during the 12 March market crash, especially in the case of Alts like Tezos, Augur, and FTT.
Tezos [XTZ]
In a recent development for the Tezos ecosystem, the token XTZ was recently listed on the crypto-exchange Poloniex. On its price side, however, the token failed to maintain an upward movement and despite a bullish streak in the early days of 2020, XTZ collapsed to $2.00-level. However, the latest rally did drive the price closer to its resistance level.
At press time, Tezos’s price stood at $1.59, while holding a market cap of $1.12 billion. Additionally, the token registered a trading volume of $90.05 million after surging by 4.21% over the last 24-hours.
Resistance: $2.57, $3.18
Support: $1.23, $0.76
MACD: The signal line hovering below the MACD indicated a bullish phase for the coin.
Chaikin Money Flow: The CMF also noted an upward movement towards the bullish zone.
Augur [REP]
Augur recently announced the fork of MolochDAO, which is focused on funding the development of Ethereum 2.0, to create OracleDAO. This DAO is essentially a smart contract that aims to coordinate efforts to build tools and market Augur, and its token REP.
Augur [REP] was also enjoying the latest price movement as it was up by a whopping 6.67% which drove its price to $10.34. At press time, the coin had a market cap of $113.7 million and registered a 24-hour trading volume of $42.23.
Resistance: $12.75, $17.28
Support: $6.39
Parabolic SAR: The dotted markers were below the Augur price candles which was indicative of a bullish trend.
Awesome Oscillator: The AO indicator also depicted a bullish price trend for the coin with its green closing bars.
FTX Token [FTT]
The recent price action of the crypto-platform FTX’s native token, FTT, has not been very impressive. One of the factors was speculated to be Binance delisting all leveraged tokens linked to the FTX Exchange.
However, following the latest market rally, FTT token was also up by 6.99%, propelling its coin to climb to a value of $2.41. At press time, the token held a market cap of $230.4 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $3.34 million.
Resistance: $2.81
Support: $2.007
Klinger Oscillator: The KO line above the signal line suggested a bullish flip for the token in the near-term.
RSI: RSI spiked from the oversold zone to the 50-median neutral zone, meaning a revival of interest among the investors in the FTT market.
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.
As seen in the chart below, Dash, Tezos, and Augur have all performed relatively well, with their RoIs over the last 90 days up by 51%, 36, and 11%, respectively. Unlike, most altcoins, however, these three coins have managed to push higher, even after the crash on 13 March.
Source: TradingView
Dash Dash had been in the news recently due to its performance over the last two months, with the altcoin performing consistently better than other coins. Further, Dash also migrated to Hive after the Steemit fiasco. Additionally, the price was forming a bearish descending triangle, with the CMF heading lower, at the time of writing.
The VPVR indicator showed the formation of a PoC at the press time price level of $70. The future for the 20th largest crypto seemed slightly bearish, with there being a possibility that Dash’s market cap [$646 million] would fall following a 9% drop in price.
Augur Augur, the 45th ranked cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, was about to face off with both the 200 DMA [purple] and 50 DMA [yellow], levels which will act as resistance, preventing the price from trending higher.
The price level [$10.13] was also a confluence of resistance, with the VPVR also highlighting a major level of resistance. Further, a drop from here would take the price of Augur aka Rep token to its PoC at $7.85.
Tezos Tezos’ price has been trending higher since mid-March, with its price going from a low of $6 to $10 and above. At press time, however, the price stood at $10.05, with the token ranked as the 10th largest crypto on CoinMarketCap.
The 24-hour trading volume for XTZ was recorded to be $134 million, with the token recording a 24-hour price change of 3.28%.
After the price breakout, a bearish trend should be expected and the same was highlighted by the MACD indicator which was heading towards the zero-line. This trend might push the price down by a minimum of 9%.
The crypto-market, at the time of writing, was going through a broad period of corrections. However, unlike the corrections on 13 March, these were more controlled in nature. Monero and Decred recorded a depreciation following a 48-hour rally, whereas Augur fell after a period of sideways movement.
12th ranked Monero did not record a major pullback as a minor dip of 1.50 percent took its valuation down to $53.15 from $54.67. Its market cap remained under the $1 billion mark, at $972 million, but it registered a below-average trading volume of $146 million, at press time.
The Chaikin Money Flow suggested that capital outflows were slightly outnumbering capital inflows, at press time, as the Parabolic SAR pointed to a bearish period.
Monero was in the news recently after reports suggested its blockchain was being used to give undocumented immigrants a better shot at fair treatment in the United States judicial system.
Source: REP/USD on Trading View
Augur registered a decline following some sideways movement on the charts. April hasn’t been entirely favourable to the REP token as its price dipped from $10.3 to $9.7, incurring a 6.08 percent loss. With a market cap of $107 million, the token’s recorded trading volume remained low with only $29 million.
The MACD indicator suggested that a bullish trend reversal could on the cards for the privacy token, but the Bollinger Bands suggested a reduced volatile period as the bands were converging on the charts.
Finally, Decred recorded a drop of 3.44 percent in its value, with the token trading at $11.6, at the time of writing. Decred had a market cap of $126 million, backed by a decent trading volume of $73 million.
Market indicators highlighted a neutral period for the token as the Awesome Oscillator pointed to declining momentum on the bulls’ side, while the Bollinger Bands were converging on the charts, suggesting an absence of major price swings.
Akin Sawyerr, founder of Feleman Restricted, an Africa-focused funding and advisory agency primarily based within the Washington, D.C., recently spoke highly of Decred, applauding the governance strategy of the foundation.
While most altcoins are trying to cope after the March 13 plunge, LEO is ahead in the market cycle, as it has already formed a golden cross. Among LEO, Bitcoin gold, and Augur, LEO shows the most profitable future while the rest, not so much.
LEO The Bitfinex token LEO is trading at $1.04 and has a market cap of $1.03 billion making it the 11th largest crypto. With a minuscule 0.06% surge in the last 24 hours, the coin showed a bearish scenario with the formation of a bearish parallel channel. The price may drop to the immediate support at $0.998.
However, due to the formation of a golden cross, the coin’s future looks bullish in the medium term.
Bitcoin Gold Bitcoin Gold, a fork of Bitcoin, was priced at $7.28 and has a market cap of $127 million making it the 40th largest cryptocurrency. The coin has undergone a -2.42% drop in the last day.
It is stuck between resistance [$7.8] and support [$6.5], with Stochastic RSI already in the oversold zone.
Augur The symmetrical triangle formed by Augur aka REP showed chances of a bearish breakout with MACD indicating a bearish crossover. Further, the coin, like BTG is stuck between support at $9.24 and resistance at $10.58.
It’s not uncommon for Non-Profit organizations to accept donations, but it’s not very common for these donations to come in the form of cryptocurrencies. Stellar is one blockchain/crypto project that is now making the big step towards donating to non-profits.
As a matter of fact, the foundation has already announced that it will be giving out a total of 1.9 million Stellar Lumens (XLM) to a select 6 organizations that have had its back for some time. The lucky non-profits include Heifer International (a global organization fighting hunger by helping agricultural producers), Women Who Code (encourages women to take up positions in the tech industry), Watsi (creates new technologies to improve financing models in the healthcare sector), Freedom of the Press, Unicef France, and the Tor Project (the creator of the anonymizing browser called The Onion Router).
Crypto Donations In the case of Tor, the project has been receiving crypto donations (Bitcoin) since 2013. Tor started accepting other cryptos in March 2019. These include Dash (DASH), Litecoin (LTC), Zcash (ZEC), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Augur (REP), and Monero (XMR). In fact, according to the project’s fundraising director, Sarah Stevenson, about 20% of the donations received by Tor come in form of cryptocurrencies.
Stellar’s new move in giving out crypto donations highlights the increasing exposure of cryptos to possible mass adoption in the future. Also, Stellar wants to support the non-profits as they have been using its technology and supporting its project, and it’s only right for the company to return the favor.
Crypto Against Coronavirus Granted, Stellar isn’t the only crypto-oriented donor in the industry. Various entities have moved to send their donations in cryptos during hard economic times and unrest in countries like Venezuela. Now, even more, entities are stepping up to help in the fight against the current Coronavirus pandemic.
In late March, Binance Exchange made a huge move by starting an initiative dubbed #CryptoAgainstCOVID. The initiative is focused on buying and distributing much-needed medical supplies to the regions hit by the pandemic. For a start, Binance donated $1 million towards the cause and pledged to match any public donation to a tune of another $1 million.
Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. Bitcoin has effectively been flat on the week, recently returning to around where it started the week after briefly interacting with the ever-important $7,400 resistance. Altcoins, interestingly, came into their own this week, with Ethereum, Link, Tezos, EOS, among other top altcoins posting double-digit percentage gains in the past seven days.
Bitcoin’s stagnation over the past week comes as the stock market has mounted a strong comeback, with the S&P 500 rallying 12% from last Friday’s close to Thursday’s close despite 6.6 million new unemployment claims in the U.S. and the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
Despite the non-action, analysts are still bullish on BTC and the rest of the cryptocurrency market. In fact, as reported by NewsBTC previously, BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes said that while he could see Bitcoin revisiting $3,000, his year-end price target “remains $20,000,” which is 180% above the current price.
As to why he thinks this is the case, he cited that the monetary and fiscal solutions that governments and central banks are enlisting to stave off precision:
“Everyone knows the shift is upon us, that is why central bankers and politicians will throw all of their tools at this problem. And I will reiterate, that is inflationary because more fiat money will chase a flat to declining supply of real goods and labour. There are only two things to own during the transition to whatever the new system is and that is gold and bitcoin.”
Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin At $7,000, FATF Regulation, Coinbase Backs Ethereum DeFi Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits Crypto Industry Sees Layoffs: The Bitcoin community and broader crypto space have not been spared in the recent economic carnage. According to a “100% user-generated” list of companies on recruiting/job site Candor, Bitcoin.com, crypto mining firm Bitfarms, and mining hardware manufacturer Bitfury are among the firms in this industry that have begun to lay off staff over the past few weeks. Outside of this, one of the original crypto companies, Factom, has purportedly gone into liquidation, despite securing millions of dollars worth of funding over the past five years and garnering a grant from the U.S. Energy Department. Ethereum DeFi Has Seen Stellar Growth: In a report published April 9th, blockchain analytics site DappReview revealed that transaction volume across Ethereum-based DeFi projects has increased by nearly 800% when comparing Q1 2020’s metrics to that of Q1 2019. Much of this growth was attributed to projects like Maker and Compound — which offer decentralized loans and stablecoin solutions — and derivatives providers like Synthetix and Augur. This growth comes as crypto upstart Thesis and other partners are soon to release tBTC — a project that will act as a decentralized representation of Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain. Analysts expect for the launch of this project to boost DeFi adoption, with both ETH and BTC holders Bitcoin Cash & Bitcoin SV See Block Reward Halvings: Both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV have seen their block reward halvings pass in the past 72 hours. As a result, both networks saw their hash rates and difficulty drop. The halving resulted in an instant 50% reduction in mining revenues for those operating on the BCH and BSV chain, forcing operators running on tight margins to turn off their machines or mine on other networks. Fewer machines mean fewer computers processing blocks, resulting in slower transactions. South Korea Launches Digital Currency Project: On Monday, South Korea’s central bank, the Bank of Korea, revealed that it has launched a pilot program for testing a digital won, which is slated to run to December 2021. A release outlining this move said the program will determine if there are a legal case and ample technical capability to launch a digital currency in South Korea. This comes just six weeks after the South Korean National Assembly passed legislation that will provide a comprehensive framework for the regulation and legalization of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin exchanges. Twitter CEO & Bitcoin Bull Jack Dorsey Pledges $1 Billion to COVID-19 Relief: Jack Dorsey announced in a Twitter thread this week that Yesterday, Dorsey announced in a Twitter thread — it’s quite fitting, I must say — that he will be “moving $1 billion of my Square equity,” which purportedly corresponds with around 28% of his total wealth, to a LLC called “Start Small” to “fund global COVID-19 relief.” Start Small existed prior to this outbreak, but this is the first time it has seen mainstream attention. The Bitcoin bull intends to allocate the rest of the donation to the promotion of Universal Basic Income and girl’s health and education, calling both issues critical. Fidelity Sees Growth In Crypto Demand: Fidelity Digital Assets — the crypto services division of Wall Street giant Fidelity Investments, a firm with trillions under management — has confirmed it has seen an uptick in interest. Speaking to Frank Chaparro of The Block, a spokeswoman for the firm said that:
“From a trading perspective, we continue to onboard new clients every month and are seeing significant pipeline growth. […] And in recent weeks, we’ve seen more momentum across our business.”
Altcoins have been on the receiving end of a massive wave on March 31 2025, with most of them experiencing impressive gains. Data from Phoenix Group and Cryptorank revealed ten projects with the highest price surge, with Augur ($REP), Unilend ($UFT), and Linear ($LINA) leading. These assets’ value doubled in a single day through trading volumes across major exchanges.
Augur saw the largest gain of the day, with its price rising by 48.1%. The stock is currently priced at $0.91 and has a market capitalization of $7.5 million. The token’s daily growth was significantly higher than that of all the other listed assets. Coinbase was the dominant trading platform used for REP.
Following closely, Unilend surged by 40.9% to $0.09 per token and reached $9.4 million in market capitalization. Most of the trading was done by UFT was in Binance. Linear, also listed on Binance, surged by 39.4% to $0.0003 with a total market cap value of $3.2 million.
AKI Network and Eigenpie Post Double-Digit Gains AKI Network ($AKI) increased by 28.6% and closed at a price of $0.01 for the day. Currently, the token’s market cap is $17.5 million. The majority of its trading activity also occurred on Bybit.
Eigenpie ($EGP), also listed on Bybit, saw its price increase by 19.1% to $1.70. EGP currently has a $16.9 million market cap token ranking among the day’s top performers.
Heroes of Mavia ($MAVIA) followed, rising by 18.4% to $0.43 and a market cap of $22.4 million. Similar to EGP and AKI, MAVIA was also an actively traded token on Bybit.
RATS, KLV, CLV, and Broccoli Show Modest Strength RATS rose by 16.0%. However, its price is still exceptionally low at $0.000003. It has a market capitalization of $30.7 million and is listed on Bitget. KLV ($Klever), also trading on Bitget, rose by 14.9% and is now $0.003 with a market cap of $28.7 million. Both tokens are traded on Gate.io.
CLV rose by 11.0% to $ 0.06 with a total market capitalization of $ 37.5 million. It was listed on KuCoin. Rounding the list, Broccoli (CZ’s Dog) gained 10.7% to $0.05 with a total market capitalization of $51,732,600.Binance was the primary exchange for the token.
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The early prediction market's fork will force inactive REP holders to migrate their tokens or lose access, testing the protocol’s dispute system.
Augur, one of the earliest decentralized prediction market protocols, is set to undergo what it is calling “crypto’s first algorithmic fork,” following a community effort to test the protocol's built-in dispute system.
Ethereum ecosystem developer and Augur contributor Micah Zoltu has collected 200,000 REP — Augur’s governance token — to fund the Augur v2 fork through a crowdsourcing contract, according to an Oct. 24 X post from Augur’s official account.
In Zoltu’s blog post describing the initiative, published in June, the collected REP will be used to trigger a fork of the Ethereum-based prediction market platform. The process mimics an attack on the protocol, which costs approximately 200,000 REP, with the end goal of filtering out passive REP holders, the post explains. Zoltu also notes that participants will lose their deposited REP in the process.
Amid news that the fork will go forward, REP surged more than 50% over the past week, reaching multi-month highs, per The Defiant’s price tracking page. However, the token is still down over 99% from its 2016 all-time high above $340.
REP 1-month price chart. Source: CoinGeckoOnce the fork is triggered, a 60-day migration window opens for holders to move their tokens to the version they believe reflects reality. Those who fail to migrate within that period will have their REP permanently stuck in the “old universe.”
Migration TimelineSpeaking with The Defiant, Zoltu said that users “don't have to take any action right now” as the fork process hasn’t begun yet.
“The old Augur UI doesn't load properly anymore, so we are currently embarking on building some new bare-minimum UIs that will allow people to do things necessary to participate in the fork,” Zoltu said, adding that this “will not be a full-featured prediction market UI, just enough so people can report, migrate, etc.”
According to Zoltu, development of these UIs will “tentatively start next week and will take some time to build and ensure they are robust enough to handle people’s money.”
Once the code is written, audited, and deployed to mainnet, the team will create a market to kick off the dispute process, expected to last 12 to 20 weeks, followed by a two-month forking window. “The critical thing is that REP holders show up during that last 2 month window,” Zoltu said.
REP Not Meant for Passive HoldingIn their June post, Zoltu said the goal of the crowdfunding campaign is to “get the set of REP holders back down to the set of people who are actually paying attention.” They described the effort as a way to “filter out” inactive token holders and restore Augur’s core principle that REP is an active, not passive, token.
The Lituus Foundation, which oversees ongoing Augur development, said it supports the idea of testing the system’s economic security but won’t take part in the fork itself.
“Augur is a permissionless system — anyone can build on it, test it, or run experiments like this,” the foundation said in a blog post from Aug. 21.
When the 2.5% REP dispute threshold is reached, Augur’s system automatically splits into two “universes,” each containing identical markets and contracts. No new platform or token will be created in the process.
Instead, existing REP holders would have to migrate their tokens to the version they consider truthful. In practice, the truthful universe is expected to remain active, while the other — tied to the losing outcome — will likely see no trading and its REP will effectively become worthless.
Commenting on the initiative, Augur said in its Friday X post that the community “has spoken,” repeating that REP tokens aren’t “meant to be passive” as every token holder “must sometimes participate or be left behind.”
‘New Developments Under Way’When asked why now, Zoltu emphasized that the timing was deliberate. “Anyone could do this at any time because Augur is permissionless,” Zoltu told The Defiant, pointing out that it is “generally not profitable to do so though (by design) so no one has. This means we have never had an opportunity to actually see it working in the real world.” The blockchain developer added:
“We have some new developments under way and there isn't activity on Augur at the moment, so it seemed like a good idea to try to do it before those new developments come to fruition. Having no active markets at the moment also means it is minimally disruptive to actual users.”Founded in 2014 by Joey Krug, Jack Peterson and Jeremy Gardner, Augur is widely known as one of the first initial coin offerings (ICO) on Ethereum, conducting the REP ICO in 2015 to fund development. The platform went live in 2018 with a native REP token and an oracle system for reporting outcomes.
Although it promised permissionless markets, in practice it struggled to deliver on that vision as early UIs and third-party node services were unreliable, blockchain sync issues caused delays, and high Ethereum gas fees further slowed activity, as The Defiant previously reported.
As part of its "reboot," the early decentralized prediction protocol is developing a shared on-chain "truth layer" for other protocols.
Early decentralized prediction market protocol Augur has released new oracle infrastructure designed to make dishonest reporting extremely costly in a bid to become a shared truth layer for other protocols.
In an X announcement on Tuesday, Jan. 27, Augur introduced Augur Lituus, an Ethereum-native open blockchain oracle protocol that "will be designed as infrastructure to support” prediction markets, rather than competing with them directly.
The new protocol will be developed by Lituus Foundation, which was introduced last March as part of Augur’s “reboot,” and now oversees the ecosystem’s development, including stewardship of its treasury. Augur said in the announcement that Lituus aims to provide “a shared, manipulation-resistant resolution layer that prediction markets, DeFi protocols, and cross-chain systems can rely on.”
The system, outlined in a whitepaper on Github, is built around so-called "algorithmic forks," a core part of Augur's dispute process. When bettors disagree on an outcome, the protocol splits into parallel "universes" for each possible result.
Holders of Augur’s native token, REP, must choose which universe they believe reflects reality and use their token holdings to vote on it. Outcomes that don’t align with the truth are expected to lose all economic value.
On top of this, Augur Lituus introduced a new mechanism called “Migration-Based Universe Forking with Supply Restoration,” which re-mints and auctions REP tokens after a fork, forcing anyone trying to manipulate results to buy dominance twice.
New StrategyAccording to the document, attacks under this design would cost roughly 134% of the oracle’s fully diluted valuation, up from about 92% under the previous Augur design. The whitepaper reads:
"In game-theory terms, it establishes truth-telling as a strictly dominant strategy equilibrium, offering a more robust defense against attacks by using forking to leverage an environment in which a network’s value depends on maintaining a sustained truthful equilibrium." The team also said that Lituus addresses a central problem for the prediction market sector, as markets need reliable truth under high stakes.
“[...] the industry looks very different. Many of the systems that were supposed to remove trust have quietly reintroduced it in new forms,” Augur wrote in the Tuesday X post.
A test fork to showcase the new mechanism is planned for this year, though a specific date has yet to be announced.
REP ReactsFollowing the whitepaper release on Tuesday, the price of REP briefly shot up 30% from around $0.74 to $0.97, before retracing back to around $0.78 at press time.
REP 7-day price chart. Source: CoinGeckoFounded in 2014 by Joey Krug, Jack Peterson and Jeremy Gardner, Augur is widely known as one of the first initial coin offerings (ICO) on Ethereum, conducting the REP ICO in 2015 to fund development. The platform went live in 2018 with a native REP token and an oracle system for reporting outcomes.
In addition to introducing Augur Lituus, Augur revealed in the same announcement this week that a separate team is in the process of developing a “new prediction market platform to be announced later.”
2019 is the year of decentralized finance. The #DeFi movement was still in its fledgling stage at the end of 2018, but in the wake of the recent resurgence in the crypto markets, it’s taken off. In March, ConsenSys published a blog post listing – believe it or not – over a hundred DeFi projects, with several commenters suggesting even more.
Of course, the ConsenSys list only included those projects developing their DeFi applications on the Ethereum blockchain. But this shouldn’t go unchallenged. After all, if the DeFi concept is truly about decentralization, then any finance application built on any decentralized blockchain platform could qualify as #DeFi. Furthermore, now that Ethereum has more competition from platforms like Stellar, Tron, or Zilliqa, it makes sense that the #DeFi ecosystem can also grow on any other platform too.
Across DeFi and the entire dApp space, Ethereum indeed has the numbers. At the peak of the ICO boom, which was fueled in part by the easy availability of ERC-20 tokens, more than 100 new dApps were being added to Ethereum every month.
However, at this point in 2019, the ecosystem has diversified. Particularly in the categories of trading platforms and automated market making, there are some notable examples of non-Ethereum projects that have established themselves as heavyweights.
Image source: Depositphotos.com
Bancor Bancor was one of the first DeFi projects to come to fruition. It pioneered the concept of the liquidity network, designed to overcome the challenge of illiquidity in altcoins and enable an extensive range of swaps between different tokens. Whereas a traditional crypto exchange depends on having a full order book to ensure that trades can happen without delays, Bancor works differently. The Bancor network is based on the concept of “Smart Tokens.”
The native token of the Bancor network is BNT, which is a smart token in itself. The BNT token holds reserves of all other tokens on the network. Therefore, when someone wants to make an exchange, the network uses the BNT token as a relay, with the reserves enabling instant liquidity. This negates the need to have a counterparty for the trade, as is needed in a traditional exchange.
In Bancor’s earlier days, it faced some criticism for having developed its own tokens. At the time, the project was operating token swaps on the Ethereum blockchain. Uniswap, an Ethereum-based liquidity project that came later, simply used ETH as the relay token, which critics said was a more straightforward solution.
However, Bancor has always held a vision of enabling continuously liquid swaps between any tokens, regardless of which blockchain they’re developed on. The company has now integrated the EOS platform tokens and has plans for more in the future. In light of this, using a blockchain-agnostic Smart Token was a prescient move. It’s also worth noting that Vitalik Buterin himself spoke out on Reddit in support of the Bancor concept of using smart contracts to hold token reserves as a means of making markets. Nothing in his comments implied that the reserves have to be denominated in ETH.
Fetch.AI Fetch.AI is shaping up to be one of the hottest projects of 2019. The project is a graduate of the Binance Launchpad program, where its token sale sold out within hours. Converging both blockchain and artificial intelligence, Fetch.AI is developing a universal integration protocol, where digital autonomous agents perform different kinds of tasks within an open economic framework. Through these agents, individuals or enterprises can participate in “smart markets” where supply is connected to demand in the most efficient way possible.
The platform offers a range of use cases from ridesharing to logistics. However, from a DeFi perspective, the ability to implement automated market makers is perhaps one of the most compelling.
Essentially, market making is a complex optimization problem where current and historical pricing data is used to determine the value of an asset and provide a reference forward curve. The Fetch.AI protocol’s synergetic smart contracts and virtual machine can solve the optimization problem to generate market orders that maximize returns, based on various market making strategies.
Such a toolkit and framework opens up an entirely new model of liquidity and market making, not only for digital assets but also for commodities in the real world where liquidity is limited, and the cost of exchange listings is high. The Fetch.AI framework enables Autonomous Decentralized Market Making (ADMM) to be deployed cross chains – something that wouldn’t be possible with a pure Ethereum deployment.
BitShares BitShares was the first of the three blockchain projects for which Dan Larimer made his name, the latter two being Steem, and most recently, “Ethereum-killer” EOS. The project was formerly known as Protoshares, rebranded as BitShares in 2014, and is an enterprise-level “crypto-equity” smart contract platform.
In 2016, BitShares was added to the Microsoft Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service platform, which at the time was one of only four projects to achieve this status. Interestingly, Ethereum was among the other three.
The BitShares BTS token is used as collateral for a variety of DeFi applications on the platform, including exchanges, banking, or creation of financial derivatives. Using the BitShares protocol, anyone can issue “smart coins,” which are collateralized and market-pegged.
Unlike, for example, Tether, which is operated by a closed-box company, BitShares is fully decentralized with the security of funds lying with the users. The platform is run by a decentralized autonomous company, which is responsible for making all decisions related to the project.
While it’s true that Ethereum currently has the majority of DeFi projects in quantity, these three projects demonstrate that there is a healthy balance for non-Ethereum projects in terms of quality. If the DeFi concept is going to thrive within the overall crypto ecosystem, then it’s necessary to protect and nurture diversity. Doing so will create more opportunities for startups and ultimately, provide a wider choice for users.
The Komodo platform is many things – a unique blockchain, a coin that pays interest, a decentralized exchange, a development blockchain with many additional features being planned for the future.
The Komodo blockchain is a fork of the ZCash blockchain, which itself was forked from the Bitcoin blockchain, making Komodo a descendent of Bitcoin. It includes the zk-snark technology that Zcash was built upon, and adds a delayed proof of work consensus algorithm to make Komodo more robust and secure.
The ultimate goal of Komodo is to create an entire ecosystem comprised of diverse partnerships that will send the platform forward into the future. Because it was designed to be used by developers of any level and in any industry it is extremely versatile.
In this comprehensive review, I will give you everything that you need to know about the Komodo platform.
How Komodo WorksThose doing development on the Komodo platform are not building onto the blockchain, but are instead building their own standalone blockchains. It’s not a fork or sidechain, and the Komodo platform doesn’t act as a parent to the new blockchain.
Each project is an independent blockchain that becomes connected to the Komodo ecosystem. This is crucial because the fact that each blockchain is independent means that future development won’t be limited by Komodo in any way.
Benefits of the Komodo Platform
Komodo was also designed from the ground up as a modular ecosystem. This allows developers to choose which technologies they wish to use in their own projects.
Perhaps most importantly, Komodo was developed with security as a top priority. In addition to using the Zcash zk-snark protocols for anonymity and privacy, Komodo uses a delayed proof of work (PoW) protocol to provide Bitcoin level security to even the smallest blockchains and projects. As stated on the Komodo website itself:
Komodo’s innovative dPOW (delayed proof of work) provides a security layer that creates backups of your blockchain’s data and notarizes it to Bitcoin’s blockchain, providing even the smallest of blockchains with Bitcoin-level security.
In essence, Komodo is using Bitcoin’s hashrate to ensure immutability for the Komodo blockchain.
Komodo PrivacyKomodo was created as a form of the Zcash blockchain, using their technology known as ‘Zero Knowledge Proofs’. This technology allows each transaction on the blockchain to be 100% anonymous or as transparent as necessary given the requirements of each situation.
Anonymous transactions are important to many users because they hide the amount, sender and recipient of the transaction, but still make it possible for miners to verify that the transaction is valid and without any double-spending. Alternatively transactions can be left transparent, in which case information shows just as it would for a Bitcoin transaction.
Anonymous transactions help protect user privacy, but they provide a more important function, and that is to preserve fungibility, which is a basic requirement for any currency.
Komodo SecurityAfter including privacy by forming from Zcash, the developers of Komodo provided for enhanced security of the blockchain in a unique manner. They created a proof of work token, but modified it to be Delayed Proof of Work, allowing it to recycle Bitcoin’s hashrate to ensure immutability of Komodo’s blockchain.
Komodo does this by using 64 “notary nodes” that work to notarize blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain. This provides protection for Komodo because an attacker would have to alter both the block in the Komodo blockchain and the block in the Bitcoin blockchain.
Steps in the Komodo Delayed Proof of Work
As long as the Bitcoin blockchain is secure, so too will Komodo – and all the other blockchains built using Komodo – remain secure.
This mechanism can now be used by any cryptocurrency that wishes enhanced security. By using Komodo the new blockchains are connected to Bitcoin, benefiting from the security of the Bitcoin blockchain, while also saving on transaction costs.
Komodo TeamThe Komodo project is based on anonymity, so it comes as no surprise that many of the Komodo team members initially chose not to reveal their identity. The founder and one core developer of Komodo went by the moniker JL777, but is now known as James ‘JL777’ Lee.
The CTO of the project was known as CA333, but we now know him as Kadan Stadelmann. This increased transparency has come about as Komodo grows in size and scope and is attracting more investors.
The full team is now nearly 30 members spanning leadership, development, marketing, and community development. And speaking of community, there are numerous contributors from the community, both developers and community outreach ambassadors.
Some of the Komodo Team Members
Currently, the general manager of Komodo is Ben Fairbanks, who is also the founder and CEO of RedFOX Labs, an incubator that is helping to launch Komodo based companies in emerging markets. Prior to joining Komodo and launching RedFOX, he served as COO at the ride-hailing service Grab. He brings extensive business and marketing experience to the project.
The CTO of the Komodo project, almost since the very beginning, has been Kaden Stadelmann. He also serves as CTO of RedFOX Labs. He previously worked as an IT security analyst and software developer, and founded the company satoshihack back in 2011, making him a pioneer in the blockchain space.
Core development is led by founder James Lee, and he is joined by Adam Bullock and Mihailo Milenkovic as well as roughly a dozen full-time developers and another dozen community volunteer developers.
KMD CoinThe Komodo native currency (KMD) was launched in an ICO in February 2017 at a price of $0.10. Since then the price of the coin has risen and fallen with the fortunes of the project and the markets. As of mid-March 2018 it was trading at $2.73 and was ranked the #48 coin by market cap on Coinmarketcap.com.
Even though 2018 saw many coins losing 90% or more of their value, KMD held up fairly well in the face of the bear market. It rallied in April, topping $4 and slowly sank from that level, finally dipping under $1 in November 2018 and hitting a low of $0.492329 on November 25, 2018.
It slowly recovered from that low and by February 2019 had doubled in price as it traded back above $1. It remained above $1 for nearly all of 2019, and nearly hit $2 in July 2019, but the price has recently dropped and as of August 9, 2019 stands at $0.863399.
KMD Price Performance. Image via CMC
The fundamentals for the coin continue to look solid thanks to the 5% annual interest rate paid to KMD holders, and the current low price is more a reflection of broad-based weakness in the cryptocurrency markets.
There are currently 115,389,114KMD in circulation, with a planned total supply of 200 million coins, which is projected to be reached in 2031. Until that time, KMD holders will continue to receive a 5.1% annual interest payment (called Active User Rewards) on their KMD holdings, so long as they keep more than 10 KMD in a wallet where they control the private keys. The KMD had an all-time high of $12.54 on December 21, 2017.
Buying & Storing KMDKMD can be purchased on a good number of exchanges, with the largest volume on CoinBene. There is also good volume at Binance, CoinEx, and HitBTC. Other good choices for buying KMD include CoinEx and Bittrex.
Given that there is strong volume across a number of exhanges, it bodes well for the liquidity of KMD. Improved liquidity means that you can execute large block orders on these books without much slippage in the price of the coin.
Register at Binance and Buy KMD Coin
In order to earn the 5.1% annual interest users must hold their KMD in a supported wallet. The top two based on the Komodo website are the Verus Agama wallet, which is a multi-coin wallet from the Verus Coin project, or the native Komodo OceanQT wallet. Other options include the Guarda Wallet and the ZelCore wallet.
Development & RoadmapWhen it comes to determining the amount of work that has been done by a project, there are a number of metrics one can look at.
However, one of the most effective that I have found is to take a look at the coding activity in the project's public repositories.
Therefore, I decided to jump into the Komodo GitHub to get a better sense of what the developers have been pushing over the past year. Below is the total code commits to two of their development repos.
Commits for Select Repos over past 12 months
As you can see from the above, the team has been quite active pushing code to their core repository over the past year. It is also worth pointing out that there are a further 56 other repositories with varying degrees of activity.
This is more development activity than we have seen at most other projects. In fact, if we were to compare Komodo to its peers, it is ranked 30th in terms of commits and 12th for overall coding activity on coincodecap.
This perhaps makes sense when viewed in the context of the numerous projects being built on the Komodo platform (more below).
In terms of the upcoming roadmap, the two most important remaining milestones for 2019 are the release of the developer portal as well as the GUI for the fully mobile-ready wallet/DEX hybrid.
If you want to keep up to date with development on the project then I suggest you jump into their discord and meet the team. They also encourage community developer contributions to the core.
Komodo Platform ProjectsThere are a number of standalone projects that were developed for the Komodo platform. Those that are farthest along in development and have been released as at least betas include Decentralized ICOs, BarterDEX along with a built-in “tumbler” service called Jumblr.
However, as of July 2019 Komodo has launched its Antara Framework, which is the basis for nearly all current services on Komodo.
Decentralized Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)The Decentralised ICO concept was meant to be an exciting option for startups as it would mean that they could launch their process much easier. It would also have given them access to the Komodo technology, marketing channels, and consultants.
However, given the regulatory pressure that has been placed on ICOs recently, this initiative seems to have fallen by the wayside. Of course, the lackluster performance of most recent ICOs has not helped the process.
The Komodo team had plans to launch a number of Decentralised ICOs. In May of last year they planned to release their first with the BlocNation dICO. However, this did not seem to materialize and the Blocnation project seems to have gone dead (with the site down).
The dICO that never materialized... Image via Komodo Blog
Despite this though, Komodo will accept pre-existing blockchain projects on other platforms that would like to migrate to Komodo to receive your own fully customizable, high performing independent blockchain.
As of August 2019 there are a number of projects that have launched on Komodo.
JumblrJumblr is a cryptocurrency anonymizer developed by Komodo which is decentralized and open-source. It can be used to increase privacy when using the Komodo platform.
Anonymizing funds is actually a fairly straightforward and simple practice. The Jumblr will take KMD tokens from a non-private address and send them through a number of zk-snark addresses.
Once these untraceable addresses have processed the coins they are sent to a new address where they are completely anonymous. The fee for using the Jumblr service is 0.3%, which is payable in KMD tokens.
BarterDEX Rebranded to AtomicDEXBarterDEX was previously called EasyDEX but was rebranded in July 2017. It is a decentralized exchange utilizing atomic swaps, and more recently etomic swaps, which bridge the gap between Bitcoin and Ethereum based blockchains.
The use of atomic swaps and etomic swaps lower counterparty risk, transaction fees and speeds the transfer of assets. BarterDEX can support trading of any cryptocurrency, and will also support fiat in the future. Already the decentralized exchange is capable of performing swaps for 95% of the cryptocurrencies in existence.
BarterDEX also solves the liquidity problem encountered by most decentralized exchanges by producing Liquidity Nodes that stabilizes prices by buying and selling assets in the order books.
Screenshots from the AtomicDex App. Image via atomicdex.io
In July 2019 the BarterDEX platform got another upgrade and rebrand and has been re-launched as AtomicDEX in a closed public beta. AtomicDEX provides a secure, reliable, and completely decentralized method for trading digital assets.
Trades no longer have to pass through an intermediary but are done from wallet to wallet. AtomicDEX will act as a multi-currency wallet and as a fully decentralized trading platform. At its beta release, AtomicDEX has support for 13 different coins, but can technically support 99% of all existing cryptocurrencies. New coins will be added with each update to the DEX.
The Antara FrameworkThe Antara Framework was launched on the Komodo mainnet on July 15, 2019, completing a rebrand that stretched out for nearly a full year. This relaunch has included several new developments, such as the beta release of the Antara Smart Chain Composer, which allows anyone to launch their own SmartChain blockchain in just minutes, including full seed nodes and mining nodes.
The Antara Framework is an adaptable framework for simple, end-to-end blockchain development. Antara makes it easier than ever before to launch a chain, activate modules, and start building blockchain-based applications.
Antara has maintained the independence and privacy of building with Komodo. Each independent chain has its own consensus rules, hashing algorithm, decentralized network, and coin. Blockchains launched with Komodo’s technology never depend on the KMD chain, network, or platform.
Antara Network Recently Going live. Image via Komodo Blog
It’s an open ecosystem so there is no vendor lock-in. Creating a chain from the CLI is permissionless and free. The Komodo team is not informed when a chain is created so there's no way to track a chain after launch.
The framework also comes with built-in modules, making development speedy and easier. This allows developers to natively support any software, dApp or blockchain-based games.
With 18 different customizable Smart Chain parameters, any blockchain can be built to serve any business need. The Antara Integration Layer also offers several white label products such as a multi-coin wallet, block explorers, full seed nodes, a branded DEX, a crowdfunding app and integration with SPV Electrum servers.
CompetitionBecause Komodo is involved in so many aspects of the blockchain it is facing competition from many different directions.
Decentralized exchanges are becoming increasingly popular, and the AtomicDEX exchange is in competition with BitShares, EtherDelta, and Waves, as well as many other smaller players.
As a privacy coin, KMD competes against the larger Dash and Monero coins, and of course against the Zcash that it was forked from.
Komodo faces stiff competition from Ethereum as it is the leader in the ICO and smart contracts field, but other established blockchains such as NEO, NXT and Waves are also competing for ICO traction.
And now we also have initial exchange offerings (IEOs) from the likes of Binance and other exchanges growing in popularity. Smart contracts have also found their way into most projects. One strength for Komodo is that it is the first to offer a fully decentralized exchange with atomic swap capabilities.
ConclusionThe Komodo project is an extensive and ambitious large-scale project that aims to solve many issues that centralization of cryptocurrencies and blockchains face.
In addition to being its own blockchain and coin, it is also tackling the decentralized exchange, atomic swap, and decentralized ICO space. It includes options for anonymity and has a unique proof of work consensus algorithm that promises enhanced security, even for new blockchains based off Komodo.
Needless to say, that’s a lot to bite off, but the Komodo team has shown itself to be up to the challenge time and again. In a world where deadlines are often missed by months, the Komodo team has not only delivered but also delivered early and with few bugs. The team also takes user feedback into consideration and has been known to pivot quickly based on the needs of the community.
If the Komodo team continues to deliver it could make a long-term lasting impact on the cryptocurrency space, but it is too early to tell if this will be the case. In any event, it is certainly a project worth watching.
In the roughly 18 months since this review was first prepared the Komodo team has continued to deliver an exceptional product, and with the July 2019 release of the Antara Framework, it has advanced to the first composable SmartChain platform in the industry. This first-mover advantage keeps Komodo on the cutting edge of blockchain development.
Disclaimer: These are the writer's opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
A “stablecoin” called BitShares (BitUSD) was trading at an impressive premium yesterday. On the exchange OpenLedger, lucky traders could sell their BitUSDs for a whopping $34, a 3,400 percent surge from the token’s previous price at roughly $1, according to CoinMarketCap.:
Source: CoinMarketCapLook at it go! (Briefly.)
But BitUSD, of course, isn’t supposed to trade that high. As a stablecoin, it’s designed to be stable and buffered against market volatility.
This isn't such a problem for traders, who aren't really paying $34 for a single BitUSD. But any aggregators, trading bots or price feeds that use CoinMarketCap's rendering of the BitUSD price—and the coin mainly trades on automated, "decentralized" exchanges—could find themselves making decisions based on questionable pricing data. So we decided to investigate.
Ross Walker, a representative from Bitshares, the open source community behind BitUSD, helpfully explained to us what he thought was going on. The trouble, Walker told us, was not caused by market manipulation or BitUSD’s own confused fundamentals, but by CoinMarketCap itself.
CoinMarketCap, Walker explained, is rolling out “Phase 1” provisions to make its index of cryptocurrency prices more transparent. Normally, when there’s no dollar market for a cryptocurrency, CoinMarketCap derives the USD price of an asset from the dollar-traded asset most closely connected, or "paired," with it. (CoinMarketCap itself confirmed this: see its methodology here.)
But in light of CoinMarketCap’s Phase 1 rollout, said Walker, the index excluded some of the more liquid BitUSD pairings. This means low-liquidity “outliers” dirty the index’s assessment. “Resulting in a very wrong price for BitUSD,” Walker explained.
This appears to be a credible—if incomplete—explanation. CoinMarketCap, in an email to Decrypt, confirmed that it had indeed excluded some BitUSD market data, saying Bitshares had failed to meet certain transparency requirements required for the Phase 1 update. And other indexes that do list the relevant data show BitUSD trading at near dollar-parity.
But CoinMarketCap also says that it excluded the data way back in June, while the recent chaos began on Monday.
What on God’s green Earth is going on? We called up blockchain consultant Colin Platt, whose proficiency with the juicing up of crypto markets once made him an ersatz shitcoin quadrillionaire. Platt helped us out, trawling through block explorers when he could have been spending time with his loved ones.
And what he found was (mildly) astonishing.
Below is CoinMarketCap’s view of how BitUSD is trading against various coins on the Bitshares-affiliated exchange OpenLedger, courtesy of Platt. The top two pairings, whose collective volume runs up to $34,000, account for 99 percent of BitUSD’s volume, meaning CoinMarketCap’s algorithm would defer primarily to them when gauging BitUSD’s price:
Source: CoinMarketCapBut as you can see, the second pairing has been manually excluded (hence the asterix), leaving only the top one, "Scorum" (SCR), with any influence.
That’s the pairing that shows BitUSD’s price trading at an alluring $34 premium.
So what's going on?
Platt did some digging, and found that there’s only one entity trading SCR against BitUSD, “marketcorrector01,” which has been blithely trading SCR for BitUSD with itself since Sunday—suggesting it’s probably a bot.
Most of the time, the bot buys and sells SCR at a price of $0.025, paying in BitUSD. But occasionally, the bot sells it at a far lower price, around $0.0004, to “t3ran13” and “mesan88":
Source: Bitshares ScanHere’s what Platt thinks happens next: CoinMarketCap, scraping data for its rendering of BitUSD’s price, sees SCR’s abrupt fall against BitUSD and interprets it as BitUSD strengthening. Devoid of better metrics, the index misleadingly reports a massive increase in BitUSD’s price.
CoinMarketCap, in an email to Decrypt, appeared to confirm this. A spokesperson said that the fluctuating exchange rate enjoyed by a “certain market pairing” caused the mispricing. This, we assume, was the BitUSD/SCR pairing.
There's certainly more than a whiff of sketchiness here. Are marketcorrector01's weird maneuvers another egregious case of market manipulation? Are “t3ran13” and “mesan88" master arbitrageurs, buying up SCRs at low, low prices and flogging them on the market for a mean profit?
"Profiting," scoffed Platt. "They would have taken home just over a penny."
But at least we (Platt) seem to have gotten to the bottom of it.
So, to conclude: owing to CoinMarketCap’s omitting of crucial liquidity metrics, BitUSD’s price appears to have been derived entirely from the notional dollar-value of an asset that’s being mostly self-traded by a bot.
Fine.
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In case you missed you can check out the first part of this series here.
Is Bitcoin Mining Legal in the United States?As implied by the FinCEN regulations, there’s no obligation on keeping virtual currencies. While spending, trading and exchanging crypto for fiat currency are considered money transmitters and should be reported.
In June 2019, Squire Mining (SQRMF), a Canadian mining mogul with the most hashpower, signed a letter of intent to host blockchain cloud computing units - over 41,000 Bitcoin - to the United States. As mining migrates from China to the US, the latter is changing priorities from application and protocol development to focusing on infrastructure.
How to Buy, Store and Spend Crypto in the USAIf you’re wondering how interested Americans really are in the cryptosphere, here’s a fun fact: Bitcoin has become so popular that as a term it has outrun Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump in search requests by three times.
Source: Consensys
Bitcoin is going mainstream in the States. It is already accepted as a payment by retailers and services like Overstock and NewsEgg and some major tech companies like Microsoft. The United States has over 3500 cryptocurrency ATMs and tellers – that’s 64% of all the crypto ATMs in the world. There is even a list of major cities in the US with ATM installations. Unsurprisingly, the top-5 cities are Los Angeles (372), Chicago (250), Miami (199), Atlanta (171) and Detroit (149). Despite the huge amount of tellers where you can buy BTC, XRP, ETH, etc. a majority of people prefer to buy crypto via the various exchanges and crypto services online.
Cryptocurrency has become an important aspect of local economies. California, New Jersey, Washington, New York, Colorado, Utah, Florida, Alaska, Nevada, and Massachusetts are the states with the largest amount of citizens who have cryptocurrency.
In 2018, Finder surveyed 2000 US citizens to get an approximate idea of what coins Americans prefer to store. It comes as no surprise that Bitcoin is the number one cryptocurrency in the US.
Source: finder.com
Is Trading Bitcoin legal in America?The question was raised on the federal level by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the focus was on the use of blockchain assets as securities, such as whether or not certain Bitcoin investment funds should be sold to the public, and whether or not a certain offering is fraudulent. However, the SEC’s report focused entirely on Initial Coin Offerings, so the results don’t apply to BTC. To trade securities on the Blockchain, a company must register as an exchange, Alternative Trading System (ATS) or a broker/dealer.
Top cryptocurrency businesses in the USAIn addition to the wide user base of cryptocurrencies in the US, the country is also home to some of the most influential crypto projects in the industry. American crypto projects range from powerful exchanges to headline grabbing social media experiments. Here are some of the most notable.
LedgerX is a New-York based Bitcoin trading platform. As a start-up, LedgerX was actively lobbying for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and after a few years got a derivatives clearing organization license from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That opened the door for the platform to bring classical financial tools to the cryptosphere. In November 2017, LedgerX launched the first long-term BTC options.
Ripple constantly finds itself the subject of debate in the crypto community regarding its centralised nature. Despite the mixed feelings, Ripple is already working with hundreds of financial institutions to drive crypto adoption and has launched the University Blockchain Research Initiative to support the research and development of blockchain technology.
Gemini is a crypto exchange based in NYC that was created by the Winklevoss brothers. In 2016, Gemini became the world’s first licensed cryptocurrency exchange. Also, Gemini holds the distinction of being the first institution to launch Bitcoin futures contracts.
Stellar was co-founded by Jed McCaleb, who was also among Ripple’s founders. The company strives to provide banking services for unbanked people. Their team is working to improve cross-border transactions and reduce fees and transfer times.
Steem is the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain-based social platform Steemit where users are rewarded for writing posts, commenting, reading and curating content. The NY-based company was founded by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, who is also known as the CTO of EOS and creator of BitShares.
Libra CoinLibra deserves its own section as it is one of the most controversial crypto projects that are sure to change the cryptocurrency market and the entire financial sector. The project initiated by Facebook, with Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal among its 27 charter members, is set to join the pantheon of premier US cryptocurrency projects. Facebook decided to launch the project to give financial freedom to 2,000,000,000 adults around the world who are outside the financial system. Of course, the guys from Facebook believe that people will trust decentralized management systems more now, when trade wars build barriers for money, when the trade is limited to the borders of the countries in dispute. Yet, the troubling issue is that Facebook management has been repeatedly accused of centralization and cooperating with authorities. On the other hand, the positive impact of mass adoption Libra can bring, will strengthen the cryptocurrency industry. However, much to my regret, Libra contradicts the basic ideas of blockchain - privacy and decentralization, the core values that Freewallet and many crypto companies fight for.
The third and final instalment of these articles will be released tomorrow at 12:30pm BST.
China’s Center for Information Industry Developed Research Institute’s monthly crypto rankings have always been viewed as an oddity, given that the CCID is controlled by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in a country notoriously scathing toward cryptocurrency.
But since President Xi Jinping’s recent address at the Politburo claiming that “We must take blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies. Clarify the main directions, increase investment, focus on a number of key technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain and industrial innovation,” the rankings potentially warrant more respect.
With the Chinese government announcing its intention to be at the epicenter of blockchain technology development, cryptocurrency markets went into overdrive, with Bitcoin seeing over 30 percent gains within ten hours.
Whether the Chinese government actually warms to the decentralized cryptocurrencies its citizens have long been enamored of remains to be seen. In the meantime, the news was widely viewed as a positive sign for the markets.
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Are the CCID Research Institute Rankings Suddenly Relevant Again? The newfound enthusiasm for blockchain in the CCP, also indicated in recent news of a pending state-run digital currency, drags the CCID’s rankings back into view. Its latest edition has just been released.
Assessed in terms of technology, applicability (capability of being applied to solve problems), and creativity (how unique the blockchain is in its approach to solving problems), EOS has consistently ranked first since the organization began publishing its rankings in May of 2018.
The 14th index shows some notable movements since its last report. TRON overtook Ethereum in second place, though only by the skin of its teeth. Lisk is up seven places to seventh and Qtum surged ten places to eighth.
Ontology is down seven places to fourteenth and Cosmos fell twelve places, from tenth to 22nd. GXChain fell precipitously, falling out of the top five in favor of BitShares. The top five now reads EOS, TRON, Ethereum, NULS, BitShares.
NANO on the Rise NANO enjoyed a rise from 22 to 13, finding a place back in the spotlight it lost during the early 2018 BitGrail debacle, from which it has since struggled to recover. As reported recently by Crypto Briefing, NANO is playing a substantial role in the ecosystem of Softbank-backed payments processor Wirex, an FCA-licensed company based in the U.K.
At a recent NANO meetup in London, Wirex’s CEO Pavel Matveev said the company was keen to continue its relationship with the crypto formerly known as RaiBlocks. A Wirex blog post also spared no compliments in describing Nano, calling it “a next-generation cryptocurrency with great potential.”
With an opaque ranking system, the CCID results will likely remain a curiosity for some time. However, the CCP’s apparent newfound fondness for blockchain technology means it is warranted for the community to put blatant skepticism over their rankings on hold for at least an interim period.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Paul de Havilland. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The 24-year-old of the Ethereum project originally proposed the creation of the network late in 2013. Buterin has kept to his word and is still at Ethereum and is working hard to make it better than ever! In the past, the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin has sat down in many interviews to discuss all things related to the decentralised network. The unofficial ‘CEO’ has gone onto explain in an MIT interview as to why the network can only be truly decentralised after it stops looking to him for answers.
The 24-year-old of the Ethereum project originally proposed the creation of the network late in 2013. Even so, he revealed that it was time for him to start taking a back seat for Ethereum rather than being full-on. This will allow the community to grow and grow in a decentralised way.
This sparks up the query as to whether Buterin is getting ready to leave Ethereum.
Some Twitter users took his words of taking a back seat as Buterin planning an exit strategy similar to how Dan Larimer has left numerous blockchain projects.
Dan ended up developing the blockchain tech of Graphene that gave fuel to BitShare and the Steem coin but he ended up leaving the project to start Steemit after he founded BitShares in 2013. Then two years ago, he went onto leave Steemit and joined Block.one as it Chief Technology Officer (which had an exciting year, to say the least!) and marched a successful crowdfunding to create EOS.
In a tweet aimed towards Buterin, he accused him of planning his exit strategically and prompted him to reply and correct his speculation.
“Looks like @VitalikButerin is getting ready to pull a @DanLarimer. Exited!!. People continue to NOT understand what a Decentralized #Blockchain is & why #Bitcoin does NOT compete w/ nonsense like #Ethereum $ETH or #EOS $EOS, it compets w/ $USD $EUR $GOLD”
Responding to the tweet, Buterin said:
I am not leaving. No plans to stop or reduce blog posts / ethresearch posts / github commits. Vitalik is "in charge": ETH is centralized! Vitalik is not "in charge": Vitalik is pulling a Dan Larimer! This is why BTC maximalists have zero credibility.” This was an interview, Buterin did last year but one year on and to this day, Buterin has kept to his word and is still at Ethereum and is working hard to make it better than ever! It makes you question what the protocol would be like without Buterin overlooking it. If you take his words for granted then it would be more decentralised!
While any spike in gun violence may give the impression that purchasing a gun is too simple, selling one can in fact be quite tricky. Indeed, many payment processors prohibit gun sales as part of their terms of service.
TUSC—The Universal Settlement Coin—presents itself as a solution to the specific problems facing gun retailers. The cryptocurrency's mainnet launched at the end of December after several months of testing. In the announcement, the company described its coin as “a gun-centric crypto [designed] to act as a 'continuity of business' payment system for gun retailers.”
In an interview with Decrypt, Rob McNealy, a Salt Lake City-based podcaster and entrepreneur who co-founded TUSC, explained the main problems firearm retailers face when trying to make a sale. For starters, he said, some of have trouble just getting a checking account where they can deposit payments.
What’s more, third-party payment providers such as PayPal typically bar weapon sales as part of their terms of service, McNealy said. Credit card fees are also higher than normal—between 4 and 6 percent, according to McNearly—because firearms is a high-risk industry. And sales are prone to credit card chargebacks because of the amount of time it takes to fulfil a custom gun order (hence the higher fees).
Why not just use Bitcoin?After talking to gun retailers and manufacturers, McNealy thought cryptocurrency might provide a way around relying on an unreliable credit card ecosystem—but purposely didn't use Bitcoin for several reasons. Most importantly, he said, "We wanted something fast for retail." With reported three-second blocks and two-second confirmation times, TUSC is a nimbler solution at a time when "Bitcoin has moved away from payments" and "Lightning is not ready for primetime."
And while Roger Ver might be itching right now to show McNealy how to buy cucumbers with BTC in Hong Kong, that hints at another big reason to create a new cryptocurrency rather than just promote an existing payment solution: the gun community itself.
Emphasizing that he spends more time with people in the gun industry than in crypto, McNealy described a cryptocurrency landscape riven with conflict and factionalism. "Some proof-of-work projects, when they have a disagreement, it fractures their communities," he said. "I think it's bad for adoption."
McNealy and his team instead settled on a delegated proof-of-stake network forked from BitShares 2.0 with on-chain governance so there is an inbuilt way to handle conflict among gun retailers using the network. The result is a custom-built solution for a narrow problem afflicting one industry.
Though TUSC is now in circulation, the team's developers are working on creating payment gateways so that it can become a comprehensive ecosystem—third-party cryptocurrency payment providers like BitPay don't allow firearm purchases either. Already, 15 retailers have committed to joining when the payment gateway is ready, according to McNealy.
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With all eyes fixed on Bitcoin’s valuation at the moment, the lesser-known assets with medium-range market caps were seen performing better than the large market cap assets.
According to Arcane Research, the best performing tokens over the past week has been outside the major altcoins with only Monero and Bitcoin SV making the cut from the major assets. Privacy coin Dash and Chainlink also registered impressive recoveries over the last few days, with Dash witnessing over 14.45 percent in the last 24 hours.
The Weiss Crypto’s Mid-Cap Crypto Index (WMC) (a measurement index covering the mid-range market cap on the basis of market performance) registered a sharp rise since the start of January. The index exhibited a growth of 1.05 percent for the collective market movement from the likes of Cardano, Monero, Dash, IOTA, and Ethereum Classic.
In comparison, Weiss Large-Cap Crypto (WLC) Index only pictured a 0.14 percent growth collectively as Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash were responsible for the majority of the positive growth. Ethereum and Litecoin managed to exhibit positive returns as well.
However, the bearish side was rather dominant with other digital assets. According to the chart above, the Weiss Small Cap Crypto Index (WSC) recorded a drop of 0.44 percent over the same period. The likes of Verge, Ziliqa, and BitShares failed to take advantage of the surging market.
As a whole, the above data indicated that mid-level crypto assets were collectively outperforming in the market over the past week, whereas the likes of major assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin were playing the game cautiously.
Prominent angel investor Armando Pantoja recently commented on the popular claim within the crypto community from critics labeling XRP as a “dead coin.”
The market commentator disagrees with this categorization. According to him, the claim is devoid of logic, as XRP remains the fourth-biggest crypto asset in the market. He stressed that a “dead coin” obviously cannot have a $112.8 billion market cap and rank just behind Ethereum and Bitcoin.
XRP Stands Strong Over Ten Years and Counting Drawing from his over a decade of experience in the crypto industry, Pantoja pointed out that the crypto assets making the top ranks today are entirely different from those of the past. In particular, some crypto assets that once ranked in the top 100 by market cap have now faded into oblivion.
Indeed, historical data from CoinMarketCap confirms that tokens like BitShares (BTS), Dash, NXT, Paycoin (XPY), and MAID were among the top ten precisely ten years ago, in March 2015.
However, these coins have now been completely relegated to the back seat. Meanwhile, during this time, XRP was even the second biggest crypto, behind Bitcoin only. Ten years later, XRP continues to defend its position among the most prominent crypto assets.
Top ten crypto ten years ago with XRP Pantoja cited this data to emphasize that the argument labeling XRP as “dead” is wholly misplaced and lacks sincerity. In his words:
“People don’t realize that all these other coins—hundreds, even thousands of coins—that were supposed to be great projects are gone now. XRP has held on, and that shows it’s not a dead coin. This is what we call success bias.”
He argued that supporters of such negative views are driven by a sense of rivalry. Pantoja stressed that commentators often fail to recognize all the failures and focus only on the successful projects. As a result, they’d look at XRP and assert, “Well, these other coins are more successful, so XRP is a failure.”
For Every Few Coins That Outperform XRP, 10,000 Others Failed In terms of price performance, Pantoja argued that out of the three or four coins that may have done better than XRP over the years, there are at least 10,000 coins that have failed completely.
He used this argument to dismiss the critical views concerning XRP’s failure to establish a new all-time high in seven years. At press time, XRP trades at $2.03, down 47.1% from its 2018 peak of $3.83.
DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
Stablecoins offer criminals a convenient tool for illicit transactions due to their price stability, speed, and wide acceptance across blockchain platforms. Global regulators are stepping up efforts to enforce stricter rules and improve transparency in stablecoin usage. Origin of Stablecoins Stablecoins made their debut in 2014. It aims to combine the steady value of fiat currencies with the openness and flexibility of blockchain technology. The first of its kind, BitUSD, was introduced in July 2014 as a credit-backed stablecoin on the BitShares platform.
Tether (USDT), which was based on fiat reserves and was pegged 1:1 to the USD, made its debut that same year. After that, the market diversified, with a focus on reserves and transparency in 2017 with MakerDAO’s DAI (crypto-backed) and in 2018 with USDC, TUSD, BUSD, and others.
Core Use Cases for Stablecoins People use stablecoins every day — to buy coffee, pay employees, send remittances, trade assets, and store value. Moreover, they are faster, less expensive, and more convenient across borders.
1. Daily P2P Remittances and Payments
Sending money to friends and family abroad has become easier and more affordable with peer-to-peer transfers.
Workers in the United States can send USDT directly to people in other countries, skipping the traditional banking system and saving on fees.
2. Acquiring Products and Services
E-commerce: Shopify and Overstock are two platforms that accept USDC or USDT, enabling customers to use cryptocurrency to buy both digital and physical goods. Paying in person:
< Starbucks with USDC through the Bakkt app.
< Miami rent payments are made in USDT.
< Purchases made at the point of sale using stablecoin debit cards, such as WhiteBIT Nova.
3. Financial Services and DeFi
Trading and Hedging: Traders often shift between volatile assets and stablecoins to secure their gains. It’s an easy way to take profits while still staying involved in crypto. DeFi Lending and Borrowing: Stablecoins like USDC, DAI, and USDT play a major role in it. Platforms such as Aave, Compound, and MakerDAO let users earn interest on their holdings or use them as collateral to take out loans. 4. Store-of-Value in Volatile Economies
In countries like Venezuela, Lebanon, Argentina, and several across Africa, many people are now turning to dollar-pegged stablecoins such as USDT and USDC. These digital assets offer a way to shield their savings from the impact of local currency crashes and ongoing economic turmoil.
5. Business and Institutional Uses
Payroll: Companies pay global freelancers and employees quickly with stablecoins—workers get funds almost instantly. Merchant Payments: Merchants are turning to crypto payment services like BitPay to accept stablecoins like USDC and USDT. These platforms offer faster settlements and lower transaction fees than traditional payment systems, making them a more attractive option for everyday business. Treasury Management: Companies are also starting to consider stablecoins as a smart way to manage their liquid reserves. They provide a quicker, more efficient method for moving funds, especially when dealing with transactions tied to tokenized real-world assets. Regulatory Adoption and Legality New regulations like MiCA in Europe and recent stablecoin laws in the U.S. are pushing stablecoins closer to everyday financial use. As more shops, businesses, and individuals begin to use them, stablecoins are gradually finding a firm place in the global economy, not just as a trend, but as a tool here to stay.
United States: Stablecoins are set to fall under new regulatory frameworks such as the STABLE Act and the GENIUS Act. To align with these upcoming rules, companies like Circle are actively pursuing national trust charters to make sure that they meet the necessary standards for operation.
European Union: Across the EU, the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation demands strict transparency and proper custodianship. Issuers who comply, such as Circle and BUSD, are permitted to operate within the region under clear and defined legal guidelines.
Japan treats cryptocurrencies as property. Also, the exchanges operating there must register and follow the rules under the Payment Services Act.
In Singapore, crypto isn’t considered legal tender, but licensed exchanges can operate under the same Act.
Australia and Canada both recognize crypto as taxable and regulated, and the use of stablecoins is permitted.
Brazil allows the use of crypto for payments, with oversight provided by the central bank.
In South Korea, exchanges must be registered, and the use of privacy-focused coins is limited or restricted.
India imposes taxes on crypto transactions, but still doesn’t have clear regulations specific to stablecoins.
Stablecoins Fall Into Four Main Classes Fiat-backed stablecoins like USDT and USDC are tied to traditional currencies, with redemption processes handled directly on-chain. Crypto-backed options such as DAI are supported by excess cryptocurrency collateral to maintain their value. Algorithmic stablecoins, like the now-defunct TerraUSD, use smart contracts to control supply and demand, but often carry significant risk. Finally, bank-issued or tokenized deposit stablecoins are digital assets backed by reserves held at regulated financial institutions. Illicit Use Cases Involving Stablecoins Several key illicit behaviours now prominently include stablecoins:
Money Laundering and Fraud Chainalysis reports that stablecoins accounted for 63% of illicit crypto transaction volume. Criminals favour stablecoins for their low volatility and ease of moving value without leaving exchanges. Moreover, UNODC flagged that Tether on TRON has become popular for cyber-fraud, darknet marketplaces, and crime.
Sanctions Evasion and State-backed Misuse A stablecoin called A7A5, pegged to the Russian ruble, has been introduced in Kyrgyzstan. It’s reportedly being used to process cross-border transactions tied to efforts aimed at bypassing international sanctions on Russia.
In addition, the FATF emphasizes stablecoins as a major vehicle for money laundering, terrorist finance, and drug trafficking.
DPRK IT workers have been identified using USDC rails to receive illicit payments, yet issuers like Circle haven’t systematically blocked them.
Ransomware and Darknet Market Use Though Bitcoin once dominated ransomware payments, stablecoins now comprise the bulk of illicit flows. Over $649 billion in stablecoin transfers in 2024 moved through high-risk addresses, representing over 5% of total stablecoin volume.
How It Works Notably, criminals generally use stablecoins in illicit activities for a few key reasons:
Stable Value: Unlike other cryptocurrencies that swing wildly in price, stablecoins hold their value. This makes them ideal for preserving the power of purchasing.
Easy Transfers: Users can send it directly to one another without needing a traditional bank account. Also, it makes the peer-to-peer transactions simpler and discreet.
On-Chain Obfuscation: Mixers and chains complicate traceability.
Cross-border Utility: Ideal for smuggling large sums across borders quickly.
Issuer Freeze Power: Centralized issuers can freeze flagged accounts, but detection lags in real-time.
Restricting Illicit Use Mitigating misuse requires a combined strategy:
BIS warns that stablecoins—if unmanaged—may destabilize finance and recommends central bank-backed alternatives.
2. Issuer Control
Examples include Tether freezing $225 million in USDT tied to scams.
Circle froze $57 million in USDC following a U.S. court order.
3. International Cooperation
Sanctions evasion schemes like A7A5 require cross-border financial cooperation. Also, FATF calls for shared intelligence and harmonized licensing.
4. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
BIS supports maturing CBDC frameworks that preserve privacy while enabling granular oversight.
Types of Stablecoins: Current and Upcoming Current Varieties USDT, USDC, BUSD, TUSD – Dominant fiat-backed tokens
DAI – Crypto assets back it, and a decentralized community governs it.
Algorithmic – TerraUSD collapsed and eroded trust in models.
Emerging and Proposed Retail stablecoins: Walmart and Amazon are exploring token launches for payments.
Bank-issued tokens: NAB launched AUDN; the central banks may follow.
Commodity-backed: Pax Gold (PAXG) and others are paired with real assets.
Some of the early illicit uses are noted at around 2017–2018, where Tether grew from $10M to $2.8B in circulation. Further in 2022, TerraUSD collapsed and shifted focus to fiat-backed tokens.
Conclusion Stablecoins were designed to stabilize and expand the utility of crypto. In addition, the predictable value and accessibility serve countless legitimate use cases. Just because stablecoins are centralized, globally accessible, and programmable, they draw the attention of bad actors looking to exploit these features.
Looking forward, the crucial factor will be finding the right balance, bringing smart regulation. In addition, better blockchain tracking tools and accountability from stablecoin issuers. At the same time, it’s just as important to protect the unique benefits that digital finance offers. As stablecoins move from being a niche product to becoming a key to global finance, getting this balance is more important.
The CEO of uPlexa, Kyle Pierce recently spoke on the financial and ethical dilemmas faced by upstart altcoin projects in the crypto space. There is an unfavourable picture noted by Pierce of an industry that may have already been taken over by its worst people including hackers, scammers and any other undesirables. The CEO of uPlexa, Kyle Pierce recently spoke on the financial and ethical dilemmas faced by upstart altcoin projects in the crypto space. There is an unfavourable picture noted by Pierce of an industry that may have already been taken over by its worst people including hackers, scammers and any other undesirables.
Centralised exchanges have a ‘king’ making power, but this isn’t something that’s news to most. In fact, the CEO of DigiByte claimed that he was asked for $300,000 to get listed on the Binance platform. This was on top of being asked for about three per cent of his altcoin’s overall coin circulation.
Nevertheless, Pierce said:
The demands made of the space platform were equally as outrageous as the CEO has said.
“We’ve had offers for 50% of the premine to get listed on an exchange. 50% of our premine that’s allocated to exchange listings, marketing, hiring, founding team, core members, security audits, etc. They somehow believe that one hour of their time is worth nearly 6,000+ of our current man hours into this project.”
The CEO further said that the saturation of centralised platforms is making matters even worse with over 1,500 thousand platforms fighting for the same area. This number is increasing and increasing by the day and the desperation of it rises as relevant.
“There’s 1500+ centralized exchanges that offer the exact same service, and they’re starting to lose volume. So they artificially boost the volume and hire VA’s to go around soliciting every team member of every project in hopes to quickly make a quick buck before their watering hole dries up.”
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!
DigiByte is a UTXO PoW network that focuses on digital payments, security, and decentralized apps. The decentralized blockchain was created by Jared Tate six years ago and has since been growing rapidly.
DigiByte prides itself on facilitating faster and cheaper transactions, unlike bitcoin. In a recent tweet, creator Jared Tate explains exactly why DigiByte is better than the OG crypto, bitcoin.
The argument about which cryptocurrency will be the next bitcoin has always prevailed in the crypto space ever since altcoins started catching on. Some altcoin creators have a penchant for making comparisons about transaction fees and speed in a bid to make a case for their pet projects.
In a recent 2-part tweet thread, DigiByte founder Jared Tate became the latest person to compare his crypto project with bitcoin. Tate pointed to the latest version of Bitcoin Core and the updated fee policy to prove his point. In particular, he noted that the new 0.19 version is now supporting slow transactions that take even a week to be confirmed, on top of being ridiculously expensive.
With DigiByte, transactions are much cheaper and it takes the blockchain approximately 2 minutes to fully confirm the transactions. Per Tate, this is why DGB is 40X faster than Bitcoin (BTC).
With the latest 0.19 version of #Bitcoin core & updated fee policy you can choose to send a TX that takes 7 days to confirm which costs more than what it costs to send a normal #DigiByte TX which confirms in 2 minutes. This is why $DGB is 40x faster than $BTC. Try it yourself. pic.twitter.com/i69G865IvM
“Seriously, who would ever send a #Bitcoin transaction that takes 7 days to confirm? Might as well go back to the banks ACH system that takes 2-5 business days. Or just use $DGB.”
Does It Really Matter? In all fairness, bitcoin’s slow transaction speed has been viewed as the chink in the asset’s armor. The fact that a single transaction can take hours or even days before it’s confirmed has led many to speculate that the crypto will not be replacing fiat any time soon unless major improvements are made. As such, bitcoin is better suited as a store of value.
DigiByte holders received this tweet with delight. For many of them, DGB is the most advanced cryptocurrency. Another Twitter user even noted that they are in Scotland and received DigiByte from Nigeria instantly.
That said, it is solely up to an investor to decide which of the two cryptocurrencies best serves their interests because the two have disparate use cases.
DigiByte is currently embroiled in the market-wide sell-off and is trading at $0.006847 at the time of publication, with almost 10% losses in the last 24 hours. Its market cap stands at $87,938,259 making it the seventieth-largest cryptocurrency on the planet.
Despite several technological advancements, most altcoins have failed to breach their previous highs. Instead, most have retraced their steps back to their yearly lows. These altcoins, strongly mimicking the price action of Bitcoin, have endured heavy losses. However, this time, not all altcoins sustained severe losses.
Cardano
On the development front, 2020 has been a good year for the Cardano ecosystem. The latest development for Cardano was IOHK’s announcement of a ‘reboot’ of the Cardano blockchain’s Byron-era codebase, paving the way for Shelley-era decentralization that will be deployed on 31st March.
On the price side, at press time, ADA was trading close to its support at $0.028, while holding a market cap of $745.6 million. Over the last 24-hours, the coin fell by 5.42%. Additionally, ADA’s 24-hour trading volume stood at $85.64 million.
Resistance: $0.044, $0.052
Support: $0.023
MACD: The MACD indicator was bullish on ADA’s near-term price movements.
Chaikin Money Flow: The CMF indicator also appeared to be heading for a much-anticipated bullish revival.
Ethereum Classic
The ETC network underwent its second block reward reduction on 16 March at a block height of 10,000,000, following which, its block reward was cut by 20% from 4 ETC to 3.2 ETC.
With respect to its price movement, ETC changed hands at $4.79 after it noted a drop of 6.54% over the last 24-hours. At press time, the coin held a market cap of $557.4 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $1.38 million.
Resistance: $7.01, $8.47
Support: $3.47
Parabolic SAR: The dotted markers below the candlesticks signaled a bullish trend for the coin.
Awesome Oscillator: AO too aligned with the bulls with its green closing bars.
Digibyte
Unlike other coins, Digibyte did not post impressive rallies at the start of 2020. Its surges remained mild. Following the sharp decline in the second week of March, the DGB token, however, paced itself after it surged for the sixth consecutive day.
In the latest development, the beta version of DigiByte’s [DGB] new website has been released for proper community assessment. The version is still in the test mode and DGB community members have been given the opportunity to report potential bugs and come up with fixes for the same.
DGB was priced at $0.0043, at press time, after it posted gains of 5.77% over the last 24-hours. Furthermore, the token registered a market cap of $56.17 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $2.20 million.
Resistance: $0.0064, $0.0071
Support: $0.0030
Klinger Oscillator: KO indicated a highly bullish phase for DGB in the offing as the signal line continued to hover well below the leading line.
RSI: The RSI also headed towards the median, depicting positive sentiment in the DGB market.
With increasing uncertainty surrounding the markets across the globe, cryptocurrencies have seen higher levels of volatility and steeper price drops. Altcoins have not been able to recover their losses after the March 12 crash and most coins continue to struggle. Bitcoin SV [BSV], Cosmos [ATOM] and DigiByte [DGB] have all endured a dip in their price in the past few days.
Bitcoin SV [BSV]
While the early parts of 2020 looked promising for the fork coin BSV, its recent price performance is rather somber. Over the past days, BSV registered a 12.4 percent drop in its price and at press time BSV has a trading value of $155. Bitcoin SV currently has a market cap of $2.8 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $1.6 billion.
As per the 4-hour chart, there is strong support for BSV at $155 and two points of resistance at $167 and $182. Bollinger Bands are slowly expanding at the moment and imply an increase in volatility. As per the RSI indicator, BSV’s price has been in the oversold zone and is now moving away towards the overbought zone.
Cosmos [ATOM]
Earlier in the year, Binance U.S began offering staking rewards for Cosmos however not much has changed regarding the fate of this altcoin. Over the course of the last few days, the price of Cosmos has once again registered a dip of 9 percent bring the price down to $1.91. If the price were to give in to the bearish momentum and fall further the strong support at $1.70, Cosmos can rely on. However, there are also resistances at $2.03 and $2.25.
As per the MACD indicator, the same has endured a bearish crossover with the signal line hovering above the MACD line. The Stochastic indicator is currently at the oversold zone but is heading northbound at press time.
DigiByte [DGB]
DGB’s price is at $0.0041 and has a market cap of $52 million. In the past day, DGB has endured a price dip of 13.5 percent and if the price were to fall further, DGB might find support at $0.0029. On the contrary, if the bulls were to raise the price of the coin there are two crucial resistance that would have to be breached, at $0.0042 and $0.0057.
Currently, the RSI indicator is heading towards the oversold zone after having spent a considerable amount of time at the top. MACD indicator echoes a similar sentiment, as it has now undergone a bearish crossover.
While some altcoins in the crypto-market reacted positively to the momentum in the market, other alts were still trying to ward off bearish pressure.
Stellar Lumens [XLM]
Stellar Lumens, with a market cap of $815.03 million, was ranked number 13th on CMC’s chart. The coin has been fighting negative sentiments in the market for a long time now, but it was falling by 0.55% over the past 24-hours. The 24-hour circulating supply of the coin was reported to be $301.88 million.
XLM also reported negative YTD returns of -8.67%, but it managed to come back from the overbought zone. The coin was hovering in the equilibrium zone, indicating that the buying and selling pressures in the market had evened out.
Algorand [ALGO]
Algorand ranks 47th on CMC and had a market cap of $102.22 million with a 24-hour trading volume of $53.51 million, at press time. The trading price of the coin, at the time of writing, was $0.1535, while the resistance was marked at $0.1714 and the support rested at $0.1399. According to the Bollinger Bands, the ALGO market appeared less volatile as the bands had contracted, but the moving average had snuck under the candlesticks, indicating a bearish turnover.
Algorand was in the news recently after Meld Gold, Australian gold industry’s first gold-backed digital asset, announced on 1 April that it will build its platform on Algorand, as per a press release shared with AMBCrypto.
DigiByte [DGB]
DigiByte has been seeing the buyers come back to the market as it noted nine green candles on the daily chart. Even though the coin was down by 16.79%, it had been recovering over the past week, and was, at press time, was in the overbought zone, according to the Stochastic RSI indicator.
The coin was being traded at $0.0044, while the closest resistance was at $o.oo45. The support was marked at $0.003.
It has been established by now that the altcoins are recovering from their losses in March. Although they are doing so at their own pace, most alts have begun to go on an upward run. Litecoin, NEO, and DigitByte are some of these alts, with each of these coins maintaining steady support levels on their charts.
Litecoin[LTC]
The 7th ranked coin on CoinMarketCap, Litecoin started its downward run as early as 7 March, recording a drop of 51% and falling to $30.25, following ‘Black Thursday.’ However, the coin soon rose by 39% on 18 March, with LTC trending upwards since, maintaining support at $35.31.
The attached chart highlighted the formation of an ascending triangle that signaled an upward breakout. This was further confirmed by the CMF indicator.
With 133,248,297 NANO in circulating supply, Nano has been trending upwards since 18 March, maintaining the support at $5.91. Nano is also among the fastest recovering coins in the market as it rose by 49% in just 3 days post the free-fall. A look at the chart revealed a potential ascending triangle pattern, one highlighting an upward breakout.
Additionally, the MACD indicator hinted at a potential bullish crossover, further confirming the upward price breakout.
With a circulating supply of 12,996,675,081 DGB, DigiByte has been trending upwards since mid-December. However, post-Febraury 15, the coin has been on a downward run and dropped further down on 12 March [41%].
Starting on 23 March, the coin recorded an upward trend. The Awesome Oscillator hinted at an upward price breakout as it lay above the zero line with green bars.
At this time in the cryptocurrency market, it’s all about making good on lost ground, and altcoins are certainly following that motto. Leading the way is the second-largest altcoin on the market, XRP, followed along by DigiByte and Maker.
XRP
Source: XRPUSD via Trading View
In the past week, XRP has mounted six green candles, a testament to its rising price which now stands at $0.18, a move up of 33 percent, since the coin fell to $0.135 post the plummet of Black Thursday, March 12.
The recovery has been locked in a rising wedge, as the price continues to mark higher highs and higher lows. In this wedge, the coin has broken two long-standing support levels at $0.168 and $0.176, respectively; but its first real test lies at $0.182, prior to which it has formed its first red candle at press time.
Bollinger Bands for the altcoin have, after converging on April 2, opened up, a sign of increasing volatility. Further, the average is moving up but is still below the coin’s price.
DigiByte
Source: DGBUSD via Trading View
DigiByte the 61st ranked cryptocurrency on the coin market is following in XRP’s lead, forming a rising wedge of steeper proportions. Since bouncing off the support at $0.00309, the price for the altcoin has increased by a whopping 70 percent and is now trading at $0.0055.
In trading within this rising wedge, the altcoin has consistently formed green candles since 22 March, allowing it to break the support turned resistance level at $0.00520. Given the pace of the recovery, even the long-term support at $0.0083 is achievable for DGB.
MACD indicator for the altcoin looks bullish as the MACD line has moved ahead and over the Signal line and is now above 0.
Maker
Source: MKRUSD via Trading View
Maker, the ERC-20 token, backed by Ethereum has a muted wedge, almost like an upward channel, hence preventing rapid price increase. However, the chances of a correction downwards for Maker is less so than the other altcoins.
Since bottoming out at $200, MKR has managed to increase by over 56 percent and is now steadily heading for the resistance level which lies at $412.
RSI for the altcoin has been consistently rising, like its price, since March 13, and is now at 46.78 from a low of 20, three weeks ago.
At the time of writing, the crypto-market had found some modicum of stability after a few days of consistent growth and consolidation. While Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, had strengthened its position over the $7k mark, many of the market’s altcoins, taking the king coin’s lead, were continuing to record fresh gains. The examples of Cardano, Stellar, and Digibyte are cases in point.
Cardano [ADA]
It has been a fruitful month for Cardano. A week in which IOHK’s Charles Hoskinson announced the launch of Byron Reboot, an upgrade that is meant to enable a seamless transition to the Shelley era of Cardano’s ecosystem, the altcoin continued to record new and further gains. At the time of writing, ADA had recorded a growth of over 32% in its value in just 10 days. It must be noted, however, that the general health and movement of the larger market did contribute to Cardano posting these gains.
After a period of brief surges, it would seem that Cardano was ready to mellow down and consolidate its position below its resistance of $0.0399, something confirmed by the Bollinger Bands contracting, at the time of writing, indicating reducing volatility in the market.
The Chaikin Money Flow indicator also highlighted the growing bullishness in the altcoin’s market, with the same presenting a picture of growing capital inflows into the ADA market.
Stellar Lumens [XLM]
The Stellar Development Foundation, the non-profit supporting XLM, has been in the news quite a lot this year. In fact, the most recent development involved the SDF’s extensive donations and efforts to fight the Coronavirus pandemic.
On the price front, XLM was doing much better in comparison to its recent past. At the time of writing, it was being traded at $0.050, with the token still a long way from breaking its resistance at $0.058. However, it must be pointed out that much of XLM’s growth was contributed to by the token’s 6 April surge.
The MACD line continued to hover above the signal line, a confirmation of the persisting bullishness in the market.
DigiByte [DGB]
Optimism has been high lately in the DigiByte ecosystem, especially after DGB surpassed the 13 billion circulating supply mark. In fact, this recent development was heralded by the creator of DigiByte Jared Tate too, with Tate claiming that DGB is “battle-hardened and proven.”
This optimism was reflected by DigiByte’s 24-hour price charts as well, with DGB having recorded a 49.28% price increase over the past 10 days. At press time, DGB was priced at $0.006, with the token well-set to breach its resistance at $0.007.
DigiByte’s staggering price movement was confirmed by the Parabolic SAR and the Awesome Oscillator as well.
At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency market was noting a sudden surge in market cap and valuation. In fact, Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, was recording a 5% pump in value, a pump that most of the altcoin market followed. At press time, Tezos [XTZ] was up by 4%, Monero [XMR] by 4.45%, and DigitByte [DGB] by 8%.
Tezos [XTZ]
The tenth-largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, Tezos [XTZ] has been one of the few major assets to reap some profits lately. According to its YTD returns, the coin was returning 44.19% since the beginning of 2020. Despite major falls in the market, the XTZ market had regained its lost value following the crash in March. Further, Binance’s launch of Tezos staking gave a lot of positive momentum to the market.
At press time, the coin was valued at $1.951 with its resistance marked at $2.189 and support at $1.219. However, the coin may have been entering bearish territory.
According to the Awesome Oscillator, the coin had shed its bullish momentum, with bearish momentum soon taking over. However, the trend was lacking strength, suggesting that even though there were sellers in the market, the pressure wasn’t high.
Monero [XMR]
Monero was recording a 0.58% growth in its price over the past 24-hours, with a market cap of $964.28 million. As the charts suggested, the coin was not successful in reversing bearish attacks, with the privacy coin registering losses of 15.69% in the market. XMR was being traded at $55.190, its with immediate resistance at $60.66 and support at $41.956.
The volatility in the market had reduced as the Bollinger bands appeared to converge. However, it would seem that the bulls may return as the moving average had slipped under the candlesticks.
DigiByte [DGB]
The 63rd-ranked coin on CoinMarketCap was recorded to have a market cap of $66.91 million, DigiByte has been at a loss of 10.73% since the beginning of the year. The coin noted a sudden spike in its price over the past week, however, after which it slipped. At press time, DGB was valued at $0.0051, while resistance was noted to be 0.0068, with the support at $0.0040.
Bullish signals were also reversed as the coin’s price went down. As per the MACD indicator, the MACD line was above the signal line until recently. However, with sellers in the market, the MACD line had crossed over the signal line, giving way to a bearish trend.
DigiByte’s native token, DGB, has soared by 13% , hitting a weekly high. Trading activity for the token has also surged after the protocol reportedly approved an upgrade.
According to data from crypto.news, DGB (DGB) has gone up by 13.2% in the past 24 hours. On March 25, the token has reached a new weekly high of $0.009392 following news that the community has approve the implementation of Bitcoin (BTC)’s Taproot activation in its operations.
At press time, DGB is trading hands at $0.925. Its market cap has increased alongside its price surge, currently amounting to around $162 million.
DGB is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and blockchain protocol that was launched in 2014. DGB tokens are usually used to facilitate payment for decentralized application and smart contract transactions on the blockchain.
The tokens can be mined through a proof-of-work consensus using computational power to solve complex mathematical problems, validating transactions, and adding them to the blockchain. DGB’s mining mechanism and scalability has been compared to earlier cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Price chart for DGB in the past 24 hours, March 25, 2025 | Source: crypto.news Both DGB and BTC rely on a proof‑of‑work mechanism to secure their blockchains. While DigiByte also follows a PoW model, it employs five different mining algorithms, which are SHA‑256, Scrypt, Skein, Qubit, and Odocrypt.
DGB’s multi‑algorithm approach helps to prevent the centralization of mining power and makes the network accessible to a wider range of hardware—from ASICs to GPUs and CPUs.
At the moment, DGB’s circulating token supply is at 17.60 billion, which is around 83.8% of its total supply. Meanwhile, there is still approximately 3.40 billion DGB that can be mined or around 16.2% of its total supply.
Why is DigiByte’s token trending? The DGB token has been on the rise since the blockchain has been considering an upgrade to its system called the Taproot Activation process through the BIP-9 soft fork. So far, 95% of its blocks have indicated support for DigiByte adopting the Taproot Activation model.
According to the site, Digibyte has already begun the process of Taproot activation. However, it is not fully active yet.
Initially deployed on Bitcoin in 2021, the Taproot upgrade is a collection of protocol updates that introduce new features that change the way blockchains process transactions. With the Taproot upgrade, transactions require less data and less work as multiple signatures can be combined for verification, rather than being aggregated individually.
Additionally, it can also improve smart contract functionality on the blockchain. In Bitcoin’s case, this feature expanded on the types of transactions that could be processed through native smart contracts on the blockchain.
Another key benefit brought in by Taproot is the reduction of fees on the blockchain. The upgrade is able to streamline how data is processed, therefore cutting down on resources which leads to lower costs for users. This is one of the reasons why the upgrade is highly anticipated by the DigiByte community.
Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.
