Category: Altcoins

Ethereum continues its uptrend. It climbed up another 8%, breaking the man $400 barrier against the Dollar. It currently stands at a 2-year high of above $430, with analysts predicting that it is highly likely to continue reaching even higher values. After a relatively stable few sessions, Ethereum managed to surpass the $390 level against the US Dollar. Soon after, it settled significantly above the 100 hourly simple moving average at $432.

Some Analysts Predict a Surge Towards $600

According to Teddy Cleps, Ethereum could surge by another 50 percent by the end of 2020. He spotted Ethereum inching towards a price ceiling that historically prevented it from making further upside moves.  This level has proven to serve a great service before, during Ethereum’s correction back in 2018. He also said that if this crypto manages to break above the price ceiling, it could kickstart a new massive buying spree. If this happens, Ethereum could surge by as much as 50 percent.

With all of this in mind, many analysts are also wary of a potential DeFi bubble burst. It appears to be overblown against the possible valuation of the startups that it features. This can potentially lead to a new frenzy, similar to the one we saw in 2017, with the now notorious ICO frenzy. During that time, the price of Ethereum crashed dramatically, losing 94 percent of its value following the bubble burst.

So, what can holders do to avoid losing money in case of another burst? In truth, not much. The best way to avoid problems like these is to carefully follow the latest technical indicators. As of now, the main support is forming around the $400 level, the most recent breakout zone. The next major resistance to observe is at the $435 level, above which the crypto is likely to continue towards the $450 mark in the short term. If the currency manages to stay stable at the $420 level, it could start a new upswing above the $430 level.

Will There Be Any Dips Soon?

If the currency drops below the $420 support level, we could see it correct even further. If this happens, the first major level support is near $405. Its most recent jump in value was strongly supported by the massive growth of Ethereum-based stablecoin and decentralized finance tokens.

In addition to this, a few days back, Ethereum transactions shot through the roof due to record demand. And, after the collapse of Yam Finance, Ethereum transaction fees have dropped by as far as 60 percent. All of this goes to show that solutions for Ethereum and the entire market are still needed in the long run.

No government can stop or control Bitcoin transactions. This has been one of the main selling points of cryptos since the first day they appeared. In today’s world, cryptocurrencies have established a strong user base among tech geeks and users who highly value the privacy of financial information. This is true all over the world, even in countries like Russia, where independent politicians and activists are currently using crypto markets to raise funds and fund activists.

But, while crypto advocates and freedom fighters may sing praises for Bitcoin all they want, the reality is that cryptos won’t be able to replace centralized legacy systems until the masses switch to them. So, how far are we from mass crypto adoption? Continue reading to learn.

Too Difficult for Average Users 

Just like any new quality invention and technology, cryptocurrencies have garnered strong support from tech-savvy users. But, what’s halting them to become more widespread is mass adoption from average users. The crypto market is confusing, difficult to understand, and comes with a lot of information. The trading platforms are unintuitive and unlike anything else found in the real world of finances. For the ordinary user, who wants a convenient and straightforward payment method, this is just too much to handle and combines for an unpleasant experience.

With this in mind, when there is a lack of understanding, there’s also a lack of trust. Newbies who are looking to get into the market are overwhelmed with confusing information on financial forums. So much so, that they build up a distrust towards all of it, up to the point that they view all information as spam and scam attempts. On top of this, there’s the prevalent issue of real scammers. Skilled cryptocurrency users with technical skills often know how to take advantage of uninformed users who are just venturing into the market.

Fiat Currency Still Much More Practical

Aside from the technical standpoints we talked about above, there’s one more issue hindering the mass popularization of cryptos. This issue is present with every cryptocurrency, even Bitcoin, and it’s that it tends to specialize only in a narrow niche. For example, Bitcoin is a great way to store and safeguard your savings. Still, it’s a relatively unsupported payment option in the real world, despite being on the market for eleven years.

For this reason, fiat currencies still maintain a strong position over cryptocurrencies. A big part of this problem is that the most significant part of the general public still relies heavily on legacy institutions. They feel that they get everything from legacy finance and don’t think that switching to cryptos will bring them any significant benefits.

With all of this said, the deteriorating economic conditions all across the globe might open the door for more mass popularization and convince people to adopt crypto in the future. One thing is sure. The cryptocurrency industry still faces a lot of challenges. The way they address these adoption issues will play a deciding role in user adoption in the next years.

Despite having a very promising start, the Ripple-backed startup recently announced that it will be shutting down its business by the end of the year. The company announced that it will be completely going out of business, with Coinbase hiring at least 10 of their current employees. According to trustworthy reports, this decision came as a result of a dwindling 2019, a year that saw staff layouts, physical store sales and many other efforts put into keeping the business afloat. 

A Brief Overview of Omni’s History

As a reminder, Omni has originally launched a little over four years ago, in 2015. It started as a unique service for personal storage, collecting items from their customers and storing them in a warehouse until they need them again.

 Two years later, in 2017, Omni introduced a new feature of its service by letting users rent out what they were storing to provide them with extra money-making opportunities. It also moved into helping retail stores run their programs. Unfortunately, as this change required from both users and merchants to make a drastic shift without significant rewards, this attempt didn’t fare well on the market.

It 2018, it seemed that the company finally managed to gain some ground and that it will finally be able to establish itself as a significant player, as it raised $25 million from the crypto company Ripple. One of the biggest reasons why Omni went out of business were the ballooning storage prices and invaluable storage prices, especially because users could get a much more efficient delivery system from Amazon.

During its relatively short existence, the service has managed to make a dent in the industry. However, despite its performance on the market, we are still left with a question of whether the investors and ex-partners will get any of their cashback.

More info: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/48512/ripple-backed-omni-is-reportedly-shutting-down-sells-engineering-team-to-coinbase

Six months have passed since Societe General issued its very first bond on a public blockchain. It still has to offer the instruments to its clients or to take advantage of the whole potential of the smart contract, which mediates the sale. Although, this French financial institution with a big reputation claims that it didn’t forget regarding the €100 million bond or approximately $110 million. They sold the bond to itself, and they’ve said that they’re still quite interested in trialing the blockchain technology in the long run. 

“Our intention isn’t to resell this at this particular time,” as said by Jean-Marc Stenger, who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Societe General subsidiary Forge Digital Capital Markets. That happens to be one of many startups that are a part of the “intrapreneurial” program in this financial institution. This bank has placed covered bonds on the well-known cryptocurrency, Ethereum, all the way back in April this year.  It is one of a couple of established companies that experimented with the issuing debt with the help of one of the biggest public blockchains by market cap.

In November last year, BBVA has recorded a massive $150 million loan on ETH. This September, Santander has settled both sides of a colossal $20 million bond transaction on ETH, which means that it didn’t just issue a token to represent the debt, but it has also settled the price amount with the assist of other tokens representing cash. Although Societe General is still the owner of the bond which has made, the lender is going to supervise if the Ethereum’s smart contract can indeed automate the usual functions of issuing debt.

“We’re demonstrating that every event of the bond has been written in the smart contract, and every event is managed by it,” by the words of Stenger. “We’re going to see if this particular technology becomes the future.”

With the word “event,” Jean-Marc Stenger means that the before-mentioned smart contract is successfully managing the parameters of the issuance. This happens to include a certain mechanism that extends the maturity of the bond, which was issued by one of the best financial institutions in the world, Societe General. That is an option intended for the issuer, in this case, SocGen, to call the security back if it is necessary and also an automated calculation of the fantastic semi-annual coupon that is paid to the bondholder.

Crypto is back in the game! Even though months ago, the Bitcoin was in the $3,000s which was very low, today it oscillates somewhere around the mark of $10,000 (even less, under $8500 as of writing), which many crypto junkies find to be satisfying. The reality is that the playing field is still alive.

With all seriousness, this isn’t some get rich quick schemes which are quite common nowadays. But for crypto enthusiasts who are connected to their mobile devices all day, some money can be earned in airdrops and also in bounty programs. The objective: crypto companies are going to compensate you with a couple of dollars ( or in their very own tokens) if you happen to spread the word about that particular company on social media.

Telegram airdrop

For instance, here’s an airdrop for the users of Telegram: CUDOS, which happens to be a cloud computing startup, is currently airdropping tokens in $7 value to those who become a part of their Telegram community. All you have to do for some tokens is to accomplish pretty straightforward assignments, chat with a Telegram bot, and give your info to the airdrop form.

Bounty Types

Startups use two bounty types: the pre-offering one and the post-offering. The pre-offering bounty is carried out before the project is launched, and the main focus is on marketing to attract potential investors. The goal of post-offering bounty is perfecting the project, communicating and building a strong community on social media like Instagram, for example.

The disadvantages of bounties and airdrops is that people can find them difficult to sell them for fiat currency or even Bitcoin. They can even be scams.

Referral Programs

Here’s why referral programs are probably slightly superior to the two before-mentioned ways of making money in crypto; you don’t have to invest any money into these programs. The only thing that has to do be done is to create an account on the crypto exchange, which offers the affiliate program. There are many exchanges who are trustworthy. You have to know that those aren’t startups, but legitimate companies.

When you look at the best 44 crypto exchanges, exactly 26 of them will give you some financial prizes and 18 of them have affiliate programs. VinDAX and Currency are the newest exchanges in the year 2019, and referral programs in which they offer to crypto admirers.

In the duration of the 2017 ICO boom as well as the crypto craze, retail cryptocurrency investors have put faith in new, untested altcoins in search for new dominant crypto like Bitcoin. The BTC represented a revolution in financial technology at that time. But, unfortunately, after the 2018 bear market, those dreams were completely shattered. Also, there’s a possibility that even if the overall market recovers, the promising altcoins may never reach their full potential. Instead, the following crypto bull run will probably be driven by a whole new and rising wave of altcoins that will satisfy the overall hype of the previous ones, but without the negative sentiment. 

Coinbase Is Exploring The New Wave Of Crypto Assets

Yesterday evening, the crypto exchange Coinbase, which is located in San Francisco, has revealed a new and exciting lineup of altcoins they’re exploring as altcoins that will potentially list in the near future. At first, the crypto community was shocked, because the leader of the cryptocurrency industry didn’t pay much attention to a vast majority of altcoin projects that investors were persistent to be listed.

There are some names in the list like the Telegram, and an older crypto-like Filecoin, but the other ones weren’t released and were quite unknown to the general public such as Chia and Polkadot. What’s common for these new altcoins, is that they’re mainly from businesses in the U.S. The before-mentioned crypto, Chia is from San Francisco and led by Bram Cohen, who was also, once, the frontman of BitTorrent.

New Altcoins That Will Outshine The Old Ones

A lot of crypto investors aren’t happy that their preferred tokens form the bubble of the year 2017, weren’t on the Coinbase’s list of promising additions, but the truth is that Coinbase has its focus on where the money is going or where it’ll be. The harsh reality is that the altcoins from last year that were the main topic of many conversations or were then hotly traded are now the thing of the past, simply, forgotten and dying. Of course, there are some incredible crypto’s among thousands of them on today’s market, but the thing is that most of those altcoins will sadly, never be applied to real-life in absolutely any way.

Crypto is really, a speculative market, because the value of the currencies happens to be driven by some future expectations as well as the general hype about them. And also with the fact that the older altcoins of the cryptocurrency market that are plagued by bagholders who happen to be prepared to dump their assets, as much as 99%. Also, if there were any indications of a price rise, they could never revisit their previous setbacks at the hype bubble height. 

Because of these factors, there is a good chance that the newly-introduced, fresh altcoins are offering hype and potential, are going to outperform every older altcoin in the duration of the following bull run.