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![[Image: Stellar-XLM-Binance-Coin-BNB-and-Bitcoin...alysis.png]](https://zycrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Stellar-XLM-Binance-Coin-BNB-and-Bitcoin-Cash-BCH-Technical-Analysis.png)
A strong Bearish momentum has hit the markets today, with a majority of the coins showing red. This momentum has had the effect of increasing sale offs out of fear of losses by investors. Today’s focus coins performed as follows over the last 24 hours:
XLM/USD
![[Image: XLM_USD_jan17.png]](https://zycrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/XLM_USD_jan17.png)
Stellar (XLM) suffered the fate of most other cryptos over the last 24 hours. It started at $0.109 and is now at $0.107 which represents a 1.2% drop. The Bearish trend tested and breached yesterday’s support zone before embarking on a slow upward trend.
The fall in the price of Stellar pushed investors to sell to avoid loss. Consequently, the relative strength Index (A) dropped slightly signaling an increase in buying activity. The 30 days EMA (C) also crossed over the 9 day EMA (B) which indicates that the drop will go on in the short term.
BNB/USD
![[Image: BNB_USD_jan17.png]](https://zycrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/BNB_USD_jan17.png)
Binance Coin started on a Bullish momentum after it was announced that the EUR/GBP pair would be added on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. This was to capitalize on the Brexit vote so that the Great Britain Pound (GBP) would become easily exchangeable to Ethereum, Bitcoin or the Euro (EUR).
The short term effect of the above fundamental news was a drop in Binance Coin’s Relative Strength Index (A). This signals increased buying activity as well as increased investor confidence in the coin. The RSI is currently at 58. This is closer to 70 (overbought) than 30 (undersold). This means that the strong investor confidence has taken a dip which has created a slow Bearish run.
Binance Coin has taken a small, 1.1% drop as a result of increased sale offs. The 9-day moving average (B), has gone under the 30-day moving average (C). This shows that a bearish momentum has hit the markets and its likely Binance coin will take a dip unless the Bulls up their momentum.
BCH/USD
![[Image: BCH_USD_jan17.png]](https://zycrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/BCH_USD_jan17.png)
The post fork period for Bitcoin Cash has been tumultuous. In the first week of 2019, it looked as if the Bulls would take charge of the market. However, the Bears have dominated the market with the 30-day moving average currently acting as price support at $130.53. This indicates a Bearish period is incoming.
In the markets, BCH is down by 2.03% with a market capitalization of $2.3 Billion. In the last 24 hours, BCH had a market volume of $181 Million.
by Dennis Wafula
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: image3-5-1068x651.png]](https://blokt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/image3-5-1068x651.png)
Stellar price prediction on January 17, 2019. We take a look at the long, medium, and short term outlooks for the price of XLM and predict where it could go from here.
Long-Term Outlook
![[Image: image1-5.png]](https://blokt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/image1-5.png)
Stellar Weekly Logarithmic Chart – Source: Tradingview.com
A look at the Weekly chart for Stellar in logarithmic form shows that price broke the long-standing support line at $0.2 in mid-November and is now close to the first major support area in $0.07-0.09.
Price is facing resistance from the 7,21, and 50-period Moving Averages and the Ichimoku cloud.
Medium-Term Outlook
![[Image: image3-5.png]](https://blokt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/image3-5.png)
Stellar 3-Day Chart – Source: Tradingview.com
A look at the 3-day chart gives similar information. Price is facing resistance from all the moving averages, and multiple bearish crosses have occurred.
However, the MACD has made a bullish cross and is heading upward. Finally, the RSI is at 35, almost indicating oversold conditions.
![[Image: image2-6.png]](https://blokt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/image2-6.png)
Stellar Daily Chart – Source: Tradingview.com
A look at the Daily chart provides a more positive outlook.
There is a significant bullish divergence in the RSI and the 7 and 21 period moving averages and close to making a bullish cross.
However, the price is below all the moving averages and the Ichimoku cloud.
Short-Term Outlook and Price Prediction
![[Image: image4-7.png]](https://blokt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/image4-7.png)
Stellar 12-Hour Chart – Source: Tradingview.com
Finally, a look at the 12-hour chart gives us a structure in which price is trading in. Price broke out of the descending wedge on December 17th and is currently close to the mini support area at $0.09-0.1.
Furthermore, there is significant bullish divergence developing in the RSI.
Price Prediction: Therefore, I believe that in the short-term price is heading for $0.014 (the recent high) and in the medium-term, it will make a run for $0.018 (top of the wedge).
Conclusions:
- Price is close to the support area at $0.07-0.09.
- There is some bullish divergence developing.
- Price recently broke out of a descending wedge.
source https://blokt.com/technical-analysis/ste...at-is-next
by Valdrin Tahiri
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2F...0x1148.jpg]](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fgeraldfenech%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F01%2FIMG_0094-1200x1148.jpg)
Cryptocurrency solution organigram by the Blockchain Exchange AllianceONEROOT
Despite current challenges in the crypto market, global interest in cryptocurrencies has continued to rise. At last count there were 2076coins and tokens on the market. Coinbase also reports that 70,000 to 100,000 new crypto trading accounts are being opened every day on their platform.
This stupendous rise has mainly been the result of the efforts of early proponents and builders of the blockchain technology who have strong convictions regarding their ideology. Idealists, liberalists, cypherpunks, and independent thinkers have been at the forefront of developing the technology and ensuring that people realize its potential. Additionally, the current use cases of cryptocurrencies have continued to generate more interest in the technology.
Are current money-making methods in crypto slowly dying?
The most popular methods for making money on the crypto market – mining, day trading, and ICO flipping – have already been exhausted. As a result, there are little to no new ways to pique the individual’s interest in digital currencies. More importantly, people now have limited ways through which they can store and preserve their assets. In this regard, a comprehensive solution needs to be developed if the market is to grow and achieve wider acceptance.
Risk diversification is another issue plaguing the market. Without diversifying risk, investors may lose interest in the market since it is easy to lose one’s assets and investments. At present, the most preferred method of diversification is having a portfolio of more than one digital currency. For instance, an individual can have both Bitcoin and Ethereum in their digital currency portfolio. However, since both currencies are interconnected, instability and volatility that have been common occurrences in the market recently, will affect them both. Therefore, the diversification approach may not be suitable in the long term since it is now likely that both currencies (Bitcoin and Ethereum) can be affected at the same time.
Investing in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) is another approach that has been used by individuals to diversify risk and expect high returns. While there have been a number of ICO projects since 2017, now known as the “Year of the ICOs,” it is now estimated that 78% of them were scams. Fraudulent ICOs have been on the rise since individuals are promised a good return on investment.
However, very few have succeeded in paying their investors’ money that has been promised. Therefore, while ICOs make it easy to earn money from digital currencies, current trends show that most of them fail to deliver in the end.
Additionally, the return on investment in cryptocurrencies has been a matter of speculation rather than deliberate strategy. This is to say that there is no guarantee or surety that the high returns will likely be achieved due to lack of regulation and insurance as is the case with traditional investments. Even worse, the speculation could go a different way where decline, rather than growth, is anticipated. Growth that is tied to a deliberate strategy can guarantee a return on investment.
Attempts to solve the problem of cryptocurrency volatility have been made through the creation of stablecoins. Stablecoins are designed to minimize price volatility by pegging their value on fiat currencies and exchange-traded commodities. However, the solution works only on the currency plane. As a result, other benefits such as having access to financial instruments and banking services cannot be enjoyed.
Why aren’t crypto exchanges able to provide enough liquidity?
Thousands of businesses across the world are accepting crypto payments for their services. There is absolutely nothing that you cannot buy with good old Bitcoin these days. With thousands of people flocking to create accounts on crypto trading platforms, why is the lack of liquidity still plaguing the majority of more than 200 crypto exchanges around the world?
All of the above-mentioned challenges – along with high transaction fees, poor security and non-availability of fiat gateways to on-ramp new customers – hamper seamless trading in cryptocurrencies. The challenges of the crypto market may have inadvertently started a vicious circle. The problems will turn potential traders away along with their money (that could have brought liquidity).
Can an exchange pool solve the liquidity problem?
Unless a radical approach is developed, the problems will not only persist but will eventually worsen. This will clearly jeopardize crypto adoption in the long run. In a refreshing development, the Blockchain Exchange Alliance (BXA) has partnered with ONEROOT to develop a technology to create a network of decentralized and centralized exchanges that will share a single, large liquidity pool and order books within the BXA ecosystem. To begin with, BXA is the controlling shareholder in Bithumb, Korea’s largest, and the world’s preeminent, crypto exchange. Bithumb is also a member of the BXA ecosystem. It brings along with it its massive liquidity pool. BXA has acquired licenses in multiple jurisdictions around the world, including the United States, Australia, Peru, New Zealand, and Canada, to open a network for DEX and CEX.
“We aren’t fighting fiat. We realize that the crypto movement has a lot to gain if it partners strategically with the fiat-powered system. And that is why we are creating multiple fiat-to-crypto exchanges with many currencies as the backbone of a global payment network,” says Dr. Byung Gun Kim, global co-CEO of BXA.
“BXA is not just solving the biggest problem of crypto trading platforms globally but is also creating an integrated digital asset financial institution. We are creating technology that seeks to blur the lines between fiat and crypto,” says Tony Sun, Chairman of the ONEROOT Foundation and BXA global co-CEO. ONEROOT is the blockchain technology service provider. BXA is the largest institutional shareholder of ONEROOT.
Parting thoughts
While cryptocurrency exchanges have sprung up left, right and center without regard to the challenges already facing the larger players, it is time for a fundamental shift in thinking. Getting on the crypto bandwagon is one thing. But doing precious little to ease trading is another. It is time for exchanges to pool their resources and create a seamless entity that provides massive liquidity, cuts down on arbitrary pricing and provides top-notch security measures to protect traders’ assets. Only then can we expect more traders to enter the crypto scene thereby creating a substantial capital influx into the markets.
by Gerald fenech
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: jesse-powell-cryptocurrency-exchange-kraken-760x400.jpg]](https://248qms3nhmvl15d4ne1i4pxl-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/jesse-powell-cryptocurrency-exchange-kraken-760x400.jpg)
Jesse Powell, the CEO of a major crypto exchange Kraken, warned users of digital assets to not store funds on trading platforms.
The warning of Powell follows a high profile security breach suffered by Cryptopia, a New Zealand-based crypto exchange known for its listing of a wide range of small market cap tokens.
Why Investors Shouldn’t Hold Crypto on Exchanges
Any application or platform connected to the internet by nature is hackable. In essence, centrally operated crypto exchanges are similar to banks in that they hold the private keys and funds of users.
If a hacker gains access into the central servers or internal management system of an exchange, the hacker can steal user funds, private information, and financial data.
As Powell said, a more secure way of storing cryptocurrencies is in a hardware wallet or a non-custodial wallet that allows users to manage their own private keys.
“Please do not store more coins on an exchange (including @krakenfx) than you need to actively trade. Use Ledger or Trezor.
DEXes are not a panacea — look at the DAO. Open source just means exploits will be discovered sooner (probably not by good guys),” he noted.
Some experts have argued that major centralized exchanges can be safer for casual or beginner crypto users because it is possible for new users to mismanage private keys and sensitive data.
![[Image: Ledger-Nano.jpg]](https://248qms3nhmvl15d4ne1i4pxl-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Ledger-Nano.jpg)
The warning of Powell follows a high profile security breach suffered by Cryptopia, a New Zealand-based crypto exchange known for its listing of a wide range of small market cap tokens.
Why Investors Shouldn’t Hold Crypto on Exchanges
Any application or platform connected to the internet by nature is hackable. In essence, centrally operated crypto exchanges are similar to banks in that they hold the private keys and funds of users.
If a hacker gains access into the central servers or internal management system of an exchange, the hacker can steal user funds, private information, and financial data.
As Powell said, a more secure way of storing cryptocurrencies is in a hardware wallet or a non-custodial wallet that allows users to manage their own private keys.
“Please do not store more coins on an exchange (including @krakenfx) than you need to actively trade. Use Ledger or Trezor.
DEXes are not a panacea — look at the DAO. Open source just means exploits will be discovered sooner (probably not by good guys),” he noted.
Some experts have argued that major centralized exchanges can be safer for casual or beginner crypto users because it is possible for new users to mismanage private keys and sensitive data.
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell has advised crypto adopters to store their coins in offline hardware wallets like Ledger, pictured above. Image: Ledger.
Well regulated cryptocurrency exchanges like Gemini, for example, have insurers in place that are able to reimburse investors in an unlikely event of a security breach or a hacking attack.
In October, Gemini revealed that it obtained insurance coverage from Aon, one of the largest insurance service providers in Europe.
In light of recent hacking attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges, certain markets including South Korea have requested trading platforms to obtain insurance to protect investors and their capital.
Centralized crypto exchanges are still vulnerable to security breaches and it is difficult to have all of the user funds insured by insurance companies.
The risk in storing crypto in a hardware wallet or a non-custodial wallet is the lack of presence of a company or a representative that could help an investor recoup funds in an event that a private key is lost.
But, the responsibility is fully on the investor to securely manage funds and back up wallets on a regular basis and as long as the wallet is well maintained, there exists no possibility of a security breach.
Cryptopia Situation
The Cryptopia hack, which prompted Kraken CEO Jesse Powell to ask investors to avoid storing funds on an exchange, is currently being investigated by the New Zealand police.
In an official announcement, the New Zealand police said:
It remains uncertain whether the exchange will be able to reimburse every investor affected by the hack.
Well regulated cryptocurrency exchanges like Gemini, for example, have insurers in place that are able to reimburse investors in an unlikely event of a security breach or a hacking attack.
In October, Gemini revealed that it obtained insurance coverage from Aon, one of the largest insurance service providers in Europe.
In light of recent hacking attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges, certain markets including South Korea have requested trading platforms to obtain insurance to protect investors and their capital.
Centralized crypto exchanges are still vulnerable to security breaches and it is difficult to have all of the user funds insured by insurance companies.
The risk in storing crypto in a hardware wallet or a non-custodial wallet is the lack of presence of a company or a representative that could help an investor recoup funds in an event that a private key is lost.
But, the responsibility is fully on the investor to securely manage funds and back up wallets on a regular basis and as long as the wallet is well maintained, there exists no possibility of a security breach.
Cryptopia Situation
The Cryptopia hack, which prompted Kraken CEO Jesse Powell to ask investors to avoid storing funds on an exchange, is currently being investigated by the New Zealand police.
In an official announcement, the New Zealand police said:
Quote:A significant value of crypto-currency may be involved and Police are taking this very seriously. We are currently talking to the company to gain a further understanding of what has occurred. A dedicated investigation team is being established in Christchurch including specialist police staff with expertise in this area.
It remains uncertain whether the exchange will be able to reimburse every investor affected by the hack.
by Joseph Young
Read More, Posted by: crytocure Trillion Dollar Market Cap, Ethereum Chain Splits & Stellar Lumens Fund - Crypto News
source youtube.com
by Altcoin Buzz
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: grayscale_screenshot_-_jan_2019.png__740...ling-2.png]](https://static.cryptoglobe.com/filer_public_thumbnails/filer_public/f4/03/f403734e-adac-4e89-8cad-6041c72f676e/grayscale_screenshot_-_jan_2019.png__740x380_q85_crop_subsampling-2.png)
On Thursday (January 17th), New York-based cryptoasset investment firm, Grayscale Investments ("Grayscale"), a subsidiary of Barry Silbert's incubator and venture capital firm Digital Currency Group (DCG), announced that it had launched a new single asset fund—Grayscale Stellar Lumens Trust—designed to give investors exposure to the price movement of Stellar Lumens (XLM), which is currently the sixth most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap.
Grayscale offers two type of investment products:
- single asset
- diversified
- Grayscale Bitcoin Trust
- Grayscale Bitcoin Cash Trust
- Grayscale Bitcoin Cash Trust
- Grayscale Ethereum Trust
- Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust
- Grayscale Horizen Trust
- Grayscale Litecoin Trust
- Grayscale XRP Trust
- Grayscale Zcash Trust
This is how Grayscale announced the news on Twitter:
Quote:
[/url]Grayscale
@GrayscaleInvest
1/ We are excited to announce two big developments! First, today marks the launch of Grayscale Stellar Lumens Trust! Investors can now gain exposure to the price movement of XLM through a traditional investment vehicle. For more info go to http://www.grayscale.co/stellar-lumens-trust …
117
21:19 - 17 Jan 2019
Twitter Ads information and privacy
Grayscale Stellar Lumens Trust™
grayscale.co
![[Image: cr_JxDXF_bigger.jpg]](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1054130771806642177/cr_JxDXF_bigger.jpg)
Managing director Michael Sonnenshein [url=http://fortune.com/2019/01/17/stellar-lumens-grayscale/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter]told Fortune that the XLM fund was created "in response to investor demand" and that he was "personally bullish on Stellar’s real world use case, which is to act as a bridge currency in transnational money corridors." He explained:
Quote:“I think the theory is a sound one. An American bank may be keeping large amounts of currencies in foreign banks, and to be able to bring those balances of foreign currencies onto a balance sheet as working capital is valuable. Financial institutions won’t be required to hold balances all over the place. This will improve efficiency and shore up balance sheets for other uses.”
Of course, Ripple's xRapid product uses a roughly similar idea to help financial institutions (that are members of its global payment network RippleNet) with cross-border payments, with XRP used as the bridge currency.
Sonnenshein also told Fortune that the launch of this new fund is another sign that reports about the collapse of the crypto markets have been greatly exaggerated, and that "net investment inflows into Grayscale continues to climb," and for him this is due to "growing interest in crypto from professional investors" and "the availability of crypto products that have the regulatory safeguards required by institutions."
At press time, according to CryptoCompare, XLM is trading at $0.1066, up 0.19% in the past 24-hour period.
by Siamak Masnavi
Read More, Posted by: crytocure With the rising popularity of the Crypto industry, there is greater need of technique and with the smart phones, it’s a very much simple thing. So, I have a very simple and commonly asked question, what’s for you the Best Cryptocurrency Apps iOS?
One easy way to figure out about the BEST one is through Cryptolinks, which is almost like ideal stuff and something that could really help people with doing things.
One easy way to figure out about the BEST one is through Cryptolinks, which is almost like ideal stuff and something that could really help people with doing things.
Read More, Posted by: MasterMania ![[Image: gold-standard-620x420.jpg]](https://thecoinradar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/gold-standard-620x420.jpg)
What are stablecoins?
A stablecoin’s goal is to provide a currency that is stable, which is done by pegging the value of a stablecoin to another asset, be it precious metals (e.g. gold) or another currency (usually US dollar). The stablecoin has a fixed exchange rate with the underlying asset, something that’s not particularly new as there are numerous examples of fixed exchange rates currencies.
You can also back a stablecoin with another cryptocurrency. There are even algorithmic stablecoins that don’t rely on any underlying asset. Major stablecoin models will be explained later in the article.
To understand stablecoins you have to know what money is. And there are several qualities of money you should be aware of, namely medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value.
Medium of exchange
All parties involved in a transaction need to agree that the instrument you pay with (money) has value, which makes it a medium of exchange. This solves the issue of a barter system (exchanging one good for another, e.g. apples for oranges), which requires both people to need the exact goods that are being exchanged. For example, if you want to sell apples for oranges, you need to find not only someone who wants to get rid of oranges, but also someone who wants apples – such situation is not always a given.
Unit of account
One should be able to use money to measure value, that is the money should be able to be used as a unit of account. This feature requires the instrument to have a stable value. Can you imagine, for example, comparing two items in a restaurant menu when the prices have changed three times before you could make a choice?
Store of value
Money should retain its value (purchasing power) over a longer period of time. That means that it has to be a reliable store of value. You want to be able to spend your money or exchange it in the future without the fear that your money changed in value.
There a few other characteristics of “ideal” money: the quality of being interchangeable (so-called fungibility), divisibility into smaller units, portability (easy to move), durability (paper money is very easily destroyed). Finally, in order to maintain the value of money, its supply should be limited.
![[Image: crypto-vs-fiat-money.jpg]](https://thecoinradar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/crypto-vs-fiat-money.jpg)
Cryptocurrency vs fiat money
Let’s take a look at cryptocurrencies in the context of these money features. Overall, cryptocurrencies do quite well as money. They can definitely be used as a medium of exchange, often with some advantages over traditional fiat money (e.g. lower or no fees).
They also fulfil the characteristics of portability, uniformity, and durability. Fungibility is interesting, as it depends on the specific cryptocurrency. The more private the coin is, the more fungible it is. For example, Monero could be considered fungible, but not Bitcoin (as you are able to trace Bitcoin transactions). Cryptocurrencies definitely win in the limited supply and divisibility category, as they can be divided up to 18 points after the decimal point, compared to fiat’s 2 points (down to $0.01, or whatever currency you use).
Perfect joke exemplifying the volatility of cryptocurrencies
One of the few areas where cryptocurrencies lose to fiat currencies is also the reason why the former is not mainstream yet – volatility. Often changing prices means that cryptocurrencies are difficult to be used as a unit of account, as the joke shows. Additionally, they can be tricky as store of value, since the volatility works both ways. The price can “go to the moon”. Or quite the opposite, as the people who bought Bitcoin at the height of the 2017 hype can now tell you.
Stablecoin advantages
In order for cryptocurrencies to be widely used, they have to be better that contemporary money. Which means that cryptos need to be at least as good as the money we have today, that is one that can be used as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value.
Stablecoins may become a catalyst for widespread cryptocurrency adoption. As their value does not fluctuate (for the most part, but we’ll get to that), they are better suited as a store of value and a unit of account. This means that they can enjoy all the traditional advantages of cryptocurrencies, mentioned earlier, as well as solve the volatility issue currently present in the crypto market.
Furthermore, depending on who you ask, stablecoins include several other advantages.
Traders can utilise stablecoins to protect against market corrections (price-drops of at least 10% after a temporary increase in price, e.g. due to hype). In general, if the cryptocurrencies are in a bear market, if the prices are going down due to a market correction, or if you simply believe that an asset’s price will go down, you can exchange it for stablecoins. If the price of the asset does go down, your value will be locked in stablecoins. Let’s take an example. Let’s say you exchange 1 BTC at the current price of $6.600 for stablecoins, and the price of Bitcoin goes down to $6.000, you still hold $6.600 worth of BTC, just in another coin.
But day traders are not the only ones who benefit from keeping the value of their trades. Investors can retain value against market volatility by holding stablecoins. The ability to keep the value of your money stable is especially useful if you live in a country in a dire economic situation, for example one where inflation is out of control (Venezuela comes to mind, but it certainly is not the only country with inflationary problems). Stablecoins might also aid innocent citizens in countries suffering under sanctions, or simply those who don’t want to trust banks or other centralised (and possibly corrupted) institutions.
Retail adoption of cryptocurrencies can still be considered small. But the stability of these coins may be attractive to both retailers and consumers, as it solves the unit of account issue mentioned earlier. And if retailers decide to add some stablecoins to the cryptocurrencies they accept, day-to-day purchases with cryptos may rise significantly.
Individuals often want to deal in dollars (or other major fiat currencies), as during times of high volatility the actual price at which a trade is executed may be higher than expected (so-called slippage). However, regulatory issues can make it difficult for crypto exchanges to allow fiat currencies. Stablecoins neatly solve this issue. Additionally, people exchanging their funds for fiat-equivalents (or as close as stablecoins can get to it) leads to a higher liquidity on exchanges, something that these platforms surely appreciate.
![[Image: Stablecoins-Guide-696x449.jpg]](https://thecoinradar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Stablecoins-Guide-696x449.jpg)
Issues
So far, everything sounds great. There is certainly a demand for stablecoins, and their potential can be clearly seen. However, there are still a few issues to be solved.
Instability
Why is it so hard to keep a currency stable? Simple: saying that a coin will cost $1 is simply not how financial markets work. Under normal market conditions, the value of any item, be it an asset, commodity, or a token, is determined by supply and demand. And every previous and current pegged asset has struggled with this very problem.
One of the most dramatic histories belongs to NuBits. In October, 2016, the price jumped to $1.22, in March, 2017, dropped to $0.72. And in September and December, 2017, the price reached $1.52 and $1.49 respectively. In March, 2018, NuBits’ peg crashed again.
The team did not have enough in reserve to withstand a drop in demand. A reserve, by the way, which was held in Bitcoin. So when the value of Bitcoin went down, so did the value of NuBits reserves. And although in April the price saw some recovery, the price suffered a death spiral soon after (due to panic, selling off, and insufficient reserves). NuBits is by far not the only stablecoin with price volatility issues. Every stablecoin on the market has experienced price jumps, which only speaks to the fact that stability is more of a goal of stablecoins, rather than an inherent characteristic.
Centralisation
Within stablecoin environment, fiat-collateralized ones (pegging a stablecoin to a fiat currency such as USD) are especially vulnerable to centralisation, as the reserves of the coin are usually held with a centralised entity that has to ensure that the token is redeemable for fiat money. The stablecoin Tether, backed by USD, is considered heavily centralised due to its close ties to the Bitfinex exchange – during the Paradise papers data leak in November 2017 it was revealed that Bitfinex leadership, Potter and Devasini, set up the company Tether Limited in 2014 (but kept quiet about this close relationship). Despite the centralisation and other criticisms, including not being able to conclusively prove that they have enough reserves to back USDT (Tether’s token), Tether is currently the most popular stablecoin.
![[Image: bitcoin-cryptocurrency-bunker-safe_1960x...6221e5.jpg]](https://news.trijo.co/wp-content/uploads/resized/a2/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-bunker-safe_1960x1029_ce02071ea89f2b7ef79fd2293c6221e5.jpg)
Vulnerability to a black swan event
A black swan event is a random, unexpected crash. Crypto-collateralized stablecoins are especially at risk here, as they have to deal not only with the volatility of their own coin, but also the volatility of the underlying cryptocurrency. Additionally, as these coins may require overcollateralization, the loss would be even worse in case of a crash. It should also be mentioned that while fiat-currencies are more stable than cryptocurrencies, they cannot be considered crash-proof (e.g. the 2001 dot-com bubble, the 2008 crash, etc.).
Scaling
Scaling is especially tricky for reserve-backed stablecoins, as it is difficult to scale while achieving a 1:1 reserve at all times. In order to achieve enough liquidity, significant investment has to be poured into the project.
Regulatory challenges
The whole cryptocurrency market faces regulatory issues. But with stablecoins, the situations may be even more precarious. They are more closely related to actual (fiat) money, and therefore regulators may have an easier time cracking down on them. The recently released Gemini stablecoin aims to be the first regulated stablecoin.
In short, stablecoins still face a number of challenges; none of them can be described as perfectly stable, as stability seems to be more of a goal rather than an inherent feature. Other challenges include a possible centralisation, threat of a black swan event, scaling, and possibly regulatory issues.
![[Image: 1*aMUFsNG6Zhc2hv-zcC5eZA.jpeg]](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*aMUFsNG6Zhc2hv-zcC5eZA.jpeg)
Types of stablecoins
There are several models of a stablecoin. They can be pegged to an asset: fiat currency, an asset (gold or precious metals), or another cryptocurrency. There are also algorithmic stablecoins, requiring no peg.
Asset-backed
Backing a stablecoin with fiat is also called IOU issuance. This stems from the nature of how these coins work. A (centralised) entity issues tokens that can be redeemed for fiat currency. They are digital representations of fiat money (for example, the US dollar).
When you buy these tokens, the entity issues an equal number of IOUs to be stored in its (centralised) reserves. When you redeem (sell) fiat-backed tokens for its pegged currency, you receive an equal value in dollars, and the tokens you redeemed are destroyed.
Advantages of the IOU model
It’s easy to understand, which is an advantage in and of itself. Moreover, as the reserves are held in fiat (or another “traditional” asset, such as gold), this model can withstand volatility in the crypto market. It should also be said that this makes it the most stable model currently on the market.
Issues of the IOU model
Counterparty risk in asset-backed stablecoins relates to the risk the company does not hold as much in its reserves as it should (see, for example, Tether controversy – explained below). As the model requires users to trust an entity and a bank that stores the currency reserves, centralisation is one of its main drawbacks. Additionally, in order to foster trust, the model calls for frequent audits, which may be expensive and time-consuming.
Regulation can be considered either an advantage or an issue, depending what kind of investor you are. Because of the strong relationship to traditional assets (fiat, precious metals), this type of stablecoin is often highly regulated.
Examples of asset backed stablecoins are Tether (USDT) and TrueUSD (TUSD), both backed by the US dollar (1:1). DigixDAO should also be mentioned, as it is one of the few stablecoins backed by precious metals, in this case gold (1 DGX is redeemable for 1 gram of gold).
Crypto-collateralized
Stablecoins don’t have to be backed by fiat currency or physical assets, some of the current applications utilise other cryptocurrencies as collateral. This allows both the stablecoins and the reserve to be on the Blockchain. On the other hand, in order to compensate for the volatility of the underlying asset (crypto), the stablecoins in this model are overcollateralized. That is, the value of the crypto collateral you put up is higher than the value of the stablecoins you get in return.
Advantages of the model
This model exists fully on the Blockchain, which makes it more decentralised. Since all that is required to switch between collateral and the stablecoin is a blockchain transaction, users can quickly liquidatetheir holdings into the crypto collateral. Furthermore, it allows more experienced traders to trade with leverage.
Issues of the model
One of the main challenges is its vulnerability to black swan events (when the price of the underlying asset suddenly crashes) and relative instability. The model is also quite complicated to understand. This model may also have issues with scalability, as (depending on the level of overcollateralization) the demand for stablecoins may some day exceed the demand for the underlying cryptocurrency asset.
Overcollaterization is an inherent requirement of the crypto-backed model. Some users believe overcollaterization to be worth the other advantages, while others may consider it as an inefficient use of capital.
Examples of crypto-collateralized stablecoins are MakerDAO (backed by Ethereum, and in the near future they will become the first multi-asset backed stablecoin), and Synthetix (until very recently Havven), which is backed by their native SNX token (formerly Havven token).
![[Image: 0_X0IAX4W2ik9f3Tqt.png]](https://thecoinradar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/0_X0IAX4W2ik9f3Tqt.png)
Non-collateralized
This type of a stablecoin model is also called seigniorage shares. Instead of putting up collateral, users are promised future profits of the company, so the model is in fact backed by future dividends. The model works much like a central bank, contracting and expanding as needed. However, this functionality is fulfilled algorithmically. Smart contracts, with a single goal of keeping the price stable at $1, automatically take action when the price deviates. Should the price rise, more stablecoins are minted and offered in an auction, increasing the supply and eventually bringing the price to the desired level. When the price falls, new shares (bonds) are created that users buy with stablecoins (believing that the demand, and hence supply, will increase in the future).
Advantages of the model
The model is fully decentralised, and does not rely on any other asset (self-contained). Even if fiat or cryptocurrency would crash, the non-collateralized coin would remain. Although the model is still experimental, it holds much potential for the future.
Issues of the model
Such models may be vulnerable to death spirals (if demand falls significantly, not enough people may be inlined to buy shares in exchange for tokens, as the chances of the demand for the tokens rising and the shares being paid out are slim), which is a challenge especially in the early stages of the project when the adoption and faith in the system are low. Other criticisms of the model include its resemblance to a pyramid scheme, as the success of the coin depends on new entrants to the system and a perpetual growth in demand (while many fiat currencies have had a steady rise in demand for cash, the same is not given for crypto project).
Basis (formerly Basecoin) has in June introduced a stablecoin with an algorithmic central bank. It is the most popular stablecoin of its kind. Or rather was, as their CEO recently stated that the Basis project is shutting down due to regulatory concerns.
![[Image: stable-coins.png]](https://thecoinradar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/stable-coins.png)
Which is the best stablecoin?
There is no one ideal stablecoin model. Rather, the investors and users need to decide for themselves which features they value more, and which model they consider to be most sustainable and scalable in the future. Would you rather be sure that the coin is fully backed, and at the same time not care about decentralisation that much? Choose the regulated, fiat-backed projects. Do you trust in crypto and are unafraid of black swan events? Then crypto-backed stablecoins, such as Dai from MakerDAO, may be your solution.
A stablecoin’s goal is to provide a currency that is stable, which is done by pegging the value of a stablecoin to another asset, be it precious metals (e.g. gold) or another currency (usually US dollar). The stablecoin has a fixed exchange rate with the underlying asset, something that’s not particularly new as there are numerous examples of fixed exchange rates currencies.
You can also back a stablecoin with another cryptocurrency. There are even algorithmic stablecoins that don’t rely on any underlying asset. Major stablecoin models will be explained later in the article.
To understand stablecoins you have to know what money is. And there are several qualities of money you should be aware of, namely medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value.
Medium of exchange
All parties involved in a transaction need to agree that the instrument you pay with (money) has value, which makes it a medium of exchange. This solves the issue of a barter system (exchanging one good for another, e.g. apples for oranges), which requires both people to need the exact goods that are being exchanged. For example, if you want to sell apples for oranges, you need to find not only someone who wants to get rid of oranges, but also someone who wants apples – such situation is not always a given.
Unit of account
One should be able to use money to measure value, that is the money should be able to be used as a unit of account. This feature requires the instrument to have a stable value. Can you imagine, for example, comparing two items in a restaurant menu when the prices have changed three times before you could make a choice?
Store of value
Money should retain its value (purchasing power) over a longer period of time. That means that it has to be a reliable store of value. You want to be able to spend your money or exchange it in the future without the fear that your money changed in value.
There a few other characteristics of “ideal” money: the quality of being interchangeable (so-called fungibility), divisibility into smaller units, portability (easy to move), durability (paper money is very easily destroyed). Finally, in order to maintain the value of money, its supply should be limited.
Cryptocurrency vs fiat money
Let’s take a look at cryptocurrencies in the context of these money features. Overall, cryptocurrencies do quite well as money. They can definitely be used as a medium of exchange, often with some advantages over traditional fiat money (e.g. lower or no fees).
They also fulfil the characteristics of portability, uniformity, and durability. Fungibility is interesting, as it depends on the specific cryptocurrency. The more private the coin is, the more fungible it is. For example, Monero could be considered fungible, but not Bitcoin (as you are able to trace Bitcoin transactions). Cryptocurrencies definitely win in the limited supply and divisibility category, as they can be divided up to 18 points after the decimal point, compared to fiat’s 2 points (down to $0.01, or whatever currency you use).
Perfect joke exemplifying the volatility of cryptocurrencies
One of the few areas where cryptocurrencies lose to fiat currencies is also the reason why the former is not mainstream yet – volatility. Often changing prices means that cryptocurrencies are difficult to be used as a unit of account, as the joke shows. Additionally, they can be tricky as store of value, since the volatility works both ways. The price can “go to the moon”. Or quite the opposite, as the people who bought Bitcoin at the height of the 2017 hype can now tell you.
Stablecoin advantages
In order for cryptocurrencies to be widely used, they have to be better that contemporary money. Which means that cryptos need to be at least as good as the money we have today, that is one that can be used as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value.
Stablecoins may become a catalyst for widespread cryptocurrency adoption. As their value does not fluctuate (for the most part, but we’ll get to that), they are better suited as a store of value and a unit of account. This means that they can enjoy all the traditional advantages of cryptocurrencies, mentioned earlier, as well as solve the volatility issue currently present in the crypto market.
Furthermore, depending on who you ask, stablecoins include several other advantages.
Traders can utilise stablecoins to protect against market corrections (price-drops of at least 10% after a temporary increase in price, e.g. due to hype). In general, if the cryptocurrencies are in a bear market, if the prices are going down due to a market correction, or if you simply believe that an asset’s price will go down, you can exchange it for stablecoins. If the price of the asset does go down, your value will be locked in stablecoins. Let’s take an example. Let’s say you exchange 1 BTC at the current price of $6.600 for stablecoins, and the price of Bitcoin goes down to $6.000, you still hold $6.600 worth of BTC, just in another coin.
But day traders are not the only ones who benefit from keeping the value of their trades. Investors can retain value against market volatility by holding stablecoins. The ability to keep the value of your money stable is especially useful if you live in a country in a dire economic situation, for example one where inflation is out of control (Venezuela comes to mind, but it certainly is not the only country with inflationary problems). Stablecoins might also aid innocent citizens in countries suffering under sanctions, or simply those who don’t want to trust banks or other centralised (and possibly corrupted) institutions.
Retail adoption of cryptocurrencies can still be considered small. But the stability of these coins may be attractive to both retailers and consumers, as it solves the unit of account issue mentioned earlier. And if retailers decide to add some stablecoins to the cryptocurrencies they accept, day-to-day purchases with cryptos may rise significantly.
Individuals often want to deal in dollars (or other major fiat currencies), as during times of high volatility the actual price at which a trade is executed may be higher than expected (so-called slippage). However, regulatory issues can make it difficult for crypto exchanges to allow fiat currencies. Stablecoins neatly solve this issue. Additionally, people exchanging their funds for fiat-equivalents (or as close as stablecoins can get to it) leads to a higher liquidity on exchanges, something that these platforms surely appreciate.
Issues
So far, everything sounds great. There is certainly a demand for stablecoins, and their potential can be clearly seen. However, there are still a few issues to be solved.
Instability
Why is it so hard to keep a currency stable? Simple: saying that a coin will cost $1 is simply not how financial markets work. Under normal market conditions, the value of any item, be it an asset, commodity, or a token, is determined by supply and demand. And every previous and current pegged asset has struggled with this very problem.
One of the most dramatic histories belongs to NuBits. In October, 2016, the price jumped to $1.22, in March, 2017, dropped to $0.72. And in September and December, 2017, the price reached $1.52 and $1.49 respectively. In March, 2018, NuBits’ peg crashed again.
The team did not have enough in reserve to withstand a drop in demand. A reserve, by the way, which was held in Bitcoin. So when the value of Bitcoin went down, so did the value of NuBits reserves. And although in April the price saw some recovery, the price suffered a death spiral soon after (due to panic, selling off, and insufficient reserves). NuBits is by far not the only stablecoin with price volatility issues. Every stablecoin on the market has experienced price jumps, which only speaks to the fact that stability is more of a goal of stablecoins, rather than an inherent characteristic.
Centralisation
Within stablecoin environment, fiat-collateralized ones (pegging a stablecoin to a fiat currency such as USD) are especially vulnerable to centralisation, as the reserves of the coin are usually held with a centralised entity that has to ensure that the token is redeemable for fiat money. The stablecoin Tether, backed by USD, is considered heavily centralised due to its close ties to the Bitfinex exchange – during the Paradise papers data leak in November 2017 it was revealed that Bitfinex leadership, Potter and Devasini, set up the company Tether Limited in 2014 (but kept quiet about this close relationship). Despite the centralisation and other criticisms, including not being able to conclusively prove that they have enough reserves to back USDT (Tether’s token), Tether is currently the most popular stablecoin.
Vulnerability to a black swan event
A black swan event is a random, unexpected crash. Crypto-collateralized stablecoins are especially at risk here, as they have to deal not only with the volatility of their own coin, but also the volatility of the underlying cryptocurrency. Additionally, as these coins may require overcollateralization, the loss would be even worse in case of a crash. It should also be mentioned that while fiat-currencies are more stable than cryptocurrencies, they cannot be considered crash-proof (e.g. the 2001 dot-com bubble, the 2008 crash, etc.).
Scaling
Scaling is especially tricky for reserve-backed stablecoins, as it is difficult to scale while achieving a 1:1 reserve at all times. In order to achieve enough liquidity, significant investment has to be poured into the project.
Regulatory challenges
The whole cryptocurrency market faces regulatory issues. But with stablecoins, the situations may be even more precarious. They are more closely related to actual (fiat) money, and therefore regulators may have an easier time cracking down on them. The recently released Gemini stablecoin aims to be the first regulated stablecoin.
In short, stablecoins still face a number of challenges; none of them can be described as perfectly stable, as stability seems to be more of a goal rather than an inherent feature. Other challenges include a possible centralisation, threat of a black swan event, scaling, and possibly regulatory issues.
Types of stablecoins
There are several models of a stablecoin. They can be pegged to an asset: fiat currency, an asset (gold or precious metals), or another cryptocurrency. There are also algorithmic stablecoins, requiring no peg.
Asset-backed
Backing a stablecoin with fiat is also called IOU issuance. This stems from the nature of how these coins work. A (centralised) entity issues tokens that can be redeemed for fiat currency. They are digital representations of fiat money (for example, the US dollar).
When you buy these tokens, the entity issues an equal number of IOUs to be stored in its (centralised) reserves. When you redeem (sell) fiat-backed tokens for its pegged currency, you receive an equal value in dollars, and the tokens you redeemed are destroyed.
Advantages of the IOU model
It’s easy to understand, which is an advantage in and of itself. Moreover, as the reserves are held in fiat (or another “traditional” asset, such as gold), this model can withstand volatility in the crypto market. It should also be said that this makes it the most stable model currently on the market.
Issues of the IOU model
Counterparty risk in asset-backed stablecoins relates to the risk the company does not hold as much in its reserves as it should (see, for example, Tether controversy – explained below). As the model requires users to trust an entity and a bank that stores the currency reserves, centralisation is one of its main drawbacks. Additionally, in order to foster trust, the model calls for frequent audits, which may be expensive and time-consuming.
Regulation can be considered either an advantage or an issue, depending what kind of investor you are. Because of the strong relationship to traditional assets (fiat, precious metals), this type of stablecoin is often highly regulated.
Examples of asset backed stablecoins are Tether (USDT) and TrueUSD (TUSD), both backed by the US dollar (1:1). DigixDAO should also be mentioned, as it is one of the few stablecoins backed by precious metals, in this case gold (1 DGX is redeemable for 1 gram of gold).
Crypto-collateralized
Stablecoins don’t have to be backed by fiat currency or physical assets, some of the current applications utilise other cryptocurrencies as collateral. This allows both the stablecoins and the reserve to be on the Blockchain. On the other hand, in order to compensate for the volatility of the underlying asset (crypto), the stablecoins in this model are overcollateralized. That is, the value of the crypto collateral you put up is higher than the value of the stablecoins you get in return.
Advantages of the model
This model exists fully on the Blockchain, which makes it more decentralised. Since all that is required to switch between collateral and the stablecoin is a blockchain transaction, users can quickly liquidatetheir holdings into the crypto collateral. Furthermore, it allows more experienced traders to trade with leverage.
Issues of the model
One of the main challenges is its vulnerability to black swan events (when the price of the underlying asset suddenly crashes) and relative instability. The model is also quite complicated to understand. This model may also have issues with scalability, as (depending on the level of overcollateralization) the demand for stablecoins may some day exceed the demand for the underlying cryptocurrency asset.
Overcollaterization is an inherent requirement of the crypto-backed model. Some users believe overcollaterization to be worth the other advantages, while others may consider it as an inefficient use of capital.
Examples of crypto-collateralized stablecoins are MakerDAO (backed by Ethereum, and in the near future they will become the first multi-asset backed stablecoin), and Synthetix (until very recently Havven), which is backed by their native SNX token (formerly Havven token).
Non-collateralized
This type of a stablecoin model is also called seigniorage shares. Instead of putting up collateral, users are promised future profits of the company, so the model is in fact backed by future dividends. The model works much like a central bank, contracting and expanding as needed. However, this functionality is fulfilled algorithmically. Smart contracts, with a single goal of keeping the price stable at $1, automatically take action when the price deviates. Should the price rise, more stablecoins are minted and offered in an auction, increasing the supply and eventually bringing the price to the desired level. When the price falls, new shares (bonds) are created that users buy with stablecoins (believing that the demand, and hence supply, will increase in the future).
Advantages of the model
The model is fully decentralised, and does not rely on any other asset (self-contained). Even if fiat or cryptocurrency would crash, the non-collateralized coin would remain. Although the model is still experimental, it holds much potential for the future.
Issues of the model
Such models may be vulnerable to death spirals (if demand falls significantly, not enough people may be inlined to buy shares in exchange for tokens, as the chances of the demand for the tokens rising and the shares being paid out are slim), which is a challenge especially in the early stages of the project when the adoption and faith in the system are low. Other criticisms of the model include its resemblance to a pyramid scheme, as the success of the coin depends on new entrants to the system and a perpetual growth in demand (while many fiat currencies have had a steady rise in demand for cash, the same is not given for crypto project).
Basis (formerly Basecoin) has in June introduced a stablecoin with an algorithmic central bank. It is the most popular stablecoin of its kind. Or rather was, as their CEO recently stated that the Basis project is shutting down due to regulatory concerns.
Which is the best stablecoin?
There is no one ideal stablecoin model. Rather, the investors and users need to decide for themselves which features they value more, and which model they consider to be most sustainable and scalable in the future. Would you rather be sure that the coin is fully backed, and at the same time not care about decentralisation that much? Choose the regulated, fiat-backed projects. Do you trust in crypto and are unafraid of black swan events? Then crypto-backed stablecoins, such as Dai from MakerDAO, may be your solution.
by Ula Piotrkowicz
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: BEST-STAKING-COINS-1.png]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BEST-STAKING-COINS-1.png)
Before going through the list of 8 best cryptocurrency projects that offer some form of a dividend, I would like to explain what the dividends exactly are and how you can earn them.
What Are Crypto “Dividends”?
Dividends provide an income without investors having to touch the underlying capital or asset, which makes them an extremely attractive income option for investors. Dividends can be issued in various forms, such as cash payment, shares of stock or any other form.
And when the similar concept of profit sharing is done by various cryptocurrencycompanies, it is termed crypto dividends, which seems to be increasingly common among altcoins. It’s important to note that this is different from airdrops. Cryptocurrency airdrops are free giveaways of pre-mined coins to the blockchain community and they usually occur after the blockchain startup has finished its ICO and the token is available for trade in the open market.
Mining and Masternode Rewards are not Dividends
Mining and Masternodes are services essential to the token they service, and these functions are just servicing and are not in themselves a profit. Crypto tokens that need only program the issuance of new tokens from Mining or Masternodes are not creating dividends.
Dividends are the result of profit and in essence, they are the difference between the cost of a business and its revenues. Revenues are payments received from other localities for shared capital project costs.
The token creation system of a token is not a form of profit. It serves the important function of securing the network and fulfilling the specification of the coin, and the important difference between crypto dividends and minting new tokens, is that crypto dividends are actually a sign of long-term sustainability of an ecosystem creating value.
To generate revenue a service that has results has to be offered, to generate a profit the cost of its inputs must be less than the revenue received for the output. The value created needs to be competitive and sustainable in order to have sustainable long term crypto-dividends.
Different Ways of Earning Passive Income in the Crypto Space
There are different ways to earn passive income from crypto coins or tokens, but these differ from currency to currency because each has its own way of operating and has its own rules and regulations.
A number of cryptocurrency projects offer some form of a dividend. Usually, you hold a certain amount of the tokens in a compatible wallet, and then each designated dividend period (between every day, to every quarter), a deposit is made to your account that holds the coins. It’s extremely important to make sure you use the right type of wallet because if you keep your coins on a crypto exchange, the exchange will probably get the rewards instead of you.
The most popular ways that actually pay you dividends are:
- Staking – Holding a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) coin in a special wallet (usually the official wallet of the currency) and getting payouts for the length of time you hold.
- HOLDing – Purchasing and holding a cryptocurrency in any crypto wallet.
Best Cryptos to Earn Passive Income
NEO
![[Image: image002-32.jpg]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/image002-32.jpg)
NEO is a popular cryptocurrency that supports smart-contracts and has been referred to as the “Chinese Ethereum” as it provides similar functionality, including support for DAPPS and ICOs. This platform is being developed by Onchain, a Shanghai-based company, which started out life as “Antshares” and just recently went through a rebrand to become known as NEO.
Alongside the coin “NEO” there is another one called “GAS,” which can be staked in an NEO wallet for a nice return.
To receive the GAS you must hold your NEO in a wallet and not on an exchange (except Binance and Kucoin that let you stake them), but only a few wallets let you claim the GAS. That’s why it’s very important to pick the right wallet to get the GAS as dividends from the official website here. One more thing worth noting is that it doesn’t require you to keep your staking wallets open at all times like in other Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies.
The return one earns is in the form of NeoGAS, which is a unique reward paid by NEO to investors that are holding NEO coins. At the time of writing this article, NeoGAS is worth $44.5. Here is our full guide on NEO and another one gas.
NEO stakers can expect an annual return between 4-6%. For a more accurate earnings estimate, see the NEO staking calculator.
Buy NEO Now
VeChain (VET)
![[Image: image004-e1532213343566.gif]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image004-e1532213343566.gif)
VeChain Thor is going to move the company beyond the supply chain into Enterprise DApp solutions, similar to Ethereum, which is in trying to push the company a notch higher to compete with the likes of Ethereum in terms of solving business solutions. The VeChain Thor platform will use two different tokens:
- VeChain Tokens (VET)
- Thor Power (THOR)
On the other hand, the Thor Power (THOR) will be given to VET holders. They can use it to perform smart contracts and run
applications on the blockchain. This is similar to the way NEO produces the GAS token for its holders. Read our beginner’s guide about VEN/VET.
NavCoin (NAV)
![[Image: NavCoin-Coin-300x169.png]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/NavCoin-Coin-300x169.png)
NavCoin is a PoS fork of Bitcoin, created back in 2014. You only need to keep your coins in a Core Wallet that is very lightweight and can be done via Raspberry Pi. The rewards are around 5% annually which is not much but since the process is literally just set and forget, it is still a nice boost for your budget with almost no effort.
For a more precise estimate, see the NAV staking calculator.
LISK (LSK)
![[Image: lisk-logo.png]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/lisk-logo.png){kind=logo}
Lisk is a decentralized network with its own blockchain, like Bitcoin, Bitshares or Nxt. However, Lisk doesn’t use Proof of Work (PoW) like Bitcoin, or Proof of Stake (PoS) like Nxt, rather they use a consensus algorithm called Delegated Proof of Stake (Dpos), which is a simplified implementation of BitShares’ original consensus algorithm. Every LSK holder can vote for mainchain delegates that are securing the network, and only the top 101 users with the heaviest votes (i.e. highest number of Lisks individually owned) have a say in problem solving resolutions and are able to cast votes to carry forward motions. Only these top users can earn block generation rewards, which means there is a financial incentive to become an active delegate. Every other delegate is on standby awaiting to become elected.
ARK
![[Image: image006.gif]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/image006.gif)
ARK pays up to 10% dividends on coins when you stake them and vote for one of the 51 delegates. These dividends are paid out every few days (or sometimes daily) so you’re getting instant growth in your tokens.
There will be a total of 128,694,286 Ark Coins. Currently, 97,444,286 of these are in circulation, with Ark using the delegated Proof of Stake.
ReddCoin (RDD)
![[Image: download.jpg]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/download.jpg)
Staking RDD is a very user-friendly process – download the Reddcoin Core wallet and load your private keys into the wallet. After the 8 hours waiting time, you will start staking and earning your RDD. Approximate rewards float around 5% per annum.
KuCoin Shares
![[Image: image003-24-300x192.jpg]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/image003-24-300x192.jpg)
Based in Hong-Kong, KuCoin is a world-class blockchain asset exchange that pays out 90% of daily exchange fees to their token-holders. The exchange was launched in mid-2017 and is a relatively recent arrival in the world of cryptocurrency exchanges.
However, the founding members explored and researched various possibilities as early as 2011. I think KuCoin will be massive in 2018 due to its business model and marketing push. At the time of writing, the daily volume is just 4,622.37 BTC (equivalent to 65,549,835.96 USD), but with the launch of promised features, such as the ability to add trading pairs, the daily volume should quickly grow to a dramatic extent, allowing KuCoin to reach its goal for the end of 2018.
KuCoin offers its own token KCS (KuCoin Shares), which has a total volume at issuance of 200 million, and uses it in a similar way to Binance. However, their mechanism of rewarding its holders is different from Binance.
By holding Kucoin Shares on the exchange, you are entitled and bestowed upon a DAILY bonus called KuCoin Bonus. KCS holders receive 50% of the overall trading fees generated currently, proportional to the number of tokens owned, which means that if the volume and amount of coins traded increases on KuCoin exchange, the bonus of holding the KuCoin Shares will increase as well.
Buy KuCoin Shares
ZenCash
![[Image: ZenCash-Coin-300x169.png]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ZenCash-Coin-300x169.png)
Masternodes in ZenCash ecosystem are called Secure Nodes. There are two types of Secure Nodes – A-Secure Nodes and B-Secure Nodes. The difference is in the amount of coins you need to own for staking and in the reward percentage you get from blockrewards.
A-SecureNodes require 42 ZEN and will give you a 3.5% share of blockreward.
B-SecureNodes
Faced with the issue of quickly diminishing returns for node operators due to the rapid growth of the community, the Zen team recently decided to implement a brand new reward scheme. Under this new system, secure node operators now share 10% of the total mining reward.
BridgeCoin
BridgeCoin is a scrypt-compatible coin that was created in July 2017 as the native token of a new and popular decentralized exchange called CryptoBridge DEX. This coin was created in order to finance the development of the decentralized exchange.
BridgeCoin promises advantages like high liquidity and convertibility, fast transaction, a multi-platform support and guaranteed scaling. It was developed by a highly trained international team that wanted to bridge the gap between different types of cryptos in many aspects, including their levels of scaling, arbitrage, liquidity and price discovery, among other factors.
BridgeCoin is designed to share revenue with its holders and its central purpose is to give the owner of the coin the opportunity to stake it and thereby become a part “owner” of the cryptobridge DEX and share in 50% trading revenue.
I like this idea more simply because of the reason that it has a decent revenue sharing model and that it is a decentralized exchange.
Buy BridgeCoin Now
DigixDAO
DigixDAO is a gold vault services firm and was the first Ethereum-based token that started paying dividends. The Digix Gold Tokens (DGX) are asset-backed Ethereum tokens and each token represents a share of the gold stored. The dividends will come from fees of storage of the gold, and this fee, in the form of earnings of the DigixDAO, is distributed to the DIGIX token holders.
It’s important to note that DigixDAO has a full backing of gold in its vault, which requires costs to maintain, audits, insurance, etc.
In January and February 2018, on a day when Bitcoin saw market reductions of -15% and Ethereum saw -20% reductions, DigixDAO has managed to actually grow more than 50% and is the only cryptocurrency in the top 100 (by market cap) not in the red.
PIVX
![[Image: image004-20.jpg]](https://captainaltcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/image004-20.jpg)
PIVX (Private Instant Verified Transaction) is an open-source, decentralized cryptocurrency that is trying to be anonymous by applying Zerocoin protocol. PIVX is forked from DASH and is attempting to build a usable digital means of exchange that is easy to spend privately and securely in everyday life.
And just like almost all PoS crypto, it also has its staking model, which means that you can earn stakes while you sleep by holding your PIVX in a wallet. This model is super simple and pays decently for staking.
It’s important to note that any amount of PIVX can be staked in the wallet. Also, a proposal was recently passed to give some voting rights to all stakers, which means that you don’t need to hold a full 10,000 PIVX to earn rewards and vote. Each block (every 60 seconds) a reward is released at random in chances proportional to the amount of coins being staked, but in this case, the wallets need to be open and online for a certain amount of time to claim the staking rewards.
Iconomi
ICONOMI (ICN) is a crypto fund-management platform that offers investors a golden opportunity to get into the crypto world by index investing that is managed by experts. This platform will create and trade an index-fund like token and a hedge-fund like token. ICONOMI is a very ambitious project backed by a visionary team and it’s calling all the investors who dare to be part of this amazing ride. ICONOMI plans to purchase ICONOMI tokens on the open market and then burn them with the profits. In this way they will increase the value of the remaining tokens.
The future plans also include a fund management system where experienced fund managers or seasoned traders will be given an ability to create a unique fund based on their preference.
The list of staking coins keeps growing…
The list of staking coins keeps growing: Neblio, Nulls, PayFair, Ontology, Tezos, NavCoin, Particl, Decred etc.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are quite a few ways to earn a cryptocurrency reward. Holding, staking and running masternodes in 2018 will really take off and through the use of these methods, it’s possible now to hold various cryptocurrencies and earn a relatively regular return by doing so.
source https://captainaltcoin.com/cryptocurrency-dividends/
by Philipp Traugott
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: 2019-blockchain-adoption-the-next-crypto...talyst.jpg]](https://coinnounce.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2019-blockchain-adoption-the-next-cryptocurrency-price-catalyst.jpg)
Industries that we never thought would be disrupted, will be disrupted massively and the company executives know it and they want to be ahead of the curve and find ways to not be disrupted out of their business. Blockchain has got a lot of amazing applications and uses cases but at the same time blockchain will not solve all of the world’s problems. It can certainly go along way towards solving quite a few of them which is amazing as a tool.
Let have a look at some of the recent survey statistics from a report from Deloitte related to blockchain technology:
- Around 95% of the companies surveyed say that their company plans to invest in blockchain technology in 2019.
- With 16% of the company executives surveyed said that they are planning on investing $10 million or more into blockchain technology in 2019.
- 84% believe that blockchain technology is broadly scalable and will eventually achieve mainstream adoption.
- 68% of the executives polled also believed that they will lose a competitive advantage if they don’t implement blockchain technology.
- 59% of people who were polled believe that blockchain will disrupt their industry.
- 39% of the people viewed blockchain as being overhyped.
- The executives who are most interested in blockchain technology by industry are Automotive industry: 73%, Oil and Gas industry: 72%, Live Sciences: 72% being the most bullish on blockchain technology.
- 84% of executives polled expect blockchain to provide more security than conventional IT systems.
- 32% of executives expect greater speed.
- 28% of executives are looking for new revenue models.
- Only 2% perceive no significant advantage of blockchain over existing systems.
- 42% of surveyed view blockchain as a critical strategic priority for their organization.
- According to 39% of people surveyed, regulatory issues present the greatest barrier to further investment in blockchain technology.
- 37% of executives are more concerned with the actual implementation of the technology. Citing things like lack of in-house understanding of how to implement blockchain technology.
- 45% of companies are considered to be likely to join a blockchain consortium with competitors while 29% are already a part of a blockchain consortium.
- 52% of companies are focused on permissioned blockchains. So we are going to see a lot of permissioned blockchains within companies so that’s not surprising but 44% are prioritizing public blockchains.
There are going to be a lot of companies that don’t really do very much in terms of buying bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency but there are will be a lot of companies that will because the use case for public blockchain is very real and the use case for value transfer is very real and companies recognize that. Some of the biggest use cases that companies are looking at are supply chain, internet of things and digital identity. A lot of that has very strong value on public blockchains in particular. So public blockchains such as bitcoin will see a lot of use.
If we assume that as surveyed, 44% of the world’s top 1000 businesses start using pubic blockchains such as bitcoin and ethereum on a regular basis. What do you think that is going to do for the price and adoption?
The United States is lagging behind overall, especially behind the other nations, particularly which were polled: China, Canada, Germany. Going back to the regulatory concerns which are probably holding back a lot of American executives from getting more into blockchain technology particularly into public crypto assets such as bitcoin or ethereum. The report from Deloitte finishes up saying that blockchain is not ready for prime time yet, it is getting closer to its break out moment every day. The report states the momentum is shifting from a focus on learning and exploring the potential of the technology to identifying and building practical business applications.
If we go back to when the internet started and invest in companies that became the big things, that’s what we have right now with cryptocurrencies. Though there will be companies that won’t need crypto assets themselves, they’ll be using blockchain technology but we are going to have a lot of companies which are going to be using these public blockchains for a wide range of use cases. This is going to be the new internet of value and the future of the web and cryptocurrencies are going to play a very strong part in that.
The crypto markets are just these powder cakes ready to blow. We have institutional investors coming in, we have better infrastructure than we have ever had before for the crypto industry and businesses are using and investing in blockchain technology.
by Janet F. Sanchez
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: 740_aHR0cHM6Ly9zMy5jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNv...5qcGc=.jpg]](https://images.cointelegraph.com/images/740_aHR0cHM6Ly9zMy5jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS9zdG9yYWdlL3VwbG9hZHMvdmlldy81MTEzYzExZDE2N2E4YzlhNjg5Mzc2NWVhMmQ5N2E2Yi5qcGc=.jpg)
Canadian Platform to Become the Major Global Crypto Exchange by Expanding to 100 Countries
Despite the downturn that shackled the crypto markets in 2018, there is arenewed sense of optimism, as some experts believe the crypto market could fare better in 2019. Canadian-based CoinField plans to make crypto trading more accessible and cheaper for investors — irrespective of where they live — so they can take advantage of when crypto prices go green. The exchange intends to become one of the largest trading platforms for cryptocurrencies. It is already available in 101 countries and the team plans to expand the service to more regions in 2019, including the United States.
World-class trading dashboard
CoinField was launched in April 2018 by Central Crypto Exchange Corp. The platform says it provided both advanced and simplified trading dashboards for beginners and professional traders to buy and sell any cryptocurrencies in just a few clicks.
The trading platform says it offers real-time order books, trade history, charting tools, advanced limit and stop orders, and a user-friendly order process so that a user “can trade like a pro from day one.”
Its engine is capable of conducting “75,000 trades per second, or up to 1.5 million API calls per second” according to its press release. CoinField highlights that the company uses the latest technology to keep the digital assets safe. Its servers are isolated and the platform has implemented three different advanced wallet technologies. According to the company, CoinField
Uses a “one of a kind secret vault that’s been built from scratch to store sensitive information on the system.”
CoinField currently offers deposit and withdrawal options for six different popular fiat currencies and 60 trading pairs for crypto. The platform has recently added four new digital assets.
Deposit and withdrawal options
The exchange offers fiat currency integrations for traders, including the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar, euro, the British pound sterling, Japanese yen and United Arab Emirates dirham.
CoinField traders can choose from a variety of deposit and withdrawal options that allow traders to convert supported fiat currencies into cryptocurrencies swiftly and whenever they want. These options include wire transfers, Interac e-Transfer, PayPal Express, credit cards and more. The exchange claims to have a fraud prevention mechanism that detects suspicious activities in traders’ accounts, ensuring their digital assets and funds are always kept safe.
Lower fees
Designed as a platform that can be used by various traders — regardless of their experience — CoinField claims to offer competitive fees compared to other exchanges out there. For trading fees, it provides a Maker fee that ranges from 0.05 to 0.15 percent, depending on the trading pair used.
Wire transfer fees for both U.S. dollar and euro are free, but it comes with a 24-48 hours processing time.
Adding XRP as one of the base currencies
While a lot of crypto exchanges offered XRP trading pairs to their customers following its spike in price — when the token briefly surpassed Ethereum by market capitalization — CoinField claims to have been the first exchange to offer XRP as one of its base currencies, enabling the traders to pair XRP with over 30 different crypto and fiat currencies on its platform.
CoinField CEO Babak Bob Ras said in a press release:
Quote:“In a very short amount of time, XRP has proven itself to be one of the most reliable and most cost-efficient blockchain networks in the industry. By adding XRP as a base currency in all trading pairs, our users can move funds in and out of different exchanges or different wallets in a matter of seconds. We are directly benefiting our users with a stable, proven base.”
The platform also listed Stellar Lumens as an XRP-based trading pair on its platform, along with direct fiat trading pairs with the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar and euro. The exchange announced the addition of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin in December as a safeguard for investors.
source https://cointelegraph.com/news/canadian-platform-to-become-the-major-global-crypto-exchange-by-expanding-to-100-countries
by Jimmi Aki
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_14_NOV_2018_Banner.jpeg]](http://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/27YdjCbMdKSmguKUAmwCwu/76b6861adf130fecb0810e8382098583/Stellar_Price_Analysis_14_NOV_2018_Banner.jpeg)
Fundamental network metrics for XLM remain poor when compared to other networks. However, current metrics including transactions per day, mean transaction value, NVT, and daily active addresses have continued to paint a bullish picture over the past few months.
Stellar (XLM) is a platform that connects banks, payments systems, and people. The network's native token, originally STR, is currently ranked 6th on the Brave New Coin market cap table. The XLM spot price is down 89% from an all time high of US$0.72, set in January 2018. The market cap currently stands at US$2 billion, and there has been US$65.43 million traded in the past 24 hours.
XLM was created in 2014 by founders Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim. The genesis block minted 100 billion XLM. The project is similar to Ripple, where McCaleb originally worked, in that there is no deflationary distribution of coins through Proof of Work mining block rewards. However, the XLM supply is currently growing at a fixed rate of 1% per year.
The coins created to satisfy the yearly inflation rate are distributed through an inflation pool. The network transaction fees are also collected and placed in the inflation pool. Every account in the inflation pool voted for an account to receive the reward, which is deposited once a week. An account is required to obtain at least 0.05% of the votes to collect the inflation pool reward. Voting is weighted according to the number of lumens the voting account holds.
There are currently almost 2.5 million accounts on the XLM ledger, a number that grew exponentially throughout 2018. The top 100 addresses currently hold 95% of all XLM tokens, and there has been some concern that the holdings of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) are being used to perpetually collect the inflation pool reward.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__1_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/5q6fNoDLhi57nP3opXt99a/2b31f20709bcf6957285cfdff77c9902/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__1_.png)
About 92% of the total supply is still held by the SDF, which is run by McCaleb and chief scientist Mr. David Mazières. Unlike Ripple, there have been no announcements of programmed or controlled escrow plans regarding the large non-circulating supply held by the SDF.
According to the Stellar ashboard, there are currently 104.64 billion XLM in existence. About 8.65 billion XLM have been distributed through airdrops or to promote partnerships and user growth. Of the current total supply, 18.93 billion XLM tokens are not held by the SDF.
The mission of the SDF is to promote global financial access, literacy, and inclusion by expanding worldwide access to low-cost financial services through the development and maintenance of technology and partnerships. The SDF was incorporated in 2014 as a non-stock nonprofit corporation in the U.S. State of Delaware. The SDF is not currently an independently operated 501(c)(3), or non-profit, but did apply for this distinction in 2015.
Last November the SDF announced its intent to undertake an up-to-500 million XLM distribution, or airdrop, through blockchain.io, which added wallet support for XLM. The airdrop is touted as encouraging first-time crypto users, and the crypto-curious. Each user will receive US$25 in XLM after KYC verification in the form of an email address and identity documentation. No funds have been released as of yet, but the airdrop is slated to be one of the biggest giveaways of its kind.
For consensus, the XLM blockchain uses the Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) mechanism, pioneered by Ripple. This mechanism was adjusted to the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) by Mazières in 2016 after the chain was unable to maintain reliable consensus.
FBA is similar to solutions related to the Byzantine Generals Problem and reaches consensus based on the agreement of a large number of individuals or validators. Anyone in the XLM network can be a validator, so the user must decide which validators to trust. Ideally, each trust group, or quorum slice, has overlapping transactions with other groups, and thus can collectively achieve consensus.
For the SCP, quorum intersection ensures that each quorum slice is always linked by one node. There are no incentives or rewards for nodes other than participating in the network and ensuring consensus. The XLM network currently has 125 active public nodes, with 66 active validators over the past two days. Most of the nodes reside in the United States and Europe.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__2_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/31DW5FEweGe07UkUMwWuD3/538799f6f6578395dd85fb9b329cc20f/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__2_.png)
The XLM network uses a default transaction fee of 0.00001 lumens to prevent spam or Denial of Service attacks. The low transaction overhead has made the XLM blockchain attractive for remittances. The Stellar team has announced partnerships with remittance agencies Tempo and ZED, ICOs Smartlands and Mobius, at least 10 stable coins, including Stronghold and Novatti, and Hyperledger.
Smartlands is a platform for security token offerings. Mobius raised US$39 million in January 2018 and compares itself to the Stripe payment gateway. Stronghold is an FDIC-insured USD stablecoin backed by IBM. Novatti is a 1:1 backed Australian dollar (AUD) stable coin, with funds held in trust, similar to Tether. Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies and includes almost 300 companies.
Last year, Stellar announced a new platform which allows enterprises and institutions to use and build on the XLM network. The product combines the Chain and Lightyear brands. Chain's products included Sequence and Chain Core. Sequence was a cloud-based ledger service for managing balances in financial and commerce applications like wallet apps, lending platforms, marketplaces, and exchanges. The Chain Core software was designed to operate and participate in permissioned blockchain networks.
The current number of total transactions per day on the network (line, chart below) stands at ~2,300, which is down from a December high of 9,000. The average transaction value (fill, chart below) is currently US$533, down from a July high of US$3,000. Both the number of transactions per day and the average transaction value have increased substantially since July 2018. The average transaction fee is currently US$0.00117 and has continually risen since April 2017 (not shown).
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__3_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/5kcuCoAA0CFBgWWSRqmWla/183f5eeb6bb958c782e4448326550a76/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__3_.png)
The 30-day Kalichkin network value to estimated on-chain daily transactions (NVT) ratio (line, chart below) has fallen substantially since November and is sitting at a multi-year low. A clear downtrend in NVT suggests a coin is undervalued based on its economic activity and utility, which should be seen as a bullish price indicator. Inflection points in NVT can also be leading indicators of a reversal in asset value.
Daily active addresses (fill, chart below) have continued to increase from the September lows, and are nearing record levels around 10,000. Active and unique addresses are important to consider when determining the fundamental value of the network based on Metcalfe's law. Grassroots interest in the project includes 7,851 members in 25 Stellar groups on meetup.com.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__4_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/39Y8APJL4vrRK9JlnyTLNs/3cb2cc095d02c52ffbb747046d82bcd6/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__4_.png)
Turning to developer activity, Stellar Core v10.1.0 was released in December, which improved ledger stability and updated the command line. In total, over 300 developers have contributed to the XLM project on GitHub, with a cumulative 2,695 commits over the past year, mostly in the main repo (shown below).
Most coins use the developer community of GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft for US$7.5 billion in 2018. Files are saved in folders called "repositories," or "repos," and changes to these files are recorded with "commits," which save a record of what changes were made, when, and by who. Although commits represent quantity and not necessarily quality, a higher number of commits can signify higher dev activity and interest.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__5_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/5BlwtwbZhNUe9wj4fKX15T/84160a77e736ba7ed0197b297d15ff56/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__5_.png)
XLM exchange traded volume over the past 24 hours has predominantly been led by Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT). There is also a higher percentage of Korean Won (KRW) volume when compared to most pairs. The majority of trading has occurred on ZB.com, Exrates, BCEX, and Binance.
Last year, XLM had several exchange-related announcements including; OKCoin listing XLM/USD, XLM/BTC, and XLM/ETH trading pairs, and XLM added to the Circle Invest and BitGo platforms. Coinbase is also potentially adding XLM to its platform in the near future. Stellar also released StellarX, a third-party client built on top of Stellar's open marketplace. StellarX holds no custody of any assets, but the client is also not a DEX, and there are no fees. The platform includes a fiat on-ramp through ACH transactions from a U.S. bank account.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__6_.png?w=600]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/cfODjipunnPxPaMLjNySZ/682ac9d2a7f3a6313904c4581e017829/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__6_.png?w=600)
Google Trends data for the term "Stellar" remains down sharply over the course of the year and is sitting at a yearly low (chart below). A slow rise in searches for "Stellar" preceded the bull run in Q4 2017, likely signaling a large swath of new market participants at that time. A 2015 study found a strong correlation between the Google Trends data and BTC price. A May 2017 study concluded that when the U.S. Google "bitcoin" searches increased dramatically, BTC price dropped.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__7_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/6dlwVHYEx0FL9OwziUNR2H/dd918af238ce3d7e6af06507c47c0c9f/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__7_.png)
Technical analysis
After making a fresh low after a multi-month period of bullish consolidation, XLM has followed the rest of the crypto market with a significant downward decline. The strength of an existing trend or potential reversal price action can be mapped using exponential moving averages (EMAs), Volume Profile of the Visible Range (VPVR), Pitchforks, Ichimoku Cloud, and chart patterns. Further background information on the technical indicators discussed below can be found here.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__8_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/12zZBabArCceB2QbNP0FU6/4ff6ca5003360495c6587e8e012c4d0a/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__8_.png)
On the daily chart, the 50/200 EMAs have been bearishly crossed since June 21st. Price has remained mostly below the 200EMA since that cross. Price is also bound by a bearish Pitchfork with anchor points in January, June, and November. A breach of the median line support would likely result in a drop into the US$0.07 to US$0.05 zone. VPVR also shows support near US$0.05 and lower. There are no active volume or RSI divergences.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__9_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/1iyqRUozRESmMIxnzVhOUy/6f00d14c81641d04cbcb238e9d4534ca/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__9_.png)
Turning to the Ichimoku Cloud, four metrics are used to determine if a trend exists; the current price position in relation to the Cloud, the color of the Cloud (red for bearish, green for bullish), the Tenkan (T) and Kijun (K) cross, and the Lagging Span. The best entry always occurs when most of the signals flip from bearish to bullish, or vice versa.
The status of the current Cloud metrics on the daily time frame with singled settings (10/30/60/30) for quicker signals are bearish; price is below Cloud, the Cloud is bearish, the TK cross is bearish, and the Lagging Span below Cloud and in price. Price experienced four bullish Kumo breakouts throughout 2018, all of which quickly turned bearish after failing to gain additional momentum. The flat kumo at ~US$0.18 remains a high probability reversal target if the current lows hold.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__10_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/6S73ofEyF73Q98zmDfPa9/e190a54d2bb308c80438991eea0e8f80/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__10_.png)
The status of the current Cloud metrics on the daily time frame with doubled settings (20/60/120/30) for more accurate signals are bearish: price is below Cloud, the Cloud is bearish, the TK cross is bearish, and the Lagging Span is below the Cloud and in price.
Again, a long entry signal, or Kumo breakout, will not trigger until price remains above the Cloud. The TK lines have formed a C-clamp, which is suggestive of oversold conditions. When a TK disequilibrium exists, price is more likely to mean revert to the Kijun at US$0.175 than break for lower lows. The flat Kumo at US$0.20 will also act as a magnet for price.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__10_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/1T40c9gSFwJjtrVHLNuLAn/778b2c02c19f0ceedbc8ec353dd00b9f/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__10_.png)
Lastly, on the XLM/BTC pair, the daily chart is very similar to the analysis above for the XLM/USD pair. The 50/200EMAs have been bearishly crossed since December 22nd. Cloud metrics are entirely bearish with a TK C-clamp suggestive of oversold conditions. There is also an active RSI and volume bullish divergence with a falling wedge chart pattern suggestive of waning bearish momentum. If price does reverse, the flat kumo at 3700 sats will act as a magnet for price.
![[Image: Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__12_.png]](https://images.ctfassets.net/sdlntm3tthp6/570k7juNpgFF2WGuKJTzsS/91ac488330731485cc5af98beb512870/Stellar_Price_Analysis_16_Jan_2019__12_.png)
Conclusion
Fundamental network metrics for XLM remain poor when compared to other networks. However, current metrics including transactions per day, mean transaction value, NVT, and daily active addresses have continued to paint a bullish picture over the past few months. Based on the recent XLM projects released, the network wants to directly compete with Ripple in the remittance realm, and Ethereum in the ICO and security token realm. The low transactional cost makes the platform more attractive than its peers for ICOs, dApps, and general value transfer.
A Coinbase listing also looms, which will likely result in a large price spike on the announcement, and a swift reversal once the pair is live. The blockchain.io airdrop will also likely be a near-term bearish event, as most users will collect the XLM and sell it on the spot market, which has been the case for both of the previous XLM airdrops.
Technicals based on trend indicators show a fresh bearish trend, although with waning bearish momentum. Both the XLM/USD and XLM/BTC pair show the potential for mean reversion targets of US$0.18 and 3700 sats respectively. If price makes lower lows, a 50% drop is likely based on the lack of historic price support.
Stellar (XLM) is a platform that connects banks, payments systems, and people. The network's native token, originally STR, is currently ranked 6th on the Brave New Coin market cap table. The XLM spot price is down 89% from an all time high of US$0.72, set in January 2018. The market cap currently stands at US$2 billion, and there has been US$65.43 million traded in the past 24 hours.
XLM was created in 2014 by founders Jed McCaleb and Joyce Kim. The genesis block minted 100 billion XLM. The project is similar to Ripple, where McCaleb originally worked, in that there is no deflationary distribution of coins through Proof of Work mining block rewards. However, the XLM supply is currently growing at a fixed rate of 1% per year.
The coins created to satisfy the yearly inflation rate are distributed through an inflation pool. The network transaction fees are also collected and placed in the inflation pool. Every account in the inflation pool voted for an account to receive the reward, which is deposited once a week. An account is required to obtain at least 0.05% of the votes to collect the inflation pool reward. Voting is weighted according to the number of lumens the voting account holds.
There are currently almost 2.5 million accounts on the XLM ledger, a number that grew exponentially throughout 2018. The top 100 addresses currently hold 95% of all XLM tokens, and there has been some concern that the holdings of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) are being used to perpetually collect the inflation pool reward.
About 92% of the total supply is still held by the SDF, which is run by McCaleb and chief scientist Mr. David Mazières. Unlike Ripple, there have been no announcements of programmed or controlled escrow plans regarding the large non-circulating supply held by the SDF.
According to the Stellar ashboard, there are currently 104.64 billion XLM in existence. About 8.65 billion XLM have been distributed through airdrops or to promote partnerships and user growth. Of the current total supply, 18.93 billion XLM tokens are not held by the SDF.
The mission of the SDF is to promote global financial access, literacy, and inclusion by expanding worldwide access to low-cost financial services through the development and maintenance of technology and partnerships. The SDF was incorporated in 2014 as a non-stock nonprofit corporation in the U.S. State of Delaware. The SDF is not currently an independently operated 501(c)(3), or non-profit, but did apply for this distinction in 2015.
Last November the SDF announced its intent to undertake an up-to-500 million XLM distribution, or airdrop, through blockchain.io, which added wallet support for XLM. The airdrop is touted as encouraging first-time crypto users, and the crypto-curious. Each user will receive US$25 in XLM after KYC verification in the form of an email address and identity documentation. No funds have been released as of yet, but the airdrop is slated to be one of the biggest giveaways of its kind.
For consensus, the XLM blockchain uses the Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) mechanism, pioneered by Ripple. This mechanism was adjusted to the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) by Mazières in 2016 after the chain was unable to maintain reliable consensus.
FBA is similar to solutions related to the Byzantine Generals Problem and reaches consensus based on the agreement of a large number of individuals or validators. Anyone in the XLM network can be a validator, so the user must decide which validators to trust. Ideally, each trust group, or quorum slice, has overlapping transactions with other groups, and thus can collectively achieve consensus.
For the SCP, quorum intersection ensures that each quorum slice is always linked by one node. There are no incentives or rewards for nodes other than participating in the network and ensuring consensus. The XLM network currently has 125 active public nodes, with 66 active validators over the past two days. Most of the nodes reside in the United States and Europe.
Source: https://dashboard.stellar.org/
The XLM network uses a default transaction fee of 0.00001 lumens to prevent spam or Denial of Service attacks. The low transaction overhead has made the XLM blockchain attractive for remittances. The Stellar team has announced partnerships with remittance agencies Tempo and ZED, ICOs Smartlands and Mobius, at least 10 stable coins, including Stronghold and Novatti, and Hyperledger.
Smartlands is a platform for security token offerings. Mobius raised US$39 million in January 2018 and compares itself to the Stripe payment gateway. Stronghold is an FDIC-insured USD stablecoin backed by IBM. Novatti is a 1:1 backed Australian dollar (AUD) stable coin, with funds held in trust, similar to Tether. Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies and includes almost 300 companies.
Last year, Stellar announced a new platform which allows enterprises and institutions to use and build on the XLM network. The product combines the Chain and Lightyear brands. Chain's products included Sequence and Chain Core. Sequence was a cloud-based ledger service for managing balances in financial and commerce applications like wallet apps, lending platforms, marketplaces, and exchanges. The Chain Core software was designed to operate and participate in permissioned blockchain networks.
The current number of total transactions per day on the network (line, chart below) stands at ~2,300, which is down from a December high of 9,000. The average transaction value (fill, chart below) is currently US$533, down from a July high of US$3,000. Both the number of transactions per day and the average transaction value have increased substantially since July 2018. The average transaction fee is currently US$0.00117 and has continually risen since April 2017 (not shown).
Source: coinmetrics.io
The 30-day Kalichkin network value to estimated on-chain daily transactions (NVT) ratio (line, chart below) has fallen substantially since November and is sitting at a multi-year low. A clear downtrend in NVT suggests a coin is undervalued based on its economic activity and utility, which should be seen as a bullish price indicator. Inflection points in NVT can also be leading indicators of a reversal in asset value.
Daily active addresses (fill, chart below) have continued to increase from the September lows, and are nearing record levels around 10,000. Active and unique addresses are important to consider when determining the fundamental value of the network based on Metcalfe's law. Grassroots interest in the project includes 7,851 members in 25 Stellar groups on meetup.com.
Turning to developer activity, Stellar Core v10.1.0 was released in December, which improved ledger stability and updated the command line. In total, over 300 developers have contributed to the XLM project on GitHub, with a cumulative 2,695 commits over the past year, mostly in the main repo (shown below).
Most coins use the developer community of GitHub, which was acquired by Microsoft for US$7.5 billion in 2018. Files are saved in folders called "repositories," or "repos," and changes to these files are recorded with "commits," which save a record of what changes were made, when, and by who. Although commits represent quantity and not necessarily quality, a higher number of commits can signify higher dev activity and interest.
XLM exchange traded volume over the past 24 hours has predominantly been led by Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT). There is also a higher percentage of Korean Won (KRW) volume when compared to most pairs. The majority of trading has occurred on ZB.com, Exrates, BCEX, and Binance.
Last year, XLM had several exchange-related announcements including; OKCoin listing XLM/USD, XLM/BTC, and XLM/ETH trading pairs, and XLM added to the Circle Invest and BitGo platforms. Coinbase is also potentially adding XLM to its platform in the near future. Stellar also released StellarX, a third-party client built on top of Stellar's open marketplace. StellarX holds no custody of any assets, but the client is also not a DEX, and there are no fees. The platform includes a fiat on-ramp through ACH transactions from a U.S. bank account.
Google Trends data for the term "Stellar" remains down sharply over the course of the year and is sitting at a yearly low (chart below). A slow rise in searches for "Stellar" preceded the bull run in Q4 2017, likely signaling a large swath of new market participants at that time. A 2015 study found a strong correlation between the Google Trends data and BTC price. A May 2017 study concluded that when the U.S. Google "bitcoin" searches increased dramatically, BTC price dropped.
Technical analysis
After making a fresh low after a multi-month period of bullish consolidation, XLM has followed the rest of the crypto market with a significant downward decline. The strength of an existing trend or potential reversal price action can be mapped using exponential moving averages (EMAs), Volume Profile of the Visible Range (VPVR), Pitchforks, Ichimoku Cloud, and chart patterns. Further background information on the technical indicators discussed below can be found here.
On the daily chart, the 50/200 EMAs have been bearishly crossed since June 21st. Price has remained mostly below the 200EMA since that cross. Price is also bound by a bearish Pitchfork with anchor points in January, June, and November. A breach of the median line support would likely result in a drop into the US$0.07 to US$0.05 zone. VPVR also shows support near US$0.05 and lower. There are no active volume or RSI divergences.
Turning to the Ichimoku Cloud, four metrics are used to determine if a trend exists; the current price position in relation to the Cloud, the color of the Cloud (red for bearish, green for bullish), the Tenkan (T) and Kijun (K) cross, and the Lagging Span. The best entry always occurs when most of the signals flip from bearish to bullish, or vice versa.
The status of the current Cloud metrics on the daily time frame with singled settings (10/30/60/30) for quicker signals are bearish; price is below Cloud, the Cloud is bearish, the TK cross is bearish, and the Lagging Span below Cloud and in price. Price experienced four bullish Kumo breakouts throughout 2018, all of which quickly turned bearish after failing to gain additional momentum. The flat kumo at ~US$0.18 remains a high probability reversal target if the current lows hold.
The status of the current Cloud metrics on the daily time frame with doubled settings (20/60/120/30) for more accurate signals are bearish: price is below Cloud, the Cloud is bearish, the TK cross is bearish, and the Lagging Span is below the Cloud and in price.
Again, a long entry signal, or Kumo breakout, will not trigger until price remains above the Cloud. The TK lines have formed a C-clamp, which is suggestive of oversold conditions. When a TK disequilibrium exists, price is more likely to mean revert to the Kijun at US$0.175 than break for lower lows. The flat Kumo at US$0.20 will also act as a magnet for price.
Lastly, on the XLM/BTC pair, the daily chart is very similar to the analysis above for the XLM/USD pair. The 50/200EMAs have been bearishly crossed since December 22nd. Cloud metrics are entirely bearish with a TK C-clamp suggestive of oversold conditions. There is also an active RSI and volume bullish divergence with a falling wedge chart pattern suggestive of waning bearish momentum. If price does reverse, the flat kumo at 3700 sats will act as a magnet for price.
Conclusion
Fundamental network metrics for XLM remain poor when compared to other networks. However, current metrics including transactions per day, mean transaction value, NVT, and daily active addresses have continued to paint a bullish picture over the past few months. Based on the recent XLM projects released, the network wants to directly compete with Ripple in the remittance realm, and Ethereum in the ICO and security token realm. The low transactional cost makes the platform more attractive than its peers for ICOs, dApps, and general value transfer.
A Coinbase listing also looms, which will likely result in a large price spike on the announcement, and a swift reversal once the pair is live. The blockchain.io airdrop will also likely be a near-term bearish event, as most users will collect the XLM and sell it on the spot market, which has been the case for both of the previous XLM airdrops.
Technicals based on trend indicators show a fresh bearish trend, although with waning bearish momentum. Both the XLM/USD and XLM/BTC pair show the potential for mean reversion targets of US$0.18 and 3700 sats respectively. If price makes lower lows, a 50% drop is likely based on the lack of historic price support.
by Josh Olszewicz
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: Stellar-Lumens.jpg]](https://ethereumworldnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Stellar-Lumens.jpg)
Latest Stellar Lumens News
By design, the crypto market is inherently volatile. That’s to say asset prices can swing by large margins in matter of minutes, hours or days. We saw what happened in Sep last year when XRP prices soared 400 percent a few days before xRapid and the super hyped SWELL conference. Therefore, although their outlook is a bit outrageous—and even full of hopium, the analysis from a “panel of experts” lead by Ben Ritchie, COO of digital capital management and Bitcoin educator and investor, Jimmy Song cannot be binned just like that.
In their own view, the crypto market is likely to make a U-turn and that means a change of fortune for asset prices including Lumens. While Jimmy Song retained a bearish outlook saying BTC may as well tank to $2,100 before snapping back to trend, Ritchie cited adoption levels and the overall impact of traditional markets on cryptocurrencies.
Even so, the market is generally apprehensive with the scars of 2018 yet to heal. Therefore, while experts can spew random numbers, it will be hard to settle on a figure because like any asset, unpredictable macros can be a real bummer. Anyhow, the year is still “young” and as optimism fill the air, the short to medium term projection largely depends on January’s barometer.
Stellar Lumens Price Analysis
![[Image: Stellar-Lumens-Daily-Chart-Jan-16.png]](https://ethereumworldnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Stellar-Lumens-Daily-Chart-Jan-16.png)
If anything, Stellar Lumens (XLM) has been consolidating against the USD for the better part of the year. By dropping from 30 cents to 15 cents after four months from July to Nov 2018, XLM is pretty stable. However, let’s not forget that by dropping and closing below 15 cents in mid-November, XLM is trading within a bear breakout pattern against the USD.
As laid out in previous altcoin daily previews, 15 cents should be important as far as XLM trading is concerned and for bulls to be in control, then the bear breakout pattern confining recent price action must be nullified.
If not, then rejection of higher highs could trigger a sell off in the third phase of a bear breakout pattern. It is for this sole reason that we retain a neutral approach, tracking XLM performance in the short term.
Rallies above 15 cents will no doubt increase XLM mark cap, opening up opportunities for retest of 30 cents. on the flip side, declines below 8 cents could see XLM sink towards 5 cents or lower by end of January 2019.
Litecoin Price Analysis
![[Image: Litecoin-Daily-Chart-Jan-16.png]](https://ethereumworldnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Litecoin-Daily-Chart-Jan-16.png)
LTC prices may be stable but recoveries above $50 anchors on reaction at $35. Note there is a bull trap and although the trend is still up, traders need to see increased market participation confirming late Dec 2018 upswings. That mean, bulls will be in control but for positions to be initiated, prices must surge above $35 at the back of above average volumes. Thereafter, we shall trade in line with previous trade plans with targets at $50. Otherwise, declines below $30 exposes LTC to Dec 2018 lows of $20.
All Charts courtesy of Trading View—BitFinex, Bittrex
By design, the crypto market is inherently volatile. That’s to say asset prices can swing by large margins in matter of minutes, hours or days. We saw what happened in Sep last year when XRP prices soared 400 percent a few days before xRapid and the super hyped SWELL conference. Therefore, although their outlook is a bit outrageous—and even full of hopium, the analysis from a “panel of experts” lead by Ben Ritchie, COO of digital capital management and Bitcoin educator and investor, Jimmy Song cannot be binned just like that.
In their own view, the crypto market is likely to make a U-turn and that means a change of fortune for asset prices including Lumens. While Jimmy Song retained a bearish outlook saying BTC may as well tank to $2,100 before snapping back to trend, Ritchie cited adoption levels and the overall impact of traditional markets on cryptocurrencies.
Even so, the market is generally apprehensive with the scars of 2018 yet to heal. Therefore, while experts can spew random numbers, it will be hard to settle on a figure because like any asset, unpredictable macros can be a real bummer. Anyhow, the year is still “young” and as optimism fill the air, the short to medium term projection largely depends on January’s barometer.
Stellar Lumens Price Analysis
If anything, Stellar Lumens (XLM) has been consolidating against the USD for the better part of the year. By dropping from 30 cents to 15 cents after four months from July to Nov 2018, XLM is pretty stable. However, let’s not forget that by dropping and closing below 15 cents in mid-November, XLM is trading within a bear breakout pattern against the USD.
As laid out in previous altcoin daily previews, 15 cents should be important as far as XLM trading is concerned and for bulls to be in control, then the bear breakout pattern confining recent price action must be nullified.
If not, then rejection of higher highs could trigger a sell off in the third phase of a bear breakout pattern. It is for this sole reason that we retain a neutral approach, tracking XLM performance in the short term.
Rallies above 15 cents will no doubt increase XLM mark cap, opening up opportunities for retest of 30 cents. on the flip side, declines below 8 cents could see XLM sink towards 5 cents or lower by end of January 2019.
Litecoin Price Analysis
LTC prices may be stable but recoveries above $50 anchors on reaction at $35. Note there is a bull trap and although the trend is still up, traders need to see increased market participation confirming late Dec 2018 upswings. That mean, bulls will be in control but for positions to be initiated, prices must surge above $35 at the back of above average volumes. Thereafter, we shall trade in line with previous trade plans with targets at $50. Otherwise, declines below $30 exposes LTC to Dec 2018 lows of $20.
All Charts courtesy of Trading View—BitFinex, Bittrex
by Dalmas Ngetich
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: Best_cryptocurrency_for_mining_0.png?itok=H-qtcYwC]](https://u.today/sites/default/files/styles/736/public/2019-01/Best_cryptocurrency_for_mining_0.png?itok=H-qtcYwC)
Contents
- Picking a new currency to mine
- Making sure the mining is profitable
- The O.G. currencies in 2019
- Monero and ZCash: top privacy coins
- Horizen (ZEN)
- Litecoin (LTC)
- Bitcoin Gold (BTG)
- How to maximize your mining profits?
- Best coins for CPU mining
- Should you mine crypto in 2019?
![[Image: Picture%201.jpeg?itok=xZ_rnUhK]](https://u.today/sites/default/files/inline-images/Picture%201.jpeg)
Picking a new currency to mine
Due to the decline of cryptocurrency mining, it is rather challenging to find a new coin to mine given that cryptocurrency price predictions change almost every day. If you want to pick a new currency, you should perform an in-depth fundamental analysis (the technology behind the coin, the team of developers, etc.). We’ve compiled the list of top factors you have to take into account when mining new coins:
- mining difficulty;
- recent price fluctuations;
- price predictions;
- market capitalization;
- the number of use cases;
- the developers’ background;
- social media presence.
- the coin has an ICO;
- the project is selling masternodes;
- premined coins;
- ‘copy and paste’ coins in the likes of Ravecoin that do not bring anything new to the table.
Making sure the mining is profitable
Once you’ve picked the coin that suits all the above-mentioned parameters, you have to make sure that running your mining operation will result in generating a profit (a rather challenging thing to do considering the current state of cryptocurrency mining).
There are numerous factors that you have to take into account, such as electricity expenses, mining difficulty, etc. We won’t enumerate all these points since there are plenty of complex mining calculators.
![[Image: Best_cryptocurrency_for_mining%20%281%29...k=C54TId3A]](https://u.today/sites/default/files/inline-images/Best_cryptocurrency_for_mining%20%281%29.png)
Another important point you should keep in mind is that these parameters are constantly fluctuating, which essentially makes the mining industry so unpredictable. Case in point: mining giant Bitmain, which recently sacked half of its employees after tons of hype surrounding its upcoming IPO that is already shaping up to be a big underperformance.
The O.G. currencies in 2019
Let’s start with an ultimate O.G. currency – Bitcoin, which turned into a multibillion-dollar business. This December, the mining difficulty of the king BTC experienced a 15 percent decline due to smaller miners leaving the Bitcoin Blockchain en masse after major experts failed with their predictions. In the middle of the crypto rout, Bitcoin miners still managed to rake in an impressive $4.7 bln, but the point is that large mining farms are primarily responsible while run-of-the-mill miners remain on the sidelines.
![[Image: bitcoin-miners-e1477665223385.jpg?itok=bvhKe607]](https://u.today/sites/default/files/inline-images/bitcoin-miners-e1477665223385.jpg)
The exodus of miners that was followed by a difficulty drop makes it much easier for new miners to enter the market. Moreover, it has been recently estimated that mining Bitcoin is still 50 more profitable than mining one of its iterations – Craig Wright’s ‘mining-friendly’ Bitcoin SV.
The same pertains to another major currency – Ethereum, which has been facing bearish predictions the whole 2018. Miners who can benefit from low electricity prices still remain in business in the yo-yo market as the mining difficulty continues to drop. Since Ethereum is way too established, you might also opt for Ethereum Classic, whose mining difficulty has been tanking as of recently.
Monero and ZCash: top privacy coins
Monero is currently the 13th biggest currency by market capitalization. The flagship privacy coin is particularly attractive for miners given its ASIC-resistance. That essentially means that you could mine Monero without buying expensive hardware, thus disrupting Bitmain’s monopoly, which could be already facing serious woes according to expert predictions. Bitmain came up with a special miner for Monero, but the dev team throttled it with a fork that could make ASIC mining inefficient.
Of course, the coin’s mining profitability tanked due to the crypto rout, but cheap GPU prices combined with low electricity still make a good combination for mining Monero in 2019. However, do not expect to gain profit from selling XRM on a daily basis despite some positive price predictions.
Alternatively, you can also consider mining another privacy coin – ZCash, which is responsible for more than 90 percent of all Equihash mining, though the recent rate spike was a blank swan situation for miners who were up to different predictions. Back in July, ZCash made headlines because of its remarkable mining profitability: it outperformed Bitcoin by 400 percent.
card
Horizen (ZEN)
According to whattomine.com, Horizen (previously known as ZenCash before the rebrand happened) remains the Equihash-based currency with the highest level of rewards. In 2019, it is still one of the best currencies to mine with your GPU.
Keep in mind that Horizen is still in its early PoW days, and they have already paid out 5.3 mln coins to miners. It would be ludicrous to expect sizeable mining profits in the current bearish market, but the project might pick up some steam in the future despite some gloomy price predictions.
Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin is yet another old-timer on the block that has been around since 2011. It poses a good option for those who want to opt for an already established currency instead of buying coins with little to no background.
LTC stands out because of faster transaction confirmations (the block generation time is restricted to ten minutes), and a more efficient storage solution.
A quick look at r/litecoinmining will tell you that the community is in low spirits right now, with some mining for the sake of heating the house or simply keeping their hobby. However, our recent price prediction shows that Litecoin is currently following a bullish path.
Bitcoin Gold (BTG)
Bitcoin Gold is a fork of Bitcoin that was created specifically for GPU mining. Apart from disrupting the hegemony created by super-powerful ASIC miners, Bitcoin Gold is also a marginally safer coin since miners do not have to rely on the hardware that is specifically designed to mine this coin. Hence, BTG miners won’t have to throw away their Antminer if their cryptocurrency lives up to most pessimistic price predictions since they can easily put their botnet on something else.
How to maximize your mining profits?
We’ve listed some of the most conventional (and fairly unconventional) choices, but it’s rather challenging to boil down your choice to one specific coin when there are more than 2,000 options on the table. Hence, it would make sense to mine several coins simultaneously (up to all major mineable currencies) to hedge against potential losses. It is not a piece of investment advice, but swapping currencies is an objectively good option in the highly volatile market where price predictions tend to change very quickly.
Best coins for CPU mining
Yes, you heard it right – CPU mining is still a thing in 2019 (just like in Bitcoin’s early days when even the boldest price predictions couldn’t foresee its present-day price). Of course, do not expect to make a single dollar (or even a single cent) with your old laptop. However, for the sake of collecting coins whose price could skyrocket one day, you can consider mining the following CPU-oriented cryptocurrencies:
- Nimiq;
- Nerva;
- Pascal;
- Uplexa;
- Blur.
Should you mine crypto in 2019?
Over the past few years, cryptocurrency mining has turned into an industrial-level venture, which means that the days when somebody could make quick dollars with crypto mining are pretty much over despite some predictions about the comeback of mining craze. In the first half of 2018, cryptocurrency prices began to fall, and many miners were forced out of business.
With the right approach, mining can still be profitable, but it’s a not a get-rich-quick scheme anymore, and the profitability margin is much lower. Even if most bullish price predictions come true, expect more super powerful ASIC miners to appear on the market.
After all, you can still mine 1 BTC in Venezuela while only forking out $531 because of its extremely low electricity rates. However, don’t be tempted to pack your bags to this ‘crypto paradise’ given that the local government is not particularly welcoming to miners, with some of them even going to jail. There is also another option: Iran, where mining still turns a profit with the country’s government subsidized energy.
source u.today.com
by Alex Morris
Read More, Posted by: crytocure ![[Image: shutterstock_320528222-1440x1056.jpg]](https://www.verdict.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/shutterstock_320528222-1440x1056.jpg)
Robot designers will soon be able to buy and sell robot prototypes and parts for cryptocurrency on the blockchain-based platform Makerverse.
Makerverse, a virtual 3D engineering and simulation space, has been developed by the Blockchain Robotics Engineering Consortium(BREC).
It shares some similarities with Amazon Web Services RoboMaker, a virtual platform for developers to build and test robots. But the key difference is the way in which it uses blockchain technology to protect intellectual property and incentivises robot designers with crypto payments for their designs.
Today, BREC announced that Makerverse will use the Enjin blockchain platform and the ERC-1155 token.
Today, BREC announced that Makerverse will use the Enjin blockchain platform and the ERC-1155 token.
The firm says that basing the platform on blockchain technology will promote transparency and help protect intellectual property rights.
“The automated robotics revolution has the potential to change our lives and society in infinite positive ways, but for many, robots can be threatening,” said Makerverse founder Patrick Mockridge.
“Our goal is to encourage fearless utilisation of robots, enable informed conversations and decision-making regarding the technology, and lower the barrier to entry for creators.
“Our goal is to encourage fearless utilisation of robots, enable informed conversations and decision-making regarding the technology, and lower the barrier to entry for creators.
“Enjin is really well-suited for this task, and we’re excited to work with them to create a modern-day decentralized IKEA of open-source engineering IP.”
How do you tokenise a robot?
The intellectual property (IP) rights for robot designs and parts will be stored on a blockchain. These robot IPs will be stored as tokenised assets in the user’s Enjin Wallet app.
If another user wants to incorporate part of a robot into their own project, they can purchase the IP on the peer-to-peer marketplace and add it straight into any project they are building in the Makerverse workshop.The process aims to encourage collaboration with others on their simulated robots.
“The most interesting aspect of the project is how Makerverse can assist in lowering the barriers to entry for engineering knowledge creation, which is a key fundamental driver of economic growth,” said Loic Sauce, assistant professor of economics at ISTEC in Paris, France.
Blockchain robotics: Democratising Silicon Valley?
Makerverse will be built with video game engine Unity and its collaborative nature has been compared to the experience of multiplayer game Star Citizen. BREC hopes that blockchain will open up robotics to investors and customers outside of the Silicon
Valley “closed shop”.
3 Things That Will Change the World Today
Robotics and AI pioneer John Sokol welcomed the opportunities presented by Makerverse:
Robotics and AI pioneer John Sokol welcomed the opportunities presented by Makerverse:
Quote:“I know better than anyone how challenging it can be creating new commercial robotics ventures,” he said. “Even living in Silicon Valley with over 30 years of knowledge and experience, I am still limited by the few venture capital firms and viable commercial routes, which have not changed significantly since the 1980s.”
“Likewise in education, children desperately need access to tools that will prepare them for the technological realities of the future.
“A concept like Makerverse would not only help me to unleash my dreams, but also level the playing field globally, creating a digital robotics education and incubation space for experts, non-experts, adults, and children alike—and giving them the power to learn and go out and create great products that solve real problems in their lives, communities, and industries.”
source verdict.co.uk
by Robert Scammell
Read More, Posted by: crytocure 
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