Coinstelegram – Altcoins Cryptocurrency News ICO growth has been tremendous since it emerged 4 years ago. From frauds to real great projects, we haven’t seen yet any exciting blockchain-based applications that would use the whole potential of the technology. For instance, what do we find if we search for blockchain-based apps? Some sort of articles like this one on medium.com (6 Interesting Blockchain-based Applications and What They Do). What we find inside? All these projects carry beautiful ideas underneath descriptions and wonderful teams of developers and advisors, but there is one point that raises question: neither of these projects can be named “a blockchain-based application”. What ADAMANT is building application indeed. All we see the popularity messengers gain nowadays. Apple added emoji, than animoji, than API for developers to create stickers and games for IMessage. In one if the latest IOS releases they even gave users the ability to send each other money from one apple wallet to another (there are several countries, where this function doesn’t work due to government regulations, but still. Chinese WeChat is another great example. Through years app developed from simply the most popular messenger in China into the app for everything – with over 580 million in-messenger mini-programs announced by WeChat in January [1]. Chinese trade through messengers, find love, pay taxes, transport fees, find cars for rent, read news… simply everything. Messengers are changing our consumption model the same way social networks did one day. So what we have? Two technologies with great potential: blockchain, messengers. And ADAMANT is trying to combine them. So what hides behind the name? These guys are trying to create web messenger (for maximum safety and no information stored on device) with blockchain encryption and large functionality. So here is some info about app and its advantages from company website: We all that range of simple but useful and so needed functions messenger can become a big player on this market. Being the first blockchain messenger and even first indeed blockchain-based app it can be valued as a good investment. Pre-ICO is going to the end and ICO starts on 01/30/2018, lasting for 2 months according to website. Our advice is at least add these guys in your short-list of followed blockchain startups and read whitepaper. Coinstelegram – Altcoins Cryptocurrency News

As one of the quickest and most convenient ways to transfer physical cash into Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin AMTs continued their impressive growth in 2021.

According to data presented by Trading Platforms, the total number of Bitcoin ATMs surged by 70% in the last six months and hit 16,500 last week.

Bitcoin ATMs, also known as BTMs, enables users with quick access to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Developed countries like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom hold the biggest number of BTMs. However, they also became very popular in countries with volatile financial markets whose citizens require a quick exchange of an official currency for a digital asset not regulated by the government.

In December 2017, there were 1,948 BTMs worldwide, revealed Coin ATM Radar and Statista data. In the next twelve months, another 1,953 crypto ATMs were installed worldwide, with the total number jumping over 4,000 in December 2018.

The number of Bitcoin ATMs operating around the world continued growing and hit 6,036 in December 2019, a 1,926 increase in a year.

However, 2020 witnessed an explosive growth of BTMs. Statistics indicate the number of ATMs supporting digital coins doubled and jumped to 12,735 in December last year.

The increasing trend continued in 2021, with almost 2,600 new BTMs installed since January, more than in the entire 2019.

Analyzed by geography, the United States represents the leading crypto ATM market, with 84% of all Bitcoin ATMs globally. The Coin ATM Radar data also revealed the number of BTMs operating in the United States surged by 85% in the last six months.

In September 2020, US citizens could use 7,567 crypto ATMs all around the country. This figure jumped to almost 14,000 in March.

As the second-largest BTM market globally, Canada also witnessed impressive growth in the number of BTMs, with the figure jumping from 866 in September to 1,275 last week.

The CoinATM data also revealed that the United Kingdom is the only one among the top three markets which has witnessed a downsizing trend. The number of crypto ATMs in the UK plunged by 25% in the last six months, landing at 195 in March. Austria, Spain, and Poland follow, with 154, 121, and 107 BTMs, respectively.

Statistics also show Genesis Coin still tops the list of largest Bitcoin ATM manufacturers, with a 38% market share and 6,346 BTMs operating worldwide as of March. General Bytes ranked as the second-largest manufacturer in the world with a 27% market share and 4,512 BTMs. BitAccess and Coinsource follow with 1,578 and 1,214 crypto ATMs, respectively.

Listen To This Episode: In this episode of Bitcoin Magazine’s Bitcoin In Asia, some of the godfathers of Bitcoin — Nick Szabo, Adam Back and David Chaum — discuss the history of the technology with host John Riggins. This episode was recorded during a live panel from Seoul at Korea Blockchain Week and is laid out as a history of the ideas and events that led to Bitcoin from their first-person accounts. It also features their current thoughts on the latest experiments in Bitcoin and what excites them about its future.  Szabo is a computer scientist, cryptographer, the designer of BitGold and a smart contracts pioneer. Back is an applied cryptographer with a computer science PhD in distributed systems, the inventor of Hashcash and cofounder and CEO of Blockstream. Chaum is best known for his fundamental innovations in cryptography, including privacy technology and secure election systems, as well as digital cash, and is currently leading Elixxir and Praxxis. Both Back and Chaum are cited in the Bitcoin white paper, while Szabo’s influence has been mentioned by Satoshi on Bitcointalk.org. From the cryptography and cypherpunk movements to David’s DigiCash, Adam’s Hashcash proof-of-work, Nick’s BitGold and more, their contributions were foundational to the development of Bitcoin, and it was fascinating to have them together and playing off of each other in a discussion of that history. The post Video: Nick Szabo, Adam Back And David Chaum On The History Of Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Episode 20 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and ADAM CEO Michelle Bond.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to  [email protected] .

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Michelle Bond has been focused on financial regulation for decades, and a turn to crypto policy a few years ago led her to take the helm at the Association for Digital Assets Markets by the end of 2020.

ADAM is a trade association for crypto markets, featuring a code of conduct that requires its members to commit to operating with certain requirements of transparency and speed.

"ADAM is 100% a standards-setting body," Bond said during the most recent episode of The Scoop. 

ADAM's membership includes such industry players as Anchorage, Paxos and Genesis and the group functions as a collective voice for its members. The group's ultimate goal is to provide for the crypto market what FINRA is to securities brokerages: an industry-spearheading body for self-regulation.

"We would like to, one day, become a self-regulatory organization. We believe that that is not something that is decreed, that is earned. At the current moment, we're setting the standards," said Bond.

Among major issues of the day, Bond noted that industry participants are awaiting a response from the Treasury's FinCEN office on the recently closed comments on its proposal to monitor rules. 

Less publicized but still critical is custody. Financial regulators in Washington, Bond said, "are 1,000% asking questions and grappling with custody."

As always, writing up such policies for crypto finance entails a combination of technological and legal savvy. This is where self-regulation comes in. Though Bond, like much of the industry, lamented the lack of coherent frameworks from financial watchdogs like her former workplace, the SEC, she identified the situation as fairly standard:

"Regulators will never come right out and endorse anything. That will never happen. And that makes sense; that's not their job."

But by presenting a code for how to operate in today's fast-moving crypto market, ADAM aims to accomplish what regulators have not. 

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The rise of the world’s most popular decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap (UNI) has been turning heads in the decentralized finance (DeFi) market. The UNI token traded at $34.00 with a daily trading volume of $1.5 billion and saw a rise up to 45.7% for the week, with the UNI price having surged over 600% this year to date.

As rumors and hype continues to build around the anticipated UNI-V3 upgrade, Uniswap has found its place in the top 10 cryptocurrencies list, with the industry-standard of DEXs currently with a total value of over $3.5 billion.

UNI founder and creator Hayden Adams took to Twitter last month regarding the launch of UNI-V3, which is planned for sometime this year, although there is still no official word on the launch date for the upgraded protocol.

“2019: Uniswap V1 proved AMMs compete with traditional exchanges. 2020: Uniswap V2 will prove AMMs can do things traditional exchanges cannot. 2021: Uniswap V3 will face slippage and capital efficiency head on to prove AMMs can outcompete traditional exchanges on all fronts” – Hayden Adams (@haydenzadams) February 14, 2020 via Twitter.

The second Tweet regarding UNI-V3 was on February 15, where Adams stated, “Uniswap V3 will face slippage and capital efficiency head on to prove AMMs can outcompete traditional exchanges on all fronts.”

The latest announcement of the EIP-1559 implementation on the Ethereum (ETH) network is positive news for Uniswap and has temporarily eased gas fee worries by standardizing the fee structure.

When implemented, the EIP-1559 upgrade will reduce the arbitrary nature of transacting on the network and make ETH deflationary. Since EIP-1559 will lower transaction fees drastically, this should greatly benefit not only Uniswap but other DEXs built on the ETH blockchain, too. Ethereum’s EIP-1559 upgrade proposal is finalized and scheduled for inclusion in the London hard-fork this July.

Now that the DeFi token has entered price discovery mode, blockchain activity suggests it is ready for another significant uptick – the number of large UNI transactions on the network has risen by a whopping 218% in the past two days. This sudden uptrend of transactions (worth more than $100,000) shows that high net worth investors and whales are interested in UNI at current price levels.

As well, the number of new UNI addresses created daily is up 64% during this timeframe. Continuous expansion of the network over time is a metric reflective of overall user adoption – another positive sign.

Finally, users expect solved inefficiencies regarding slippage currently experienced UNI’s present iteration with the introduction of UNI-V3 and for the upgrade to feature liquidity-mining pools and reduced gas fees. Alongside these expectations, and with DeFi enthusiasts eagerly awaiting an official announcement of the UNI-V3 full-upgrade plan, analysts anticipate that UNI will hit the top five most valuable cryptos in terms of market cap, with a price target of $50 by the end of this year.

The UNI price soared nearly 60% to the upside the past few days, likely due to the immense hype surrounding Uniswap creator Hayden Adams’ tweets regarding UNI-V3 and the Ethereum EIP-1559 upgrade announcement.

In addition to the overall bullish sentiment of the market spanning the DeFi space as a whole, the previously mentioned factors undoubtedly played a vital role in the tremendous upswing of the UNI token we have recently witnessed. It’s safe to say that if FOMO hasn’t yet been a factor in the Uniswap token’s price appreciation, it surely will be if the bulls continue their dominant presence over the bears.

However, only time will tell how the bull-market ultimately plays out and for how long. One thing is for sure, though: we are definitely in an alt-coin season bull market, and there is likely still plenty more action to come.

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It looks like the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is opening up fresh lawsuits against cryptocurrency companies for conducting token sales, which the SEC considers illegal securities offering. After a massive lawsuit against blockchain payments company Ripple, the SEC has now filed a lawsuit against New Hampshire-based crypto startup LBRY Inc., accusing the company of selling unregistered securities in the form of its token.

LBRY is a decentralized content publishing platform, and according to the company the platform’s native token LBRY, also dubbed as LBRY Credits, is used to publish and buy content. But, the SEC’s complaint argues that LBRY Credits are securities and the company’s token sales were an unregistered offering to investors.

“According to the SEC’s complaint, from at least July 2016 to February 2021, LBRY, which offers a video sharing application, sold digital asset securities called “LBRY Credits” to numerous investors, including investors based in the US,” the SEC said in a statement published Monday. “The complaint alleges that LBRY did not file a registration statement for the offering and that the offering failed to satisfy an exemption from registration.”

The suit adds that LBRY Inc. “received more than $11 million in U.S. dollars, Bitcoin, and services from purchasers who participated in its offering.”

Meanwhile, LBRY states that this lawsuit was a broader attack on the entire cryptocurrency industry in the United States, similar to the events that have unfolded previously with major names like messenger app Kik and, more recently, distributed ledger firm Ripple.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a complaint against LBRY Inc alleging that all distributions of LBRY Credits by LBRY Inc are unregistered securities offerings,” the firm wrote in the FAQ section of its website which was launched following the lawsuit’s filing.

“This claim is a tremendous threat to the entire cryptocurrency industry.”

The company also noted that it had been the subject of an SEC inquiry for three years now, adding:

“LBRY Inc has been preparing to fight this case for three full years, which is how long the SEC has been investigating this matter. We wanted to tell you sooner, but transparency in ongoing investigations is not welcomed by the SEC.”

News coming in recently from various sources that the Indian government is planning to ban cryptocurrencies in a hurry despite knowing the fact that India has over 7 million active users holding crypto worth over $ 1 billion. It began in 2013 with RBI cautioning the users of virtual currencies and subsequently bringing in a circular to bar banks from dealing with crypto companies and currencies.

Now the Finance Minister has said:

“A high-level Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) constituted under the Chairmanship of Secretary (Economic Affairs) to study the issues related to virtual currencies and propose specific actions ….”

Their intent seems quite clear which brings to the matter of the case – “What to do with my portfolio once the ban is applied?”, “Will I be jailed for having crypto in my wallet?” or “How will I be able to cash out my holdings in fiat currencies?”

Don’t worry, Chatex is your safeguard. With more than 300 payment methods, Chatex is a reliable chatbot with a built-in P2P platform right in the Telegram messenger. This means that if ever the ban happens, Chatex is there to save users from all the hassle. Its integration with Telegram makes it impenetrable and impossible to hack. With no other service provider offering such a secured framework, Chatex takes pride in its product and the community.

The dynamism of Chatex is unparalleled, and the company welcomes all kinds of suggestions and concerns from users. Specifically for the Indian traders, Chatex has assured proper exchange of cryptocurrencies if the worst-case scenario hits the dock. We are all prepared to accommodate the sudden surge, which might be caused once the news gets out.

Chatex promises to get users the right prices within a few touches on the phone screen. With a sincere team to handle the vastness of the crypto market in India, Chatex is all prepared to be everyone’s personal tool to face the adversity of the crypto ban which might be announced probably very soon.

A 24/7 prompt support with 15 minutes resolution time in all kinds of queries and issues, Chatex is dedicated to its customers and caters to their needs in a tailor-made manner. The wallet is PIN-protected which can be set up by the user itself along with a 2-Factor Authentication feature. The user base comprises individual investors, traders, and businesses as well. Currently supporting 11 cryptocurrencies and over 140 fiat currencies, Chatex is the most flexible and accessible globally. Chatex commitment to build a transparent and low-cost financial system has been realised by the released remittance feature on the platform, which charges 0% fee for sending payments between Chatex wallets. 

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A surge in participation in decentralized finance and decentralized exchanges has increased competition among projects especially to improve liquidity offerings. Uniswap Labs released an overview of the upcoming Uniswap Protocol v3. According to a release shared with AMBCrypto, this new feature aims to “increase capital efficiency and trade execution quality.” The new protocol is scheduled to launch on the Ethereum mainnet on 5 May, 2021.

In the previous version, liquidity providers would keep capital as a reserve for an infinite range of prices; however, Uniswap v3 includes “concentrated liquidity” that allows individual liquidity providers control over price ranges their capital is allocated to. Thus liquidity providers can provide liquidity with “up to 4000x capital efficiency” relative to v2.

Other features such as multiple fee tiers and advanced oracles are said to be “easier and cheaper” to integrate.

Addressing the launch, Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap Labs said that the protocol serves as a “critical infrastructure” for decentralized finance. He added:

Uniswap v3 now paves the way for automated market makers to outcompete both stablecoin-focused and traditional exchanges on trade execution quality.

Recently, analysts at Intotheblock stated:

In just 78 days of 2021, the protocol did $73.1b in traded volume and over $219m in fees.

As well, the Total Value Locked reached a new ATH of $5.23b pic.twitter.com/yeklzbFt8V

— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) March 20, 2021

Across the DeFi sector Curve, YieldSpace, Balancer, and DODO among other projects have been attempting to improve providing liquidity in decentralized exchanges. While Curve managed to have stablecoin-to-stablecoin transfers, Balancer, a protocol for programmable liquidity, recently introduced a key feature for its V2 protocol that maximizes liquidity providers’ returns.

What to expect from this later-stage bull market of Bitcoin?

‘If my boom thesis is true, you are crazy not to have Bitcoin’

Alisha is a full-time journalist at AMBCrypto. Her interests lie in blockchain technology, crypto-crimes, and market developments in Africa and the United States

What to expect with UNISWAP’s price by the end of the weekend

Why Uniswap will play a crucial role in the coming months

Is it time to focus on large-cap altcoins like Ethereum, Litecoin, Polkadot, Chainlink

Uniswap Price Analysis: 15 March

DeFi: Will the next rally see the rise of this DeFi-ETP?

Will DEXs outdo centralized exchanges in 2021?

The NFT craze is showing no signs of slowing down with a newly launched NFT tulip collection epitomizing how some view the current state of the crypto art ecosystem.

The NFT collection appears to be an ironic reflection of the tulip mania-like status of the current NFT scene.

The collection is on sale on the OpenSea NFT market place as “113 unique algorithmically generated collectible Tulips.”  The NFTs were created by a digital artist going by the Twitter handle @jtbxl who has a number of pieces for auction on the Rarible platform.

'Tulip mania' refers to a period during the Dutch Golden Age when prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulips reached extraordinarily high levels, and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637.

Angel investor Brad Mills made the comparison to his 26,000 followers on Twitter on March 11.

Investor and Ethereum advocate Ryan Sean Adams commented on how frothy the current NFT frenzy is by observing the fully diluted market capitalization of Dapper Labs’ token FLOW has grown to an extraordinary valuation.

The maximum supply of 1.34 billion tokens at a current market price of $31 would give FLOW it a fully diluted market cap of approximately $41.5 billion, placing it athird in the market cap charts, just above Binance Coin.

However, its actual market cap for circulating tokens is currently $988 million based on a circulation of 31.5 million tokens according to Coingecko.

Dapper Labs is the firm behind the wildly popular CryptoKitties and the record breaking NBA Top Shots NFT collections.

Its Flow blockchain was unveiled in September 2019 following venture capital investment from Andreessen Horowitz, Warner Music Group, Union Square Ventures, and a number of others.

The concept for a new blockchain targeting games, social networks, and NFTs arose after Ethereum faced large scalability issues in 2017 with the high transaction fees during the CryptoKitties hype.

The same hype is now occurring with crypto art and Flow is reaping the benefits. Over the past thirty days, the price of its FLOW token has increased 63%, hitting an all-time high on March 4 of a little over $40 according to Coingecko.

Starting March 2020, Bitcoin held by exchanges has been on a downtrend. For much of that time, prices have been doing the exact opposite and heading upward. At current levels, Bitcoin is at a 2 year low. Analysts believe that if this trend persists exchanges will experience a liquidity crisis.

In general, Bitcoin being withdrawn from exchanges is perceived as bullish. It is assumed that the investor plans to hold for the long term. They are bullish and withdrawing pushed demand higher than supply on the exchange. The opposite is true when Bitcoin is deposited in exchanges. This shows intent to sell, in case of large deposits, this easily triggers sell-offs.

For the last couple of months, the market has been bullish. As a result, more and more investors have been withdrawing Bitcoin to hold in their private wallets. Especially with analysts still adamant that Bitcoin could reach highs of $100K by the end of the year, investors, most of whom weathered the 3-year bear market, are ready to hold out for another couple of months.

The massive withdrawal has itself been a positive indicator. According to Danny Scott, CEO of BTC exchange CoinCorner and market analyst, the current trend mirrors that seen in the 2017 bull run. Scott commented on Twitter that the only other time there was a 6-month consistent drop in exchange liquidity was in 2017.

The only time exchange #Bitcoin balances dropped for a consistent period was 6 months in the build-up to the 2017 bull run. We’ve now passed 12 months and it’s dropping significantly.

This makes it clear that the current market sentiment is much stronger than that of 2017. Furthermore, it is proof that Bitcoin is not done yet and might easily double to reach the expected $100K price tag by the end of the year. The sentiments come as no surprise with one of the main reasons for the massive withdrawals being institutional demand. As long as this stays high, exchanges will continue to see their reserves hit new lows.

As the month comes to an end, there is mixed sentiment whether the worlds largest digital asset is bullish or bearish in the short term. On one hand, it has closed the last 20 days above $50K which is positive. However, it has been unable to break above its new high of $61K. According to Danny Scott, the asset is targeting $83K in April.

Bitcoin’s price flipped to green after Federal Reserve officials on Wednesday reaffirmed their expectations to keep interest rates close to zero at least through 2023, potentially bolstering the cryptocurrency’s appeal as a hedge against faster inflation. 

As of press time, bitcoin was changing hands around $58,000, up from about $55,500 just before the Fed announced its decision around 18:00 coordinated universal time (2 p.m. ET). 

The price has doubled this year, partly because of demand from institutional investors who are looking for an asset that might hold its worth if the dollar’s purchasing power declines. Central banks around the world have pumped trillions of dollars of freshly created money into global financial markets to stimulate their coronavirus-wrecked economies.

Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley’s wealth management unit on Wednesday published a research report arguing the “threshold is being reached” for cryptocurrency to become an investable asset class. On the same day, Morgan Stanley said it will offer its clients exposure to three bitcoin funds, while Hong Kong-listed software firm Meitu made additional investments in bitcoin and ether.

“This is a bullish step to further awareness and acceptance of bitcoin, and shows the organic underlying demand as investors look to seek alternatives to existing investment classes,” said Jason Lau, chief operating officer at San Francisco-based crypto exchange OKCoin. 

Read More: Morgan Stanley Sees Cryptocurrencies on Path to Investable Asset Class

Ether (ETH) was up on Wednesday, trading around $1,824.79 and climbing 2.24% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).

“Ether and bitcoin are still moving tightly together,” OKCoin’s Lau said.

At the same time, the number of BTC locked in the Ethereum blockchain saw a sharp rise on Wednesday after dropping for more than a month, according to data from DeFi Pulse.

“The hypergrowth that markets exhibited earlier in the year, especially with ether, appears on the surface to have subsided, but the reality could not be any different,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research at trading sentiment data provider Trade the Chain, said. “Specifically, the number of bitcoin locked on Ethereum continues to rise and much of this capital eventually lands across the DeFi ecosystem.”

A handful of lesser digital assets rose sharply Wednesday after Grayscale announced plans for new trusts linked to Chainlink’s LINK, Decentraland’s MANA and a handful of others. (Digital Currency Group is the parent of Grayscale and CoinDesk and an investor in Decentraland.)

Bitcoin’s temporary failure to move higher since Saturday’s all-time high may have also pushed some investors and traders to alternative cryptocurrencies.

“While this might be unexciting for bitcoin traders, it has ether traders licking their lips at the prospect of the leading altcoin regaining some market share,” Adam James, senior editor at OKEx Insights, said. “Likewise, traders will also be looking for altcoins and DeFi governance tokens to capitalize on a bitcoin consolidation.”

Read More: LINK, MANA Token Prices Spike as Grayscale Unveils New Trusts

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mostly in green Wednesday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET): 

Notable losers:

Litecoin during the last cycle was as popular and hyped as other top cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum. This time around, however, the coin called digital silver isn’t performing anywhere nearly as well as its digital gold counterpart or even other altcoins.

Whatever has been causing the lag behind the rest of the market, there are several signs that the altcoin has bottomed and is the next cryptocurrency in line to set a new all-time high.

This bull market has been dominated primarily by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and innovative new blockchain-based technologies like DeFi and NFTs.

Among the year’s top performers, nowhere to be found on that list would be Litecoin – an altcoin that during the last bull market rose as furiously as Bitcoin, and peaked weeks ahead of Ethereum.

During this cycle, Litecoin is lagging well behind these other top ten assets with serious longevity. Although Litecoin has maintained its position within the top ten, it is finally at risk of falling out of it and is currently ranked in ninth place overall.

But before that could happen, the altcoin could finally see a strong bounce according to several technicals.

First and foremost, on the rarely used six-week timeframe on LTCUSD the trading pair, Litecoin has completed one of the technically cleanest Adam and Eve bottom formations in crypto.

The projected target based on the measure rule should send Litecoin to nearly double its previous all-time high within weeks once things do turn around.

Switching to the LTCBTC trading pair, quarterly timeframes are signaling that the brutal downtrend could be completely exhausted with a TD 13 and a sweep of former lows.

A quarterly candle has never traded below the current level, making a reversal at this zone all the more likely.

On monthly timeframes, the altcoin has been trading against Bitcoin in a falling wedge pattern, and after four years of a bear market, finally touched down on RSI support.

At the same time, Litecoin has fallen to support dating back to the 2017 bottom, just before the altcoin began its extended, four-year descent against the top cryptocurrency.

Zoomed in further to weekly timeframes, a bullish divergence on the Relative Strength Index has been building since around mid-2020.

If the bullish divergence fails, Litecoin will set new lows against Bitcoin. If confirmed, the reversal should begin well into 2021 before the total cryptocurrency market tops out once again.

The fact that Litecoin remains so far behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, despite reaching its all-time high before the other two during the last cycle, could indicate that the peak of the crypto market is nowhere near.

When Litecoin does break out against Bitcoin, it is historically one of the largest and most profitable plays in crypto. But as price action has recently shown, history doesn’t always repeat.

When will Litecoin finally shine again?

Sardine, a startup that provides what it calls “fraud protection as a service,” launched out of stealth today alongside news of $4.6 million in seed funding. Sardine was co-founded by CEO Soups Ranjan, formerly director of data science & risk at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

Targeted at crypto and fintech businesses, Sardine’s platform takes a multi-pronged approach to combating potential fraud. The system essentially creates a "foundational fraud score" for each user of the business that's signed on to Sardine's service, such as a crypto exchange. To do this the company claims to collect data from a bevy of sources, including cross-referencing bank accounts, credit card info, social media, and other sources. It also says it can help companies guard against account takeovers, like SIM swaps.

“Banking-as-a-service platforms are leading a generational shift towards better financial services, making financial products more accessible than ever—that is, if fraud doesn't kill them first,” Ranjan told Decrypt . “That's why we launched Sardine to help digital businesses, like cryptocurrency exchanges and neobanks, onboard truly authentic users by providing a holistic approach to fraud detection”

The idea is to help crypto services stop fraud before it starts. And, in crypto, fraud happens a lot. According to a recent report from blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace, bad actors raked in $1.9 billion last year from crypto users and businesses, most of it due to fraud. In 2019, it was even more: $4.5 billion.

Ranjan suggested that many current anti-fraud ecommerce solutions are not primed for crypto exchanges and fintech platforms. Sardine, he said, is better equipped to detect fraud in such businesses and avoid false positives along the way. His new firm already counts such companies as Moonpay, Dharma, Relay Financial, and Unifimoney amongst its customers.

The $4.6 million seed funding round was led by XYZ Ventures, and includes participation from Coinbase Ventures, 11.2 Capital, and Village Global; Sardine incubated at Sweat Equity Ventures. The round also includes more than 25 angel investors, such as former WealthFront President and CEO Adam Nash, Greylock partner John Lilly, and Scalar Capital co-founder and Managing Director Linda Xie.

Alongside Ranjan, Sardine is staffed by former early employees of tech giants like PayPal and Uber, with their diverse fraud-fighting experience coming together for this new service. Ranjan saw the rising threat of crypto fraud firsthand at Coinbase, where he worked from 2015 to 2019, and told Decrypt that he co-founded Sardine as a way to help fintech startups battle the myriad threats they face.

“Cryptocurrencies are highly liquid and not reversible, and this means crypto exchanges get hit by the most sophisticated fraud attacks,” said Ranjan. “I had the opportunity to fight firsthand against these ‘bellwether’ attacks, many of which brought down our competitors and are only now making their way to other financial institutions.”

“I learned a lot during my time at Coinbase, but quickly realized that new fintech companies were left to navigate the massive burden of tackling fraud and risk on their own,” he continued, “so my team and I launched Sardine to help catch fraud from day zero.”

Although the Western media and governments have begun to portray China as the next big boogieman, there are few meaningful differences to be spotted in terms of free expression. The scope of public discourse has shrunk to record low levels of allowability—and it keeps shrinking. Even the appointed “paper of record”, the New York Times, recently opined that critical thinking is too dangerous lest one falls for “misinformation”.

In the meantime, institutional erosion of privacy continues unabated on both sides of the pond. In the US, politicians keep introducing laws to undermine privacy on popular messenger apps using end-to-end (E2E) encryption. In concert, the EU is following the same steps as well. It has become largely accepted that privacy is a luxury that should not be afforded the regular citizens.

As we have seen with WallStreetBets using social media to enact a certain trading strategy, as you would in a private investing club, the relationship between communication and financial freedom is intrinsically linked. In turn, economic power is a gateway to all other liberties we have taken for granted. When WallStreetBets moderators announced the launch of their decentralized liquidity pool, this was a response to the trend of intensified suppression of fundamental liberties.

“WallStreetBets has shown the world that a group of individuals, all acting in their own self-interest, can coordinate in a decentralized way and compete with large institutions. However, the tools that were used to do this are rudimentary, centralized, and prone to failure. Robinhood, Discord, Reddit—each one of these centralized tools played an important role but ultimately showed their weaknesses.”

Furthermore, it is noticeable that voting has little to no effect on major shifts in policies, be they wars that are implementing backdoors into messaging apps. It seems that only technological innovation can halt the leviathan of suppression. Now, we are seeing the expected outcome – the merger of cryptocurrencies with open-source communication platforms.

Seemingly linked, just as Signal – the popular alternative to WhatsApp – announced its acceptance of cryptocurrencies to fund the app’s continued development, it had been banned in China on Monday. Or at least, an attempt at one that was easily circumvented by using a VPN. Interestingly, China also banned Clubhouse – an invitation-only, social networking audio-chat.

Soon after Clubhouse’s launch, the usual suspect – The New York Times – expressed deep concerns about “unfettered conversations” that might be taking place. In this atmosphere of suppression from all vectors of institutional power, Signal has taken steps to take advantage of cryptocurrencies as a funding model.

As the demand for privacy heightens, Signal experienced tremendous growth in just two years. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Signal had been boosted by Brian Actor, the co-founder of WhatsApp in 2018. He gave the non-profit organization a $105 million zero-interest loan. Since then, Signal app has been downloaded over 105 million times on Android and Apple stores, showing exponential growth.

In 2021, it is no surprise to see Signal’s user count surge after having received Twitter endorsements from both Elon Musk and Edward Snowden. Signal’s encryption works in a similar way to cryptocurrencies, by relying on public and private keys. Just as you are the only person to access your crypto wallet funds with a private key, only you can decrypt sent messages on Signal, while the public key is used for encryption.

Not only can you donate 12 types of cryptocurrenies to Signal but they are also tax-deductible because Signal is non-profit. Here is the current list of cryptos you can use to keep Signal up and running:

By making donations directly with these cryptocurrencies, your capital gains tax is not applicable.  Because the IRS treats cryptocurrency as property, you receive tax deduction instead. In other words, directly donating with digital coins is much more preferable because you can donate more instead of first selling your coins and then donating via fiat currency.

As crypto wallets become more common, communication platforms present a vector for intrusion. Do you think this will have the effect of forever demolishing the “nothing to hide” coping mechanism?