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RBI is working towards a 'phased introduction' of the digital rupee. The digital rupee will likely coexist with cash and digital forms of payments.

Coin Sets are the basket of crypto tokens, which will be based on a particular theme and investors believe this idea can gradually play on it, growing wealth in the long run. For example, the coin set named as 'DeFi 10' will include top 10 DeFi (Decentralised Finance) tokens. Similarly, the coin set of 'NFT' will be a basket of the top NFT projects. The coin sets are created and managed by experts from the Mudrex team. The team will take care of fund allocation, weightage, order execution and periodic rebalancing. The product will help investors manage potential risks by diversifying their portfolios into different cryptocurrencies and reap above-average returns. Edul Patel, CEO & Co-founder of Mudrex, said the platform is looking to bring ease and simplify investing in crypto for new investors. Coin Sets is a product that will allow investors to mitigate risks by diversifying investment in cryptocurrencies. "It is a mutual fund-like product with a better risk-reward ratio, curated suitably for investors who look at crypto investments as a long-term wealth creation option. The product is likely to boost retail participation in cryptos," he added. With an asset under management of more than $15 million, Mudrex recently raised $2.5 million funding from Nexus Venture Partners, Village Global, Kunal Shah and others. Launched in 2018, Mudrex has a user base across 90 countries.

Tenderly, a platform that helps developers monitor smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, announced Thursday it has raised $15.3 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel.

Headquartered in Belgrade, Serbia, Tenderly provides a set of tools for developers to test and watch the health of their code on the Ethereum blockchain through monitoring smart contracts, real-time alerting, troubleshooting and more complex integrations.

“Ever since we started building Tenderly, our goal has been to create an all-encompassing platform that will make developers’ lives easier,” said Andrej Bencic, chief executive of Tenderly. “Now we are in the position to take this broad concept and turn it into reality.”

The objective of the company is to provide comprehensive tools for developers to discover errors in smart contracts before they are deployed and catch them early when they happen in the wild.

Smart contracts are pieces of self-executing code written on the blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. They are the fundamental building blocks of decentralized applications and are typically used to automate the execution of agreements between parties.

On the development side, Tenderly provides a visual debugger that inspects transactions and helps inspect each of the smart contracts to make certain that they will operate correctly. Along with that, it has a simulator to allow the developers to run code through its paces before it goes into actual production.

Once live, Tenderly has real-time monitoring and alerting so that when things do go wrong, problems can be detected early. That means custom triggers for anything that could start going wrong including potential exploits or errors that could affect the natural progress of smart contracts and security warnings.

Right now, the popularity of nonfungible tokens – a type of crypto asset which can represent anything from digital art to video game items – is creating a lot of attention for distributed applications, especially on Ethereum. Transactions involving NFTs are powered by smart contracts and bugs could be extremely costly, not just for users, but developers.

The company said that crypto startups such as Nexus Mutual, Uniswap, Chainlink, Sushi Swap, InstaDApp and DeFi Saver all use Tenderly regularly to check their Dapps for code correctness.

The company intends to use this new infusion of financing to expand its core offering with new tools and services and bring in more talented people. The startup currently has a team of 14 people.

“Our goal is to further cement Tenderly as the best destination for all developers looking to monitor, test and debug smart contracts, simulate transitions, build better DApps and help improve the Ethereum ecosystem,” said Bencic.

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Authors: Benedikt Eikmanns, Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe, Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is likely to have a significant impact on how banks operate in the future – and even has the potential to shift the structure of the whole financial system at a macroeconomic level. Before we discuss and substantiate this hypothesis, we would first like to introduce the core concept of DeFi.

Decentralized Finance or “DeFi” in short, is an umbrella term encompassing the vision of a financial system that functions without any intermediaries, such as banks, insurances or clearinghouses, and is operated just by the power of smart contracts. DeFi applications strive to fulfill the services of traditional finance (also coined as Centralized Finance, or just CeFi) – but in a completely permissionless, global and transparent manner. 

The vision of a new financial system accompanies the blockchain space since its inception. However, while it has been an aspirational dream for the blockchain community in the past, the vision of a new financial system has come some steps closer. 

Since 2020, DeFi is growing at an astonishing pace and billions of USD have been put in the ecosystem. The growth is mainly led by applications (also denominated as protocols) that are built on the Ethereum blockchain. In the following, we give an overview of the actors in the DeFi ecosystem from an economic point of view, introduce the maturity stages of DeFi and explain the potential of DeFi to outperform the traditional finance system in the years to come. 

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The primary business model of commercial banks is to accept deposits and to give loans to its clients. Borrowing and lending are an elementary cornerstone of an efficient financial system as holders of funds get an incentive to provide liquidity to the markets and in exchange earn a return on their otherwise unproductive assets.

DeFi protocols enable for the first time to borrow or lend money on a large scale between unknown participants and without any intermediaries. Those applications bring lenders and borrowers together and set interest rates automatically in accordance with supply and demand. Moreover, those protocols are truly inclusive, as anybody can interact with them at any time, from any location, and with any amount. 

In fact, the recent hype around DeFi applications is largely driven by the advancement of borrowing and lending protocols, such as Compound. In contrast to traditional finance, loans in DeFi are commonly secured by over-collateralization. However, companies such as Aave are currently working on enabling uncollateralized loans similarly to traditional finance.

Investment banks and issuers of financial instruments

The business model of investment banks usually involves the advisory on financial transactions. Also, the creation or trading of complex financial products and the management of assets fall in the realm of investment banks. DeFi protocols are already offering similar products. 

For instance, Synthetix is a derivatives issuance protocol, which enables the decentral creation and trading of derivatives on assets such as stocks, currencies, and commodities. Also, decentral asset management for cryptocurrencies is evolving. Yearn Finance, for example, is an autonomous protocol, which searches for the best yields in the DeFi space and invests automatically for its users.

Exchanges

The function of an exchange is to organize the trading of different assets, such as stocks or foreign currencies, between two or more market participants. Even the exchange of cryptocurrencies against fiat money (e.g. US Dollar) can be attributed to CeFi, as the regular holder of cryptocurrencies needs to use exchanges like Coinbase or Binance (which are centralized organizations) to swap a unit of a cryptocurrency against another. 

Now, with the emergence of decentralized exchanges (DEX), holders of cryptocurrencies no longer need to leave the crypto space for swapping their tokens. A prominent example of a DEX is Uniswap. DEX are composed of smart contracts that hold liquidity reserves and function according to defined pricing mechanisms. Such automated liquidity protocols play a key role in the development of an independent decentralized ecosystem without any CeFi intermediaries.

Insurances

An important function of insurance is to smooth out risks and bring security for market participants. An example of decentralized insurance is Nexus Mutual, which offers insurances that cover bugs in smart contracts. Since everything is based on smart contracts in DeFi, vulnerabilities in the code of smart contracts is a fundamental risk for DeFi users. Decentralized insurances are still in their infancy, but it can be expected that a larger amount and more sophisticated insurance models have the potential to emerge in the DeFi space in the future.

Central banks

So-called stablecoins are based on blockchain protocols that have the principle of price stability inherently encoded and, thus, fulfill the function of a reserve currency. The introduction of stablecoins set the foundation of the functioning decentralized financial system, as they enable participants to engage with each other without the underlying risk of price volatility. There are three options how a cryptocurrency can reach price stability. 

First, stablecoins can reach high degrees of price stability by pegging a currency to other assets. For example, for each issued unit of USD Coin a real US Dollar is held in reserve. 

From a decentralized finance perspective, another interesting approach is the issuance of stablecoins by using other cryptocurrencies as collateral. A central protocol for the Defi ecosystem is Maker DAO, which issues the cryptocurrency DAI that is backed by other cryptocurrencies and ensures with its algorithm that the value of 1 DAI is hovering around the value of 1 US Dollar. 

Thirdly, there are more experimental approaches that aim to reach price stability without the use of collaterals. For instance, the protocol Ampleforth automatically adjusts the supply of token in accordance with demand. 

We argue that DeFi has reached an important intermediate step to become a substitute for traditional finance solutions. While crypto-based finance solutions were merely capable of realizing efficient value transfers in the past, now the time value of money is reflected in crypto-finance. 

Stage 1: Efficient value transfers 

Until now, centralized exchanges and wallet providers have been the only successful blockchain business models at scale. The reason for the success of centralized exchanges is that they are the main entry point to the crypto space (see Figure 1). The common user needs to swap fiat money (e.g. US Dollar) against a cryptocurrency before being able to interact with services in decentralized finance. Furthermore, wallet applications are established that enable users to safely store and transfer their cryptocurrencies.

Based on those two applications, exchanges and wallets, efficient value transfers between unknown parties could be conducted for the first time without the need of traditional finance actors. This enabled the crypto space to fulfill limited functions of a financial system, namely speculation on (crypto) assets and the facilitation of payments. Thus, disintermediation of financial firms occurred – but only, if savers of traditional finance wanted to diversify their portfolio towards crypto assets or needed a frictionless payment system. We propose this to be the first maturity stage of a decentralized finance system.

Stage 2: Connecting savers and borrowers

Still missing was the ability to deal with flows of funds from savers to borrowers and vice versa. In the following years, additional elements of a more advanced financial system were developed. The function of a payment system could be advanced with the development of stablecoins, decentralized exchanges, and borrowing/lending protocols. Thereby, DeFi developed the necessary platforms for facilitating the flows between savers and borrowers.

It might be no coincidence that the start of the explosive growth for the whole DeFi ecosystem could be observed with the advancement of the lending/borrowing protocol Compound. Since Compound started the distribution of its governance token, COMP, on June 15, 2020, the whole DeFi ecosystem showed a steep growth trajectory. Functioning lending/borrowing protocols, such as Compound, might have been the missing cornerstone for the foundation of a properly working decentralized financial system. This can be marked as the second maturity stage of the decentralized finance system.

Stage 3: Competing for traditional finance funds

DeFi can be described as a platform that is competing with traditional financial firms for the same resources. However, DeFi is an encapsulated system, which is not obeying the same rules as traditional finance. In particular, national law does not apply and regulatory policies can hardly be enforced in the DeFi space. This might be a major competitive advantage over the highly regulated traditional finance firms. 

For example, financial innovations can be freely developed and implemented in DeFi without regarding regulatory boundaries. On the other hand, the absence of common legislative and political principles has certainly major disadvantages. It can be doubted that mainstream savers would consider the current DeFi environment a trustworthy destination to invest their pension. Hence, the crucial question for the advancement of DeFi to the next evolutionary stage will be:

To which degree are savers of traditional finance willing to relocate their funds towards DeFi applications?To which degree are borrowers of traditional finance willing to access funds from DeFi applications?

To answer both questions at the current point in time: Only to a very limited degree. The reason is that most traditional finance savers or lenders do not trust the crypto space or simply do not know about DeFi. The influx of capital into DeFi applications since June 2020 most likely stems from idle assets on crypto wallets, i.e. from a redistribution of assets within the crypto space. Nevertheless, the rising use of DeFi protocols proves that the system is scalable and working. Today, the users of DeFi belong to the group of "innovators" or "early adopters" (i.e. a very small proportion of households). Tomorrow, the users might be mainstream households.

We argue that there are three reasons why DeFi has the potential to outperform the traditional finance system and to gain increasing attention in scientific, economic, and public debates:

: DeFi is a highly scalable and global ecosystem. Once DeFi as a whole (or a specific DeFi application) proves its utility, exponential growth is possible. The website DeFi Pulse monitors the total value locked (TVL) on smart contracts on all relevant DeFi applications (i.e. how much money has been poured into the ecosystem by its users). The increase of TVL between June and August 2020 illustrates powerfully the exponential growth potential of DeFi. While 1st of January 2020 the TVL was at $0.7 billion, it started skyrocketing in June 2020, reaching 1.9 billion 1st of July, 4 billion 1st of August, and surpassed the $8 billion mark 1st of September 2020.Room for growth: According to Messari, a crypto market analytics firm, the capitalization of all DeFi applications was just at 1.5% of the total crypto market as of July 2020. Therewith, it could be argued that there is a lot of room for growth only by further asset redistributions within the crypto space. Looking beyond the crypto space, lets us derive the real potential of DeFi. According to the Institute of International Finance, global household debt alone amounts to 48 trillion US Dollar in 2019. If DeFi covers just 0.1% of that debt, DeFi's TVL would grow by 500% compared to the beginning of September 2020.New market segments: According to The World Bank, 1.7 billion adults do not have access to banking services. DeFi is permissionless, meaning that anyone can access those financial services from anywhere in the world. In principle, just electricity, an internet connection, and smartphones are needed. DeFi could provide a viable option in regions, where banking services are too expensive compared to income, little trust in financial institutions persists, or if financial institutions are simply too far away. A prerequisite, however, for reaching unbanked adults is that DeFi applications develop more intuitive user interfaces and simplify the on- and off-ramp with fiat currencies.Conclusion: Crypto-based finance is here to stay

For the first time in history, a financial system is developing without intermediaries at a large scale. So far, DeFi applications cannot compete in terms of security, speed, and ease of use with traditional finance solutions yet. But DeFi has produced real, working applications that have already managed to attract billions of capital. Those resources will be used to develop more competitive and user-friendly applications in the future.

Yes, there are parallels to the ICO hype of 2017, which resulted in a sharp increase and price crash across virtually all cryptocurrencies in 2018. Since then, the interest of mainstream media has diminished. However, it has been largely unnoticed that the influx of capital through ICOs has enabled the blockchain community to bring the technology to the next evolutionary stage. Now again, large sums are invested into blockchain technology. But in contrast to 2018, applications already have been developed and are running. While we might be standing at the verge of a new bubble, we might also be at the beginning of a new big development cycle for blockchain technology.

For sure, many more development cycles need to follow. However, it is not unrealistic to state that decentralized finance will be more efficient, convenient to use, and secure than traditional finance. It will be highly interesting to observe how the different actors in traditional finance will respond when profits start to deteriorate because of DeFi.

Benedikt Christian Eikmanns is Senior Consultant at the strategy consultancy Roland Berger and doctoral candidate (PhD) at the Technical University of Munich. His research area is the economic evaluation of blockchain technology.

Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe is a full professor (W3) at the Technical University of Munich and head of the Chair for Strategy and Organization and co-founder of the TUM blockchain center. Her research focuses on digital transformation and business model innovation, and the role of emerging technologies for organizations and society. Prof. Welpe is a board member of the Center for Digital Technology & Management (CDTM), and an active member in several (inter)national advisory and supervisory boards. She is a recurring speaker at international technology and innovation conferences such as Digital Life Design (DLD) and has been listed among the Top 40 under 40 of the „digital elite“. 

Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner has founded the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (FSBC). In 2018 and in 2019, he was ranked as one of the “top 30” economists by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a major newspaper in Germany. Further, he belonged to the “Top 40 under 40” — a ranking by the German business magazine Capital. Since 2017, he is a member of the FinTech Council of the Federal Ministry of Finance in Germany.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here. Philipp Sandner…

The expertise of Prof. Sandner includes blockchain technology in general, crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, the digital programmable Euro, tokenization of assets and rights and digital identity.

Nexus Mutual Cryptocurrency is currently on bullish momentum by 42.44% in the last 14 days. At 08:05 EST on Friday, 7 May, Nexus Mutual is at $132.34.

Concerning Nexus Mutual’s daily highs and lows, it’s 59.2% up from its trailing 14 days low of $83.13 and 3.38% down from its trailing 14 days high of $136.97.

Currently, Nexus Mutual has 26566 Twitter followers.

Nexus Mutual’s last week, last month’s, and last quarter’s current volatility was 75.46%, 75.46%, and 75.46%, respectively.

Nexus Mutual’s current volatility rank, which measures how volatile a financial asset is (variation between the lowest and highest value in a period), was 75.46% (last week), 75.46% (last month), and 75.46% (last quarter), respectively.

According to the stochastic oscillator, a useful indicator of overbought and oversold conditions, Nexus Mutual’s crypto is considered to be oversold (<=20).

S&amp;p dow jones brings Bitcoin, ethereum to wall st with cryptocurrency indexes. According to FX Empire on Tuesday, 4 May, "The new indexes, S&P Bitcoin Index, S&P Ethereum Index and S&P Crypto Mega Cap Index, will measure the performance of digital assets tied to them."

Square revenue more than triples, driven by Bitcoin purchases. According to Bloomberg Quint on Thursday, 6 May, "Surging purchases of Bitcoin have been a major boon for the company over the past year as more consumers have flocked to the cryptocurrency. ", "Square Inc.’s quarterly sales more than tripled, surpassing analysts’ estimates, driven by skyrocketing Bitcoin purchases through the company’s Cash App."

Bitcoin traders in U.S. lack investor protections, gensler says. According to Bloomberg Quint on Thursday, 6 May, "The SEC has signaled that Bitcoin is a commodity under U.S. law and therefore not subject to the agency’s toughest rules.", "U.S. investors lack protections when they trade Bitcoin on cryptocurrency exchanges, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler told lawmakers."

More news about Nexus Mutual.

by Nexus | Jan 4, 2019 | News, Technology, TritiumEnterprise adoption is instrumental to blockchain technology becoming mainstream, and Nexus Advanced Contracts are the next step in leading this progression. Existing Smart Contracts have experienced issues in relation to ease of use and scalability due to a Turing complete system. Addressing these issues, Nexus has produced what is in essence a ‘Register-based Virtual Machine’, set for release in January 2019 with the Tritium upgrade. Tritium will allow developers to access the technology of Advanced Contracts simply through an API set. Before an explanation of Advanced Contracts is given, some context will be provided as to how conventional Smart Contracts function.Smart Contracts are self-executing. Their design is to enforce the terms and conditions of a contract through programmable logic, reducing the need for third party intermediaries such as brokers and banks. Smart Contracts are an additional layer of processing above the ledger layer, i.e what is known as ‘the blockchain’, and are comparable to small computer programs that hold a state of information. The calculations of the contract are carried out by the processing nodes of a blockchain, which change the state of the information. Given that the calculations or processing is carried out by distributed consensus, the state of a Smart Contract is immutable.Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency with built-in Smart Contract capabilities, which it calls ‘scripts’. Scripts are not Turing complete and contain byte code. Ethereum augmented these capabilities into its ‘Turing Complete Smart Contracts’, which are generic to developers’ needs. Ethereum gives developers more access to contract functionality on a blockchain through a custom programming language called Solidity, which is then compiled into assembly language that is run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The EVM is a ‘Stack-based Virtual Machine’ that processes each instruction in turn. Though very capable, Ethereum has experienced some issues in regards to security, performance, and ease-of-use, predominantly because of its Turing complete design. Some notable cases include the $75m DAO hack on Ethereum, and the $286m Parity bug. Vulnerabilities existed due to the large complexity of a Turing complete system, and the resulting difficulty of resolving bugs in a protocol written in immutable code. The complexity of operations that support universal computation or Turing complete designs also limit scalability. A universal system has a higher degree of complexity, and can not therefore compete with technology that is designed for more specialized tasks. An example of this observation would be the comparison between a CPU (Central Processing Unit) with a ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) in the mining of cryptocurrency. A CPU can’t compete against a SHA256 miner, as its complexity and design is geared to support universal general computation, not specialized computation. A similar conclusion could be drawn when a comparison is made between the system design of Ethereum (universal), and Nexus (specialized).Nexus has developed a ‘Register-based Virtual Machine’, a specialized contracting engine with greater capabilities than the EVM. Unlike the the EVM, which is defined by only two distinct layers of processing and is dependent on a Turing complete system, the Nexus contract engine is facilitated through the seven individual layers of the Nexus Software Stack, each designated to carry out specialized processes. The third layer of processing is called the Register Layer. Here, the states of individual pieces of information contained by Advanced Contracts are recorded in architectural components called registers. Registers are used by typical computer processors and provide easy access to memory storage of frequently used information or values. With respect to Nexus Advanced Contracts, each register is owned by a Signature Chain. Therefore, the ownership and write access of a register is validated by the second layer, the Ledger Layer. The fourth layer is the Operation Layer which defines the rules of the state changes to a register, called ‘operations’. The operations are carried out by validating nodes that change the state of the registers by distributed consensus. The design provides the required functionality of a contract engine, without the over complexity and complications of a Turing complete system.The ownership of a register can be transferred providing many proof of ownership use cases. Examples of such include titles, deeds, digital certificates and records, agreements, or any other digital means of representing tangible assets or time-stamped events. A register can also be owned and governed by another register, creating a relationship between many users. Relations can be used as proofs on the Operation Layer to provide additional functionality. An example of this would be a register that holds metadata representing the ownership of an item, and it being owned by another ‘token register’. The token ownership signifies partial ownership of the item, which provides the possibility for further use cases such as royalty payments with split ownership.Conditions or stipulations can also be coded into Advanced Contracts by validation scripts or Boolean logic. Validation scripts require a transaction to fulfill a certain set of conditions to execute, which allows a user to program in stipulations on the exchange of NXS, tokens or any other digital asset. This allows a user to void transaction orders, place time locks on funds, or exchange any digital asset without a central intermediary.Advanced Contracts which will be accessible through an API set will be able to improve many existing processes, including digital ownership, tokenization of assets and enterprises, digital rights, royalty payments, supply chain management, escrow services, financial applications, legal documentation of digital signatures, and many more.The standards of object registers, operation codes, and API methods will be defined through working group consensus, to ensure a consistent connection between developers and users. Nexus borrows a similar model to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that provides the working groups for all RFC (Request for Comments) standards. This is important to drive a vibrant ecosystem forward. Just as we have seen with the success of the internet, we hope to continue this success in the next era of global connection: blockchain, artificial intelligence, and satellite communication.Copyright 2014-2018 Nexus Earth | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

ICON Nexus Explained 3 min readThis is the fifth article of our series on ICON, throughout which we introduce the various components and differentiating elements of the ICON project .In this article, we will take a deep look at ICON Nexus, the blockchain which will enable interoperation between the various chains of the ecosystem.The Importance of Inter-operability At , it is our view that blockchain scalability and mass adoption will require multiple blockchains to interoperate with each other. Rather than having one chain to rule them all, it actually makes sense for the market to have multiple inter-operable blockchains: private, public, permission-based, with different parameters and characteristics adapted to their applications. Over the past decade, the number of chains and cryptocurrencies have grown at an incredible pace, but most remain isolated which clearly limit their reach and applications.Blockchain networks enable trustless transactions and have applications reaching to many sectors: finance, supply-chain, healthcare, gaming, governance, to name but a few. However, these services have so far mostly been offered through siloed-chains, completely isolated from others and thus without sharing data with other networks. Having isolated chains limit the potential applications but also makes it more complicated in terms of user experience. Without interoperability, users need to deal with multiple wallets, exchanges, and developers sometimes need to find off-chain methods in order to build some of their DApps.ICON, like other recent blockchain projects (Polkadot, Cosmos, Wanchain), is working towards interoperability, which would give users a much more friendly experience and enable new DApps functionalities. Thats where ICON Nexus comes into play. A Nexus can connect various blockchains of the ICON ecosystem but can also connect to another Nexus-equivalent blockchain network, and this allows blockchain networks to scale and expand in diverse ways.Nexus: a blockchain to build Networks of Networks Interoperability ICON Nexus is a multi-channel blockchain based on loopchain that underpins the ICON interoperables ecosystem. Within the ICON ecosystem, there will be multiple blockchains communities: individual blockchains, protocols, consortiums. For example, ICONLOOPs private networks, which are the result of multiple partnerships with leading firms such as Samsung, Line or even the Seoul Metropolitan Government, might ultimately be connected to the ICON Ecosystem through ICON Nexus.Interoperability between blockchain communities will take place via C-Nodes (also called C-Reps or Community Representatives) connecting to ICON Nexus, and every transaction on ICON Nexus will require ICX fees. These C-Reps serves as Portal to Nexus and will be in charge of managing token transfers and transactions between the multiple chains connected to Nexus, but they also play an important role in decentralized governance. Depending on the policy of respective blockchains, Portal can be organized by a single C-Rep or multiple C-Reps, or it can make another form of consensus network to serve the different needs.Decentralized governance Each blockchain connected to Nexus has its parameters but also its own governance structure. Through C-Reps, blockchains connected to Nexus hold voting rights and can participate in Representation Channel through which operational policies are proposed and selected by voting. In a Representation channel, one can manage node policies regarding node addition and removal in Nexus, adjust ICX transaction fee, manage node selection, and take other decisions with the goal to maintain and promote the ICON network.Get to know more about ICON (dedicated media about ICON and its ecosystem)DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. Staking and cryptocurrencies investment involves a high degree of risk and there is always the possibility of loss, including the loss of all staked digital assets. Additionally, delegators are at risk of slashing in case of security or liveness faults on some PoS protocols. We advise you to DYOR before choosing a validator.

May was one of the most exciting months in the history of Nexus with the release of the Tritium White Paper. Tritium is the first of the TAO update series (Tritium, Amine, Obsidian) and represents a giant leap forward in blockchain technology. Nexus is pioneering unique solutions in order to solve the industry’s most pressing challenges while maintaining the principle of a distributed landscape, hence the term Distributed Ledger Technology. Through the creation of an innovative software stack, we are tackling the challenges of speed, scalability, ease of integration, and intuitive user experience. Tritium incorporates advanced contracts which will allow for easy integration of financial tools for increased accountability and transparency. Tritium also incorporates LISP technology into the Nexus framework to further ensure the network is distributed, secure, scalable and introduces parallelism on the network layers. The core team also had a busy travel month with some of the team visiting Australia, where Colin Cantrell spoke at Sydney’s Bitcoin & Blockchain Fair, and others from the team in New York City for Consensus. These trips help us make important connections in the industry and educate key people on the work being done at Nexus. Last but not least, we would like to remind everyone that we will be hosting the Second Annual Nexus Conference here in Scottsdale, Arizona from September 19th to the 22nd. See you all there! Development update from core developer Brian Smith:Our development team has been growing and is now structured into two different groups. The front-end developers are working on the Nexus Interface (wallet) and the back-end developers are working on the legacy code and the new Tritium protocol. “We’ve been shoring up each of the modules as well as making sure all the Legacy QT wallet features are implemented in the new interface, and cleaning up any loose ends.” said Dillon Dugan who is part of the wallet development team.We are continuously maintaining the legacy code base as well as working on Tritium. Colin has been working with each of the developers on specific portions of the LLL with the overarching goal of improving the code and reducing the memory footprint. We are also developing a new coder training set with explanations on how Nexus works and how it differs from other blockchain projects. Colin and Brian are additionally building out the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for the Tritium protocol.After a lot of hard work and much anticipation, the Tritium White Paper was released on Tuesday, May 29th.  We are pleased to share the blueprint for this revolutionary technology co-authored by Colin Cantrell (Chief Architect and Founder, The Nexus Embassy) and Dino Farinacci (Lispers.net), the next evolution of blockchain scalability, integration, and usability. Just as the Nexus project has continued to grow, building and connecting with many, this paper was an unprecedented collaboration of many. Make sure to read about the amazing White Paper Community contributors, Shea, Jules and April, featured in the Community Contributor section of this newsletter.The Tritium White Paper is here, our blueprint to the future.Read the full Tritium White Paper here: https://nexusearth.com/tritium-white-paper/Blockchain is a flourishing technology that is in a constant state of change. In recent years, the global market for blockchain has grown exponentially, yet as organizations race to efficiently adopt and implement blockchain technology, they are encountering numerous scalability and implementation challenges.  Nearly all blockchains currently in use record information in one dimension, comparable to a single lane highway. When a highway gets congested from mass use, traffic comes to a standstill as it bottlenecks. These limitations prevent blockchains from scaling efficiently, because as more transactions are processed the network slows down.  These constraints are already being widely reported via early blockchain adopters. From an enterprise perspective, there is a need for a simple interface with easy integration, thus allowing for broad applications across industries while scaling for worldwide use. Instead of building custom applications on a predetermined platform, businesses are seeking opportunities to collaborate on the design process prior to blockchain development to ensure the technology meets their individual and/or industry needs.Nexus is pioneering a new approach to blockchain technology that solves the biggest challenges faced by the industry: scalability, ease of integration, and intuitive user experience. Beginning with the Tritium update, Nexus is creating an innovative software stack containing multiple layers of abstraction that will streamline business integration into the Nexus framework. It will create the foundation of a cryptographic identity system and make smart contracts easily accessible through a feature-rich Application Programming Interface (API) set. Each API will be developed through a standardization process with input from businesses, industry leaders, and developers, focused on providing a well-designed interface and seamless business integration. This unique customer engagement approach allows businesses that are building on the Nexus software stack to have input on the forward development and standards for each release. This is very important for streamlining the integration between consumers, businesses, and networks. The software stack introduced by Tritium enables the incorporation of advanced contracts and allows for built-in smart financial instruments, such as stipulations on funds received and their appropriation. Smart financial instruments such as ‘receive signatures’ can be expanded into a form of multi-signature contracts allowing multiple parties to decide how the funds are spent, thereby increasing accountability and transparency. These organizational contracts allow businesses and consumers to function in a more streamlined and connected way.The integration of LISP (Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol) with Nexus introduces a truly distributed, secure, and scalable infrastructure network. The combination of running Nexus over LISP with the Tritium software stack represents a new evolution of blockchain development that addresses the critical issues facing existing technology.  Nexus / LISP also creates a more efficient messaging system, prevents IP address spoofing, and introduces parallelism on the network layers.The Tritium Protocol, as described in the recently released white paper, is the first of three updates of the TAO framework (Tritium, Amine and Obsidian) that provides utility, scalability, and extensibility to the Nexus Blockchain architecture.  It is the first step towards a practical and efficient distributed system that can be tailored to various use cases. Through an intuitive user interface and comprehensive API sets, Tritium enables seamless integration with other applications. With the upcoming implementation of Tritium, there is plenty to be excited about!We’d love to see all of you at The Second Annual Nexus Conference from September 19th – 22nd in Scottsdale, AZ. Make sure to visit our  conference website and join the mailing list to be among the first to be updated to reserve your Early Bird Tickets! The Premier Blockchain Event for Business InnovationSeeking: Visionaries, Collaborators, Builders & Innovators Make sure to book your rooms through the Nexus Room Block to receive our special rate: Nexus is pleased to announce that it is now listed on Binance, the biggest global exchange for trade volume (at the time of publication). Nexus is available on Binance with trading pairs for: For support, check out: ts-Nexus-NXS-   Colin C. and the Aussies  at the Nexus Booth  At the beginning of May, Colin Cantrell (Chief Architect & Founder) and Colin Forbes (Chief Financial Officer) of The Nexus Embassy traveled to Sydney, Australia to speak at Sydney’s Bitcoin & Blockchain Fair, as well as connecting with the large Nexus Community in Australia. While there, Colin and Colin participated in many interviews (see links below) covering the latest from Nexus including topics like the Embassy’s self-funding mechanism, the 3 Dimensional Chain, and more. The visit included a Facebook Live interview with Alex of ‘Nugget’s News Australia’ and a well attended Sydney MeetUp and a lively dinner with the Australian Community. At the Bitcoin Fair, in addition to having a booth Colin C. spoke on decentralized organizational structures.A big thank you to Cain Beuchat, Mike Casey, Paul Screen and the rest of the Australian Nexus Community for their organization of the Blockchain Fair, the Nexus Booth, the Sydney MeetUp and the community dinner as well as their continued collaboration on Nexus.  Colin and Colin look forward to visiting again. Check out the interview from CryptoFinder with Colin Cantrell & Colin Forbes:Nugget’s News Australia Facebook Live interview with Colin Cantrell & Colin lin Cantrell speaks with Crypto News Australia: https://youtu.be/ahkNgFh3kngMembers of the Core team visit Consensus: Kierre Reeg, Alex El-Nemer & Ajay AhujaIn early May, Ajay Ahuja (CEO), Kierre Reeg (Chief Economist), Alex El-Nemer (International Business Development) and Dionna Bailey (Business Development) attended Consensus in New York on behalf of the core team. With over 4,000 in attendance this year, Consensus has become one of the biggest blockchain conferences in the world. Consensus was a great place to connect with leaders in the industry and to gather information, as well as an opportunity to educate organizations looking for a layer one blockchain solution such as Nexus. We are excited to see these relationships materialize in the future. Hot topics at Consensus this year for the Nexus team included potential future regulation of the industry, enterprise supply chain wish lists, and overall market sentiments. The team also had the chance to connect with many Nexus  Community members who were attending Consensus.                                                                                                                  Francisco Hernandez Henaine moved to the US from Mexico when he was 16 years old to pursue academic and professional development opportunities. He has always enjoyed a passion for technology and started fixing and building computers at a young age. When he took his first coding class, he felt like he’d found what he was meant to do. Francisco got into the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry in 2017 and was truly amazed by its potential, most especially what he saw at Nexus. Some of his hobbies include foosball, pool, soccer, gaming and working out.Alex El-Nemer (International Business Development) of the Nexus team had the pleasure of speaking with Dominic Bennett in an AMA video that took place on May 1st. Alex has been working from London to educate about Nexus outside of the US, including working on international use-cases, sponsorships for the conference, and helping with international press for Nexus. Make sure to check out the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W02HZZW4CN8&t=211sTritium White Paper: Shea (@Shea), Jules (@Jules) and April (@chambermaid): Shea, Jules, and April from the Community worked closely with Colin and Dino to write the Tritium White Paper. These dedicated community members are extremely knowledgeable in mathematics, engineering, technology and economics, and greatly help the advancement of Nexus. They have also collaborated with the team on the Nexus FAQs and the website content, and continue to educate people on the revolutionary advancements of Nexus. Our thanks to each of you for all of your hard work!Tritium White Paper Explained: Spaid (@Spaid), Ahmed (@Medo_NZ), and Peter (@imestin):Since the release of the White Paper, many Community members have taken the initiative to simplify the technology in order to make it more understandable for many. Thank you for your impactful contributions. The Nexus Tritium White Paper Seven Layers t contracts in nexusCommunity Mining Guide: Vilcu (@Vido) and Glen (@MrProbz)Vilcu and Glen from the Nexus Community have compiled a comprehensive and very user-friendly Community Mining Guide for anyone who is interested in mining Nexus. The guide includes everything from equipment suggestions to step-by-step instructions on how to setup miners and receive your first reward for securing the Nexus blockchain. The Nexus miners are always available to help and answer questions in our Slack. Please email [email protected] for an XaQVMuJnluLSnLBQxBB0/edit?usp=sharingWe’d like to thank the Community for an unprecedented time of collaboration. The Tritium White Paper as well as Nexus’ growing blockchain advancements are proof that we are always better together. As a further testament to our growth, we’ve just reached 20,000 followers on Twitter. Thanks for all you do!Copyright 2014-2018 Nexus Earth | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

ICON (ICX) operates as an open-source programmable blockchain network and data aggregator. The goal of the project is to create a blockchain hub within the market that enables developers and users to facilitate interactions between independent blockchains. This strategy enables entities from a diverse range of industries to better serve the market. Specifically, ICON envisions a day where the financial, security, insurance, healthcare, educational, and commerce sectors can interact and share data in a seamless manner.

What Problems Does ICON (ICX) Attempt to Fix?

One of the main issues that ICON wants to tackle is a lack of interoperability within the market. The blockchain sector is at an important crossroads at the moment. The industry continues to introduce new and more flexible networks. However, these networks often lack the ability to build on their predecessors. As such, developers spend a lot of their time just repeating the same features.

ICON enables developers to build on each other’s creations and leverage the best aspects of each blockchain. This approach saves time and enables developers to direct their efforts where they are most useful. Additionally, the platform introduces standards to help drive innovation. ICON’s decentralized structure also helps to prevent centralization through a community voting mechanism.

High Fees

Ethereum is currently in the midst of major congestion issues. The network is unable to host so many DeFi networks without experiencing high fees. ICON provides a viable alternative to the market which eliminates these issues and introduces a variety of new services to improve usability.ICON’s design enables it to provide scalability to the market.  Notably, the platform leverages a Delegated-Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism. This system gives the network high security, responsiveness, and much lower fees than major competitors such as Ethereum.

Benefits of ICON (ICX)

There are many benefits that make ICON a smart decision for businesses and firms seeking to integrate blockchain tech into their processes. The added interoperability provided by ICON can save developers time and effort. The protocol is packed with developer resources and more. For example,  the network provides a simple way for developers to create and sell Dapps. Additionally, it enables users to create more diverse Dapps that leverage the best aspects from multiple blockchains to provide a top-notch user experience.

How Does ICON (ICX) Work

At the core of ICON’s strategy is a custom-built blockchain called Nexus. Nexus is a third-generation blockchain that provides high transaction throughput and unmatched interoperability. The blockchain leverages Loopchain Technology which enables it to act as an intermediary between other networks. The system also uses Blockchain Transmission Protocols (BTP) to effectively govern how independent blockchains interact with the ICON Republic’s blockchain.

ICON Republic

The ICON Republic functions as the governing layer of the protocol. The ICON Republic enables community elected representatives to cast votes on and put forth proposals. Notably, it’s not designed to govern independent communities directly but rather, it’s responsible for determining things such as ICX minting, fees, and how communities interact.

ICON Communities

ICON communities are the separate networks that developers and users create. These networks are unique in nature and can operate with their own governance structures, numbers of nodes, and characteristics. This approach provides developers and businesses with top-notch flexibility to build applications that meet their needs. Notably, the DEX sets currency reserves for each blockchain community using an advanced AI evaluation method.

C-Rep

Every ICON community has a C-rep. This node is responsible for putting forth the concerns and requests of their community. C-reps are vital because they directly link communities to the ICON Republic. For their services, C-Reps receive payment in the form of the network’s native utility token, ICX.

C-Nodes

The ICON ecosystem relies on community nodes to provide vital infrastructure to the blockchain. All C-Nodes must be elected to their position by the community. Like reps, they receive ICX rewards for their contributions.

Citizen Nodes

Citizen nodes are users that participants in the blockchain but lack voting rights. These users still have access to the core features of the platform. They can send and receive transactions within a community, with other communities, and with the Icon Republic directly.

ICX

ICX is the native cryptocurrency and utility token for the platform. This coin operates as the primary intermediary currency for the exchange between networks. Users can stake ICX and earn rewards for helping to keep the Nexus chain safe. You can also use ICX like a normal cryptocurrency to send value internationally in a frictionless manner.

IRC16

In 2019, ICON raised eyebrows with the release of its first token standard – IRC16. This new token standard enabled users to easily and more efficiently create tokenized assets and securities. Standardization is a vital first step in driving innovation within a network. The introduction of IRC16 marks a major milestone. Now, developers can create wallets, exchanges, games, and much more with full confidence that their creations will function perfectly within the ecosystem.

History of ICON (ICX)

ICON officially entered the market in 2017. This South Korean-based firm was created by the ICON Foundation. The ICON Foundation operates as a non-profit entity tasked with expanding and supporting ICON’s ecosystem. Notably, it wasn’t until January 2018 that ICON launched its mainnet. This maneuver was followed in June 2018 by ICON ICO investors receiving their ICX tokens.

ICON (ICX) is available on the following exchanges:

Kraken – This is the best exchange for USA residents.

Binance – Best for Australia, Canada, Singapore, UK, and most of the world. USA residents are prohibited from buying most tokens. Use Discount Code: EE59L0QP for 10% cashback off all trading fees.

Gate.io – This exchange accepts USA residents.

ICON (ICX) Adds Value to the Entire Crypto Market

Platforms such as ICON that focus on drawing out more value from the existing networks are much-needed. ICON provides the right combination of scalability, developer flexibility, and easy access to make it a strong contender in the market. As more developers exit Ethereum in search of more dynamic and affordable options, ICON continues to provide everything they seek. For these reasons, ICON is set to see growing adoption moving forward.

Many or all of the products here are from our partners. We may earn a commission from offers on this page. It’s how we make money. But our editorial integrity ensures our experts’ opinions aren’t influenced by compensation. Terms may apply to offers listed on this page.

As you venture further into the world of cryptocurrencies, at some point you have to consider the concept of money. Once upon a time, we bartered with each other, swapping one product for another. Perhaps you'd give me some fish in exchange for some potatoes. I might then swap some of that fish for some seeds, and so on.

As societies evolved, so did our money. We started to use things like cowrie shells or gold as a medium of exchange for goods and services. From there, we eventually reached fiat money -- like the dollars or euros that we use today. These aren't inherently valuable: A dollar is worth a dollar because we give it that value.

Now we have cryptocurrencies. One way to think of crypto is that it's like digital cowrie shells: tokens you can swap for goods and services.

How Bitcoin can change our monetary systems

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and it promised to revolutionize the way we use money. It isn't backed by a central bank or government. And it allows us to make digital payments or transfers without involving a third party, such as a bank. Money can be moved faster and with lower transaction fees.

Over 11,000 alternatives to Bitcoin (known as "altcoins") followed in its wake, and a new decentralized finance (DeFi) industry has flourished. DeFi cuts the middleman out of traditional financial services. For example, crypto holders can take out a loan without going through a traditional lender, earn interest without opening a bank account, and take out insurance without using a broker.

Here are five altcoins pushing the frontiers of how we use money.

1. Aave (AAVE)

Decentralized lenders like Aave cut traditional lenders out of the loan process. Borrowers don't need to pass a credit check or fill out paperwork. Instead, they put down crypto collateral and enter into a smart contract (a piece of self-executing code that lives on the blockchain).

Crypto holders can earn interest on their assets by contributing them to the lending pool. The rates they can earn are higher than traditional savings accounts, as are the risks.

2. Compound (COMP)

Compound is another top DeFi lender that operates similarly. According to DeFi Pulse, which tracks the performance of different DeFi platforms, Compound has fewer total assets deposited on its platform than Aave. (At the time of writing, Aave topped the list with $16.12 billion, while Compound had $10.35 billion.)

3. Ripple (XRP)

Ripple is an international digital payments network that seeks to replace SWIFT (the current standardized money transfer system favored by banks). If Dogecoin (DOGE) is the people's crypto, Ripple is the bank's crypto.

Ripple makes it easy to transfer any currency, whether it's dollars, Swiss francs, or Aave tokens. Unfortunately, it landed in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which enforces securities laws and protects investors. It argues XRP is a security rather than a cryptocurrency. (Most cryptocurrencies are categorized as commodities, so they don't have to follow the same rules as securities.)

4. Stellar Lumens (XLM)

Stellar was created by Jed McCaleb, one of Ripple's co-founders. Like Ripple, it aims to facilitate low-cost money transfers. However, Stellar is aimed at people rather than institutions. This could be particularly powerful in developing countries where many people can't access traditional banking services.

5. Nexus Mutual (NXM)

Sadly, as cryptocurrency gains in popularity, crypto scams, hacks, and thefts also increase. Cryptocurrencies don't have the same protections you'd get with a traditional bank or stockbroker. As a result, crypto insurance is increasingly important.

And, unsurprisingly, there's a growing pool of decentralized insurers. Indeed, insurance brokers as we know them may become a thing of the past. Those smart contracts we mentioned earlier? They don't always work as planned. Nexus Mutual covers smart contract failure and exchange hacks.

The nonprofit aims to bring back a community approach to insurance and cut administrative inefficiencies. Unlike traditional insurance brokers, NXM token holders jointly assess claims, which are then paid out from a central pool. Unfortunately, the token is not available from major U.S. cryptocurrency exchanges.

Changing the way we use money

Whether it's banking, money transfers, loans, or insurance, these cryptocurrencies and others could transform the financial landscape. But like all cryptocurrencies, they are volatile and high-risk investments.

We don't yet know how this space will evolve, and there are many moving parts. Authorities worldwide are considering how DeFi should be regulated to ensure consumer protection. Governments may launch their own centralized digital currencies. And the technology itself continues to develop rapidly, so these coins may be superseded by newer ones.

That said, DeFi is an exciting area with a huge amount of potential, so it's worth putting these coins on your watchlist.

Buy and sell crypto on an expert picked exchange

There are hundreds of platforms around the world that are waiting to give you access to thousands of cryptocurrencies. And to find the one that's right for you, you'll need to decide what features that matter most to you.

To help you get started, our independent experts have sifted through the options to bring you some of our best cryptocurrency exchanges for 2021. Check out the list here and get started on your crypto journey, today.

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Investors in ParagonCoin, one of the many cryptocurrency scams that sprung up in the 2017 ICO mania, are set to recoup a small share of the money they lost when it went bust. The U.S. securities regulator has confirmed it will distribute $175,000 to the victims, even though the project had raised more than $12 million in its sham coin offering.

ParagonCoin was founded in 2017 by Jessica VerSteeg and her husband Egor Lavrov. It claimed to offer its PRG token to power payments in the cannabis industry, its ParagonChain blockchain to power the cannabis supply chain, and Paragon Space, the first cannabis co-working space in Los Angeles. The project later put up this space for sale for $4.2 million after its legal troubles. Since it was during the ICO mania season when any project could raise millions, VerSteeg and Lavrov attracted hundreds of investors who put in $12,066,000 in BTC and Ether.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went after the project on charges of selling an unregistered security. Paragon settled with the regulator in what was the first civil penalty imposed by the SEC solely for ICO securities offering registration violation.

While Paragon was to compensate the $14.9 million it owed its investors, the founders declared bankruptcy and fled the U.S. They had only paid part of the $250,000 civil monetary penalty at that time to the SEC.

Now, the regulator has revealed it will distribute some of this money to the victims. In a statement, the SEC revealed that it’s establishing a Fair Fund to distribute the funds.

“The Commission staff has determined that it is feasible to distribute the civil money penalty funds paid to date to compensate investors harmed by Respondent’s conduct described in the Order. Therefore, the Commission staff has taken the appropriate steps to recall from Treasury the $175,000 paid by Respondent.”

The Fair Fund shall be used to distribute any future funds the Paragon founders pay to the SEC.

ParagonCoin is one of the many sham projects that sprung up during the ICO season in 2017 that have now gone bust. However, many digital currency investors are yet to learn from their mistakes. The current Ethereum DeFi mania is proof that many are still on the hunt for get-rich-quick schemes. So far, tens of projects have lost hundreds of millions of dollars, including Pickle Finance, Warp Finance, Nexus Mutual, Compunder Finance, Value DeFi and more.

— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) August 18, 2020

Follow CoinGeek’s Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of groups—from BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream, ShapeShift, Coinbase, Ripple and Ethereum—who have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for naïve (and even experienced) players in the market.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeek’s Bitcoin for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoin—as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto—and blockchain.

2021 has been a banner year for European blockchain startups so far. This year, VCs have funnelled €2.6bn into Europe’s blockchain startups, more than 4x 2020’s funding and as much as what has been invested in the more traditional sector of insurance. 

The figure is largely thanks to megaraises, such as football NFT trading card startup Sorare’s monster $680m Series B and Viennese crypto trading platform Bitpanda’s $263m Series C.

With blockchain funding at an all-time high globally, we asked five investors to nominate the startups that are set to follow Europe’s blockchain heavyweights. The only catch — they had to be non-portfolio companies. 

These are the startups they chose.

iTech Capital is an investment firm HQ’d in Moscow, with offices in Cyprus and Latvia. It primarily invests in crypto, fintech and adtech and has raised two unicorns — Bitfury and TradingView. 

1inch — remote across Europe 

This is a decentralised exchange aggregator that helps users discover the best trade prices for tokens. Instead of swapping tokens from a single liquidity pool from one decentralised exchange, 1inch will aggregate across different pools and suggest the most efficient way to trade your tokens. It works as a metasearch engine and helps you to use your crypto more effectively. At present, it has around $300m in daily trade volume and is growing fast. Additionally, 1inch has its own foundation, DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) and even a wallet. It supports all well-established blockchains such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and many Layer 2 solutions. 

Syntropy — Lithuania

The company offers technology that is compatible with current internet infrastructure and its protocols but introduces a crucial layer of programmability. This enables more efficient utilisation of resources. It removes bottlenecks and limitations of the existing system, ensures security and optimisation by default and unlocks greater scalability for future technologies and applications. 

In simple words, it helps to improve the quality and speed of internet connections so enterprises can interact with their customers without any latency. Syntropy already has multiple promising pilot projects with Starlink, Microsoft, AWS, etc.

Aleph.im — France

This is an open-source crosschain network featuring a decentralised database, including file storage, computing and a decentralised identity framework. Aleph.im’s core mission is to help decentralised apps and protocols strip off the centralised parts of their stack — achieving a fully decentralised architecture. This is seen as especially crucial for upcoming Web 3.0. era. You can think of Aleph.im as a decentralised AWS (Amazon Web Services) or firebase. Aleph.im is focused on supercharging the DeFi ecosystem and is already compatible with many leading blockchain projects, including Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos and BinanceChain.

Humanode.io — global but mostly Eastern Europe and Georgia

Humanode.io is a public, permissionless financial system based on consensus between equal human nodes, with rule-based monetary policy targeting real value growth and proportional emission. In other words, they develop an alternative blockchain with the highest level of decentralisation. All commonly-used Proof-of-Work (BTC, ETH) and Proof-of-Stake approaches still have a lot of drawbacks including mining cartels, validator oligopolies, etc. All nodes in the Humanode network are created through a unique biometric validation and are equal in terms of validation and voting power, bringing true equality between peers in decentralised networks. One person, one vote.  

zkSync — remote but mostly Eastern Europe 

zkSync is a trustless protocol for scalable low-cost payments on Ethereum. It’s powered by Zero Knowledge Rollup technology, known as zkRollups, that increases Ethereum scalability. It also uses zero-knowledge proofs and on-chain data availability to keep users’ funds as safe as though they never left the main net. One of the reasons why it might be interesting is because of high-fees on Ethereum which at present are not affordable for most users (it happened mostly because of the rise of ETH price and limited scalability of the network).

zkSync solves this problem by presenting a Layer 2 solution with cheaper and faster transactions above the main ethereum network. In addition, the rise of DeFi opens many more interesting use cases and zkSync can be easily integrated with any decentralised application. zkSync has already successfully raised an equity round in the beginning of 2021 from USV and numerous other strategic partners.

cofounder of Ethereal Ventures 

Ethereal Ventures is an early stage investment firm focused on backing technical founders building crypto products and protocols. The team comprises the former investment team of ConsenSys, was founded this year and is currently in stealth. 

Token Terminal is a platform that aggregates financial data on the leading blockchains and decentralised applications. Its long-term goal is to work together with users, be it project teams and communities, investors, analysts and other stakeholders, to build out the most robust and useful investment analysis toolkit for the crypto markets. With globally connected 24/7 lightning fast crypto markets, it’s critical to have access to accurate, on-chain financial data to make on-demand financial decisions. Token Terminal democratises this data to the rapidly growing group of crypto traders, both retail and institutional alike.  

Nexus Mutual is a digital cooperative that operates as a decentralised insurance mutual. It is built on the Ethereum blockchain. People who join the mutual become members, and members can buy cover to protect themselves against hacks in smart contract code. 

Members hold tokens that represent membership rights and entitle holders to participate in governance decisions and capital provision to the mutual. While smart contract insurance is a necessary tool for any blockchain application, it’s not widely available from traditional insurance players due to complexity in underwriting. Nexus Mutual helps to protect user assets as they experiment with Web3.0 apps.

Built on the Ethereum blockchain, the project describes itself as an ‘open-source, community-led, and self-sustaining network for software collaboration’. By allowing developers to host and manage open-source software projects on a decentralised network of nodes owned by their peers, instead of centralised platforms like GitHub, precious code is fortified as censorship resistant and persistent. Through features such as decentralised name registries, user owned code repositories, community funding and governance of open source projects, Radicle is making open source development sustainable and accessible to developers across the globe. 

Speedinvest is an early-stage European VC firm headquartered in Vienna. It primarily invests in fintech, deeptech and SaaS startups. 

Angle — France

Angle is building the first decentralised on-chain Euro stablecoin. The protocol is designed to attract three key participants: 1) stablecoin users who want to easily access stable assets, 2) hedging agents who protect against volatility to ensure the stability of the stable assets and 3) liquidity providers who want to earn high interest yield on their deposited assets. This flexible design will allow Angle to support numerous stablecoins with different collateral types, starting with its Euro stablecoin backed by USDC and DAI — both stablecoins backed by the US dollar. 

The rise of stablecoins over the last 12 months has been incredibly exciting, as it enables so many different applications from savings to hedging to low-cost payments. The only concern is that a lot of the growth has been with centralised stablecoins (like Tether and USDC). These stablecoins require trust in a centralised company to hold the assets in reserve, which is incongruent with the ideological goal of many cryptocurrencies to remove the need for trusted third parties. Decentralised stablecoin projects like Angle offer the promise of a more congruent, decentralized future. 

NFTX — UK

NFTX is a platform for creating fractional shares of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Users can deposit their NFT, like a CryptoPunk, into a NFTX vault and mint fungible ERC20 tokens — the token used for all smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. These represent a proportional claim on the asset in the vault. The inherent scarcity of NFTs can lead to inaccessible prices for blue-chip NFTs for many users. NFTX solves this problem by creating fractional shares of high-quality NFT projects, allowing users to gain exposure and increasing liquidity for asset owners. This increase in liquidity also allows for better price discovery and the creation of ETF-like funds for a portfolio of NFTs. These innovations support the healthy growth of NFT ecosystems by lowering the barriers to entry for new users. 

Cap Finance — Europe

Cap Finance is a decentralised perpetuals trading platform on Arbitrum, an Ethereum-based Layer 2 scaling solution. By leveraging Arbitrum, the non-custodial solution allows traders to take positions that execute in seconds for negligible fees, a dramatic improvement over Layer 1 platforms, with the added benefit of decentralization. Since the Aribitrum mainnet launch at the end of August, Cap Finance has traded over $75M of volume. 

Based in London and New York, Octopus Ventures is one of Europe’s largest VC firms. It primarily invests in healthtech, fintech, deeptech and B2B startups. 

A big promise of crypto has been to create an open protocol for financial value transfer, and in an ideal world, financial value ought to flow proportionally and simultaneously to the value for which it is being traded. To date, society has approximated this through scheduled triggers of individual transactions typically processed on third party ledgers (think payroll, or a Netflix subscription). Superfluid will allow us to programme any structure of value transfer to match any set of needs one could imagine.

The DeFi world is coming, but most assets are still tied up in the CeFi world. Without the liquidity and discipline that typically comes with ‘wholesale money’, DeFi will likely remain a sideshow and asset pricing will essentially be landlocked, meaning that society can’t extract the functional value it needs from new technologies. Rvvup is building a bridge between DeFi and CeFi.

It’s getting harder to compete with algorithms, especially when it comes to trading market signals. Coinrule puts the power of trading algorithms in the hands of normal investors. Those of us old enough to remember AA Road Atlases chucked in the boot will recall that they usually got us where we needed to go, but we’d be silly to turn down directions on Google Maps today. The same thing should probably apply in many other domains, including day-trading crypto.

Located in Reykjavík, Iceland, Crowberry Capital is a VC firm that invests in Nordic seed and early-stage startups. 

Aztec is bringing privacy to the blockchain which is fundamental for mainstream adoption. Aztec operates as a scaling solution for Ethereum and is a security shield for the internet of money. 

Tom Matsuda is an editorial intern at Sifted. He tweets from @_tommatsuda.

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The US Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that it was going after Russia-based cryptocurrency exchange Suex for facilitating ransomware payments in some of the first public, concrete action taken against ransomware groups.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Treasury Department was planning some sort of ransomware-related sanctions but US officials explained its plans in detail on Tuesday. 

The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control's (OFAC) said Suex was being sanctioned for its role in facilitating "transactions involving illicit proceeds from at least eight ransomware variants."

Data showed that more than 40% of Suex's transactions involved "illicit actors" according to the Treasury Department, which added that virtual currency exchanges like Suex are "critical to the profitability of ransomware attacks, which help fund additional cybercriminal activity."

US officials said it was the first sanctions designation against a virtual currency exchange and was done in coordination with the FBI. 

They noted that not all virtual currency exchanges are working with ransomware actors and explained that some are often exploited by malicious actors. But a number of exchanges work directly with ransomware gangs to increase profits. 

"As a result of today's designation, all property and interests in property of the designated target that are subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them. Additionally, any entities 50% or more owned by one or more designated persons are also blocked," the Treasury Department said of Suex. 

"In addition, financial institutions and other persons that engage in certain transactions or activities with the sanctioned entities and individuals may expose themselves to sanctions or be subject to an enforcement action. Today's action against Suex does not implicate a sanctions nexus to any particular Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) or variant."

Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis -- which assisted in the investigation -- said that while Suex is registered in the Czech Republic, it does not have a physical office there and has multiple branches in Moscow and St. Petersburg. There are also Suex branches across Russia and in the Middle East.

The exchange has become popular among cybercriminals because it claims to be able to convert cryptocurrency holdings into cash at branch locations and even facilitate the exchange of cryptocurrency for physical assets like real estate, cars and yachts, according to Chainalysis. 

The sanctions are part of a larger effort to disrupt ransomware, which brought in at least $400 million in ransoms in 2020. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen highlighted that ransomware groups have not stopped their attacks on businesses, schools and hospitals since the White House ramped up efforts to stop the spate of incidents crippling hundreds of organizations. This week a US agriculture company was knocked out of commission due to a ransomware attack. 

"We will continue to crack down on malicious actors," Yellen said. "As cyber criminals use increasingly sophisticated methods and technology, we are committed to using the full range of measures, to include sanctions and regulatory tools, to disrupt, deter, and prevent ransomware attacks."

The US is trying to institute an anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) framework among virtual currency exchanges and companies as a way to disrupt how ransomware groups manage to get away with their crimes. 

OFAC also released an updated advisory discouraging companies from paying ransoms and urging organizations to promote more stringent cybersecurity practices. The advisory implores organizations to contact US government agencies in the event of an attack and work with them "to avail themselves of OFAC's significant mitigation related to OFAC enforcement matters and receive voluntary self-disclosure credit in the event a sanctions nexus is later determined."

The government noted that through its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, it has been collecting information on ransomware payments. 

The Treasury Department used the Chainalysis platform and tools from the company to conduct its investigation into Suex.

Gurvais Grigg, global public sector CTO at Chainalysis, told ZDNet the company has a long history of supporting government efforts by providing insight into how cryptocurrencies are used, and in some cases, abused by bad actors.

"With Suex specifically, we have been following them for a while. We first identified them in 2019 as one of a relatively small group of OTC brokers who were helping bad actors cash out a large amount of ill-gotten gains," Grigg said. 

"It's a common misconception that cryptocurrency is anonymous and untraceable. Chainalysis has a long history of providing technology to government agencies to help them investigate illicit activity using cryptocurrency. Our investigative tools have been used in some of the most high-profile recent cybercrime investigations including ransomware, child sexual abuse, darknet markets, and more." 

Grigg added that the company anticipates further actions as governments and agencies grow their proficiency and access to the data and tools necessary to conduct investigations into cryptocurrency.

When asked whether the company was working with other law enforcement agencies around the world, Grigg said they work "with many partners around the world and our data and services are leveraged in over 60 countries."  

"These partners are actively working similar cases and leverage our data and tools in a similar manner as did Treasury in the actions taken today," Grigg said.

The company released a blog post explaining some of their role in the investigation, noting that Suex has moved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency -- mostly in Bitcoin, Ether, and Tether -- much of which is from illicit and high-risk sources. 

© Provided by ZDNet Chainalysis

"In Bitcoin alone, Suex's deposit addresses hosted at large exchanges have received over $160 million from ransomware actors, scammers, and darknet market operators. Chainalysis' investigation reveals that the OTC is converting cryptocurrency into cash at physical branches located in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and possibly also at other offices outside of Russia as well," Chainalysis said. 

"Suex is also found to have received over $50 million worth of Bitcoin sent from addresses hosted at illicit cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e from 2018 through 2021, well after BTC-e was shut down by U.S. authorities for its own money laundering activity on behalf of cybercriminals."

Chainalysis said it had been tracking money laundering on Suex for a while, finding that multiple addresses associated with the site are included in the group of 273 service deposit addresses they identified as receiving 55% of all funds sent from illicit addresses in 2020 in their recent Crypto Crime Report. Suex addresses also appeared widely in other lists of addresses connected to money laundering. 

The company said due to Suex's size, shutting it down would "represent a significant blow to many of the biggest cyber threat actors operating today, including leading ransomware attackers, scammers and darknet market operators."

"Suex operates as a nested service, meaning it operates using addresses hosted by larger exchanges in order to tap into those exchanges' liquidity and trading pairs. While many nested services are legitimate, some exchanges don't hold nested services to high enough compliance standards, meaning they can be exploited for money laundering," Chainalysis found. 

"Blockchain analysis reveals that Suex has received tens of millions worth of cryptocurrency payments from addresses associated with several forms of cybercrime, as well as from addresses associated with the now-shuttered exchange BTC-e."

Chainalysis researchers said there are significant financial ties between SUEX and BTC-e. Despite being shut down in 2017, Suex facilitated transfers on behalf of BTC-e administrators, associates, or former users who were "attempting to liquidate cryptocurrency trapped at the exchange." Some of the BTC-e transfers took place this year even, despite the platform being shut down years ago. 

$481 million in Bitcoin has made its way to Suex since it emerged in February 2018, including almost $13 million from ransomware gangs like Ryuk, Conti, Maze and others. Other cybercriminals, like those involved in Finiko, have also spent millions on the site. 

"A small group of illicit services facilitate the majority of cryptocurrency-based money laundering, and Suex is one of the worst offenders, so today's action represents a positive step forward in the fight against cybercrime," Chainalysis said. 

"We commend OFAC for making this designation and look forward to working with our partners in the public and private sectors to continue the fight against money laundering service providers."

While bitcoin and the broader crypto market look to be taking a breather, OMG, the native token of scaling product OMG Network, has reached its highest level since April 2018.

Bitcoin, the top cryptocurrency by market value, was trading sideways on Monday – at about $48,000 for the third straight day – after rising by nearly 10% on Friday. That was the biggest single-day gain in almost three months, based on CoinDesk 20 data.

The cryptocurrency rose 11.7% last week, defying what appears to be a turn away from risky assets in traditional markets, as the Federal Reserve ruled out plans to follow China’s lead and outlaw virtual currency businesses. Further, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler reiterated support for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) rooted in regulated futures markets.

Although increased hopes for a futures-based ETF are likely to keep the market buoyant in the short term, an eventual disappointment, if any, could bring some selling pressure.

“Run-it-up turbo and disappoint? This makes me think of July 2018, when crypto went on a manic run higher driven by misplaced ETF expectations,” trader and analyst Alex Kruger tweeted Sunday, adding that an ETF approval would be massively bullish and lead to rotation of money into bitcoin from alternative cryptocurrencies.

The SEC has already extended its review of applications from Global X, Kryptoin, Valkyrie and WisdomTree by 45 to 60 days. The new deadline dates for the SEC to make decisions are Nov. 21 for Global X, Dec. 8 for Valkyrie, Dec. 11 for WisdomTree and Dec. 24 for Kryptoin, as CoinDesk’s Jamie Crawley reported. Decisions on several other ETF applications may be made in the coming weeks.

According to technical charts, last week’s move in bitcoin has opened doors for a retest of early September highs above $52,000.

“Bitcoin finally resolved its 10-day sideways range by exceeding the downtrend, which had been in place since early September,” research firm FSinsights said in an email. “Note, trends had turned negative a month ago technically, but after a visible three-wave decline into late September, Friday’s move is a big positive in helping to resolve this consolidation. The first upside target lies at September highs at $52,956, then $64,895.”

OMG rally continues

OMG Network’s OMG token is trading at a three-and-a-half-year high of $18 on Coinbase. The cryptocurrency has seen a sixfold rally since July 19 and surged 82% last week alone, topping the list of best-performing coins with more than a $1 billion market cap last week, according to Messari data.

Analysts said the token is benefitting from surging investor interest in so-called layer 2, or “L2,″ scaling projects that facilitate faster and cheaper transactions and help reduce the load on Ethereum’s blockchain. OMG Network creates a value transfer layer on top of Ethereum that bundles Ethereum transactions and validates them through a speed-optimized child chain before sending them back to the Ethereum blockchain for confirmation.

“OMG’s rise seems to be on investor excitement in L2s and on the announcement of the mainnet launch of Boba Network, an L2 Optimistic rollup, as OMG token holders are eligible for an upcoming airdrop of the BOBA governance token,” digital currency platform CrossTower research analyst Martin Gaspar told CoinDesk.

Boba Network, a new layer 2 product created by blockchain developer Enya in collaboration with OMG Network, will be airdropping its governance token BOBA to OMG token holders as of the snapshot date of Nov. 12 on a 1:1 basis.

“Named the Boba Network, the project is a layer-2 solution that allows crypto to have payment processing speeds that rival payment heavyweights like Visa and Mastercard,” Don Guo, CEO of Broctagon, said. “Game-changers like these, much like the NEXUS WorldBook movement, which is an inter-exchange liquidity network for digital assets, can create greater visibility and trust for crypto as a whole.”

OMG’s rally is accompanied by an exodus of coins from exchanges and appears sustainable. The number of coins held on exchanges fell to 28.9 million Sunday, hitting the lowest since September 2018, according to Glassnode. The tally has declined by 42% since February.

A slide in exchange balance typically represents strong holding sentiment is taken as a bullish indicator.

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Launched in 2018 by IIT Bombay Alumni Edul Patel, Rohit Goyal, Alankar Saxena, and IIT Kanpur alumnus Prince Arora, Mudrex was built with the idea of revolutionising retail participation in crypto. It helps people invest in cryptocurrencies in a hassle-free and safe environment, using top algorithms. Mudrex hosts over 25,000 active portfolio managers acquired both organically as well as through a referral system and has witnessed more than $1 billion in trading on the platform. The company at present holds an AUM of $15 million and counting. 

Commenting on the fundraise, Edul Patel, CEO and Co-founder of Mudrex, said,

Our vision is to become the leading crypto asset management platform that provides users state-of-the-art products and services to improve their trading decision making and hence returns on investment. We will achieve this through expanding our user community, providing superior tools to advanced portfolio managers, debunking myths about crypto trading as well as new product introductions like crypto indices, high yield crypto 'savings account', building out our mobile apps and more.” 

The startup says that investing in crypto is broken. Most retail users end up purchasing random tokens hoping for 10x returns in five days with a very high chance of everything going to zero. 

Mudrex said it is creating simple-to-invest products with a better risk/reward ratio that will help the next billion users join and participate in crypto. 

It's first product gives investors the ability to invest in algorithmic strategies created by professional traders. Mudrex curates these funds, assigns them a risk/reward score and offers them in a simple and easy to invest browse list for users to invest in. Effectively, Mudrex has today already built the 'Mutual Fund' investing layer for crypto.

Pratik Poddar, Principal, Nexus Venture Partners, added, “The cryptocurrency ecosystem is at an inflection point. Mudrex team has shown incredible potential and growth in carving a niche for themselves in a product-first customer-centric manner. They are operating at the intersection of three growth trends - access to wealth management services for retail investors, social investing by a new upcoming class of retail investors who are more risk taking, and crypto trading. They are operating in a market that is on the cusp of breaking out, and we are proud to get a chance to work with the team.”

“Cryptocurrencies stand out as a new asset class with extraordinary returns over the past decade, but systematic investment products like mutual funds are lacking. Mudrex enables the crypto-equivalent of mutual funds, ETFs, and index funds by letting professional investors create algorithmic crypto trading strategies on the platform. Then, Mudrex makes those algorithms discoverable by other investors who can make informed choices to put money behind the strategies that match their risk/reward profile. It’s a new ecosystem of algorithm creators and those who back their strategies,” said Anne Dwane, Co-founder and Partner at Village Global.

Hugh Karp, the chief executive of decentralized finance (DeFi) provider Nexus Mutual, is the latest crypto heavyweight to suffer in the hands of malicious actors.

Nexus Mutual revealed on Twitter that hackers had broken into Karp’s personal crypto wallet and drained his funds. The hacker managed to install a compromised version of MetaMask, the famous Ethereum-based crypto wallet, and tricked Karp into authorizing a transaction that diverted all his NXM tokens into their wallet.

Investigations into the theft are still ongoing. Karp complemented the attacker on the smooth operation, which he calls a “very nice trick.” The CEO offered a $300,000 reward to the thief. He also promises to drop all charges against him in exchange for returning the stolen tokens.

MetaMask is one of the most famous wallet apps available. However, the service has seen an alarming number of phishing attacks and other hacks this year.

Earlier this month, blockchain forensics and security firm CipherTrace issued a warning after noting an uptick in the reports of a malicious Chrome browser extension for MetaMask that had been stealing user funds.

The warning, titled “ALERT: Malicious Crypto Browser Extension — Masked MetaMask,” explained that CipherTrace had seen a rise in comments and alerts within the online crypto community.

The company added that links to fake MetaMask sites are being reported to crypto projects and forums. Many of them also show up on Google ads above any legitimate search results whenever the “MetaMask” entry is entered into the search engine.

The primary MetaMask problem is phishing. There seem to be several fake sites touting the wallet, and many of them ask new visitors to enter their 12-word seed phrases to connect and upgrade their wallets. But, the hackers simply use the phrases to break into the wallets and steal the victims’ funds.

Ethereum, the self-proclaimed “world computer,” has a serious case of the ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ after a series of public relations black eyes.

On Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that Ethereum developer Virgin Griffith had pled guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) by instructing North Korean officials on how to use cryptocurrency to evade economic sanctions and fund the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

The DOJ’s statement says that Griffith formulated plans to assist the North Korean regime in 2018, then traveled to North Korea in April 2019 to give a presentation to local officials, despite the U.S. State Department denying Griffith permission to travel to the so-called Hermit Kingdom. (Griffith appears confused as to the standard Crypto Costanza tactic of acting illegally, then pleading ignorance of the law and begging The DOJ says Griffith and his co-conspirators “provided instruction on how the DPRK could use blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to launder money and evade sanctions,” including through the use of smart contracts. Griffith hatched a plan to facilitate crypto trades between North and South Korea, attempted to recruit other U.S. citizens into the scheme and tried to introduce North Korean agents to unspecified crypto and blockchain service providers. 

Griffith’s charge carries the threat of a potential maximum of 20 years behind bars when he’s sentenced on January 18, 2022, by U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel. However, Griffith reportedly worked out a deal to drop his defense in exchange for a custodial sentence topping out at six-and-a-half years.

Griffith didn’t earn the court’s sympathy after violating his bail conditions in May through his attempt to access his crypto holdings on the Coinbase exchange, reportedly in order to pay his attorneys. Monday’s plea deal included a court order that allowed Griffith to access his Coinbase account for the express purpose of transferring payment to his attorneys. 

After Griffith’s November 2019 arrest, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin issued a statement in which he “refuse[d] to take the convenient path of throwing Virgil under the bus, because I firmly believe that would be wrong.”

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 1, 2019

Buterin went on to justify this stance by stating his belief that Griffith “made no personal gain from the trip” and didn’t give North Korea “any kind of real help in doing anything bad.” Which really only confirms that Buterin is not a local fisherman who constantly scans the horizon for signs of an incoming NK missile test launch into the Sea of Japan.

Buterin also signed a Change.org petition calling for Griffith’s release from prison and the dropping of all charges against him. As of Monday, the petition had garnered only 532 signatures, suggesting few Ethereum users shared Buterin’s willingness to stick by old comrades who felt themselves above the law. 

DeFi… it’s a gas

The United Kingdom is currently undergoing a petrol shortage that resulted in panic buying not seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. Meanwhile, gas is also an extremely pricey commodity on Ethereum-based DeFi platforms, where at least one transaction hit absurd new heights on Monday. 

Early Monday morning, reports surfaced of an ERC-20 token transfer of around US$100,000 worth of Tether (USDT) on the Ethereum-based DeversiFi decentralized exchange. The transaction cost the sender nearly 7,700 ETH in gas fees, or roughly $23.7 million in greenbacks. That’s a new all-time high for the network and a considerable premium on a transaction that ordinarily would have incurred a gas fee of around $40-50 (which is still preposterously high, much like you’d get if you directly inhaled diethyl ether).

The transaction originated from a wallet owned by the Bitfinex exchange, whose parent company also controls the Tether stablecoin. DeversiFi began a few years ago as an offshoot of Bitfinex—DeversiFi was originally known as Ethfinex—and the two companies announced a new partnership just last Thursday that ironically promised “the first bridge between a centralized and Layer-2 (L2) decentralized exchange, enabling fast and low-cost transfers for ERC-20 tokens, starting with Tether tokens.”

As speculation about the suspect transaction mounted, DeversiFi tweeted a statement referencing “an erroneously high gas fee.” The company said it was “investigating the cause” of this apparent cockup while assuring that “no customer funds on DeversiFi are at risk” and “operations are unaffected.”

Bitfinex then tweeted that the fees would be “shouldered by third party integrations with Bitfinex,” adding that Bitfinex would “look forward to DeversiFi’s investigation and to their having this matter sorted on their side.”

However, Paolo Ardoino, CTO of both Tether and Bitfinex, later tweeted that in the “worst case scenario Finex will take care of it with it’s [sic] company funds.” That’s a rather benevolent gesture considering the fat-fingered fault is allegedly all on the other side of the ledger. Still, Ardoino may have felt extra self-conscious after issuing a tweet on Sunday that the new Bitfinex-DeversiFi partnership was “Working like a charm!”

— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) September 26, 2021

Speculation has now turned to the unknown miner that received that ‘erroneous’ $23.7m payday. Said miner ranked ninth among ETH miners over the past week, credited with just under 3.2% of all blocks mined.

As Monday progressed, word came that the miner had returned all but around 290 ETH ($1.4m) of the excessive gas fee to DeversiFi, with Ardoino chiming in that the “rest will come soon.” That said, given that Monday’s events involved the reliably noxious nexus that is Bitfinex/Tether, where nothing is ever as it seems (or its backers would have you believe), the sector will be watching to see if any additional connections to this mystery miner emerge over the coming days.

Proof of futility

In the day’s final Buterin-based development, the second-largest Ethereum mining pool is officially calling it quits at the end of this month. Hangzhou-based SparkPool stated last week that it had stopped providing services to new Chinese customers in keeping with Beijing’s latest crackdown on all things crypto.

But the company issued a fresh statement on Sunday announcing “a complete shutdown for all SparkPool services and operations for the existing users, at home or abroad,” effective September 30. SparkPool said the abrupt shutdown was made “under the premise of ensuring the safety of our users’ assets.” 

— SparkPool (@sparkpool_eth) September 27, 2021

SparkPool launched operations in 2018 and grew to account for over one-fifth of Ethereum’s hash rate, only a few points behind frontrunner Ethermine. All ETH miners are facing an eventual reckoning when the technology makes its long-delayed switch from a proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism to the new proof of stake (PoS) model, which will further centralize control of the network in the hands of a few ‘validators’ who accumulated vast quantities of pre-mined ETH tokens.

Follow CoinGeek’s Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of apeShift, Coinbase, Ripple and Ethereum—who have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for naïve (and even experienced) players in the market.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeek’s Bitcoin for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoin—as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto—and blockchain.

Analysis ICO Analysis: Social (Nexus) Published 8 months ago on August 19, 2017 By P. H. Madore Reader, be suspicious of anything that tells you it will establish a new social network. The establishment of social networks is semi-organic and requires a massive effort. Have a look at Minds.com, which is a great idea that integrates Bitcoin for promotion. Its still growing. The author has been there from the beginning. So dont take this statement the wrong way the author would love to see the social network monopolies of Twitter and Facebook broken, he just isnt overly confident that it will happen anytime soon, and here are presented with an investment that hinges on the building of a social network. // -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace. That just seems like a bad idea off the top, though well look a little further into it. Any social networking play would involve integrating with existing social networks. That would be the way to approach such a thing. Nexus Overview Nexus is a new generation of social network. All data and uploads will exist on the blockchain instead of centralized servers. Nexus is a feature rich platform that allows you to communicate with friends and family in multiple different and unique ways, while providing state-of-the-art security and privacy. This all sounds great, but none of it means it will take off. You need tens of millions to even begin to compete with any other social networking effort. It doesnt matter if you decentralize the data. It doesnt matter what you do. To build a social network, you need a social magnet. You need a lot of things that Facebook doesnt have. People may post on Facebook that they are concerned about being monitored and their data not being private, but its not the case that they will necessarily leave the social network right away. // -- Become a yearly Platinum Member and save 69 USD and get access to our secret group on Workplace. Click here to change your current membership -- // Did you know an alternative software to Twitter has existed for the entire time that Twitter has existed? The software that Identi.ca is based on is open source anyone can implement it. For that purpose, its decentralized. The networks can be integrated through Oauth and other means. Its really incredible by comparison to Twitter, especially for businesses that want to operate social networks but as it turns out, the network effect is real in social networking. To build a social network, you need a lot. A lot more than a great idea. A lot more than good technology. MySpace allowed anyone to create a page, make it look however they wanted, and display music. This was great. Facebook came along and took all of these features away and still flourished. Facebook focused on being exclusive at first, which expanded its network effect, which is an ironic reality. By decentralizing and encrypting all data and uploads, Nexus hopes to eliminate all invasion of privacy that large corporations are currently performing. End-to-endmessageencryption ensures only you and the person youre communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between, not even Nexus. Imagine a full decentralized social network where all data and multimedia is stored on the blockchain instead of centralized servers. Again, this sounds great, but for all intents and purposes no one actually cares. People want to be where they can be accessed. LinkedIn has managed to flourish as a place to find people in business, and yet the new generation are largely dispensing with it. It would have made more sense for LinkedIn to have released the equivalent of Workplace, but Facebook beat them to that, too. Facebook may not have an eternal grip on social marketing, but it presents a tremendous obstacle to anyone trying to build alternatives. Minds.com, again, is a great alternative to other social media platforms people have to pay for the privilege to get their posts out there, and theres an internal currency which manages to integrate Bitcoin. Its a great project as well, but it will be a long time before it is large enough to matter. This is the simple reality of the matter. Social Token The token sale for this ICO is ongoing. The token will have a purpose, to be used on the platform for advertising and the purchase of goods and services. This is enticing on the face at least theyre forcing the use of the token for something. But overall, who cares, really? We have to depend on them to build a massive social network, and this much seems unlikely. You can build all the buzz around the thing you want, although they havent, really. One thing you can say for them is that they are doing the right thing with the tokens they are issuing, which there will be a maximum of 50 million. Out of those, 47.5 million will be for sale to the general public. It would be nice if more profitable, better ideas would also do similar with their tokens. Retaining tokens from the public while at the same time profiting during an ICO handsomely is strictly a red flag. It makes one wonder what ICOs intend to do with those tokens. So its a plus to see that theyre not doing that here, but again, this thing is probably going nowhere due to its actual mission. The Verdict We dont see any future in things which want our money to start competitors to well-established social networks. Risk Such a prospect as building a successful social network can take decades to achieve. -4 Growth Potential For short-term investments, its nice to see so many tokens being put on the market. This is unusual and should not be under-credited +4.5. Disposition We reach a numerical disposition of .5 on this token. We figure if you do invest, youd better dump quickly. Investment Details The ICO for the Nexus social tokens is ongoing. Visit https://ico.nexus.social/. Currently, they are offering a 40% bonus (another red flag) 700 tokens per Ether. Please invest with caution. Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink. Rate this post: Important for improving the service. Please add a comment in the comment field below explaining what you rated and why you gave it that rate. Failed Trade Recommendations should not be rated as that is considered a failure either way. (0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this. Loading... P. H. Madore 5 stars on average, based on 2 rated postsP. H. Madore has covered the cryptocurrency beat over the course of hundreds of articles for Hacked's sister site, CryptoCoinsNews, as well as some of her competitors. He is a major contributing developer to the Woodcoin project, and has made technical contributions on a number of other cryptocurrency projects. In spare time, he recently began a more personalized, weekly newsletter at http://ico.phm.link Follow @HackedCom Feedback or Requests? Related Topics:Nexus Up Next Trade Recommendation: IOTA Don't Miss Trade Recommendation: Dash You may like Chinese White Hats Win $200,000 for Hacking iPhones, Google Devices New Exploit Bypasses Android Lock Screens 1 Comment 1 Comment coinsoncoins August 19, 2017 at 7:14 pm great article Log in to Reply You must be logged in to post a comment Login Leave a Reply Cancel replyYou must be logged in to post a comment. Analysis Technical Analysis: Bitcoin Tests $9000 as Altcoins Pull Back after Strong Rally Published 10 hours ago on April 21, 2018 By Mate Cser The cryptocurrency segment is in a short-term correction after a great week that saw several key resistance levels fall, as the major coins kept up the bullish momentum and hit new rally highs after a shallow correction. Ethereum and the smaller altcoins continued to outperform Bitcoin on the way higher in the last couple of days, but today, Bitcoin is holding up relatively well amid the pullback, indicating a slight change of behavior. // -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace. BTC/USD, 4-Hour Chart Analysis Bitcoin broke out of its lengthy declining trend, rallying quickly up to the key $9000-$9200 zone as expected, even though the momentum of the move has been relatively weak, and the coin failed to enter the zone, with the lower resistance line halting the advance, for now. The currency should remain above the declining trendline, but another short-term consolidation phase could be ahead as altcoins are likely entering a correction. Further resistance is ahead at $10,000 and $10,500 while support is found near $8400 and $7800. // -- Become a yearly Platinum Member and save 69 USD and get access to our secret group on Workplace. Click here to change your current membership -- // ETH/USD, 4-Hour Chart Analysis Ethereum hit the $625 level as we expected and it also broke out of its declining trend, after confirming a new short-term advance earlier on this week. Traders shouldnt enter new positions here, as the coin is stretched from a short-term perspective, while investors could still add to their holdings on the pullbacks. Support is now found between $555 and $575, and below that zone at $500, while strong resistance is ahead between $625 and $645 and near $740. (more) Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink. Rate this post: Important for improving the service. Please add a comment in the comment field below explaining what you rated and why you gave it that rate. Failed Trade Recommendations should not be rated as that is considered a failure either way. (4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this. Loading... Mate Cser 4.5 stars on average, based on 228 rated postsTrader and financial analyst, with 10 years of experience in the field. An expert in technical analysis and risk management, but also an avid practitioner of value investment and passive strategies, with a passion towards anything that is connected to the market. Follow @HackedCom Feedback or Requests? Continue Reading Stocks How to Trade Some of the Most Conspicuous Price Phenomena: Gaps and Windows Published 10 hours ago on April 21, 2018 By Konstantin Dimov Overview Gaps (as they are called in the West) and windows (their Japanese counterparts) have always attracted the attention of technicians most probably because they are nearly impossible to be missed on a price chart. After all, a trading session lying completely outside of the prior days range, which is what gaps and windows are by definition, must carry some kind of predictive power. However, a critical question remains are gaps and windows indicative of the beginning of a new trend (as it was the case for AAPL in Figure 1), or are they simply an overreaction and are subsequently quickly filled (as it was the case for MMM in Figure 2)? Notice how in the former case the gap stayed opened (and it still is) for more than a year, whereas in the latter case the gap was filled/closed within two months (i.e. subsequent price action in September completely overlapped the range of the gap). // -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace. Figure 1. AAPL Daily Figure 2. MMM Daily // -- Become a yearly Platinum Member and save 69 USD and get access to our secret group on Workplace. Click here to change your current membership -- // Note, from here on, only the term gap is used, even though there is an important difference between the two gaps look at intraday prices when determining if they are filled, whereas windows only look at closing prices. At the bottom of the article, you can find references to several works on the price phenomenon, in which the difference between the two variations is discussed in-depth. Given that gaps occur quite frequently (see referenced materials for details), it is easy to understand how any gap strategy can be depicted to have predictive power. Most traditional books on technical analysis include a list of gap trading strategies followed by a few stellar charts that are supposed to prove the strategies validity (charts similar to Figures 1 & 2). Furthermore, given gaps conspicuous nature, most traditional trading strategies have their entry on the day the gap occurs (or Gap Day). For example, proponents of gaps being a continuation pattern would suggest that taking a position in the direction of the gap on Gap Day is profitable. On the other hand, technical analysts who believe that all gaps get filled suggest taking a position on Gap Day in the opposite direction of the gap. In both cases, action is taken on Gap Day. After trading and analyzing gaps for many years, I was certain that traditional theories do not work the way they are described to. Probably the most illogical stipulation made by various technical authors was that the gap itself should serve as support or resistance and once filled, gaps become insignificant. On the contrary, I had found that the gap itself is rarely a strong support or resistance and that very often the most significant gaps are those that have already been filled. This is when, in 2016, I developed a new theory on gaps (K-Divergence), which significantly diverges from traditional theories. Before discussing what the K-Divergence theory entails, an explanation of the most popular traditional theories is presented. Traditional Gap Theories 1. A gap is a continuation pattern. Strategy taking a position, on Gap Day, in the direction of the gap. This theory is based on the idea that if, on any given day, prices jump/fall significantly enough to never touch the prior sessions price range, something significant must have occurred and changed the markets sentiment on the company. In this case, on Gap Day, prices are assumed to reflect the changing opinion of the stock only partially, and thus, further movement in the direction of the gap is expected. In the case of AAPLs gap (Figure 1), on February 1, 2017, the company reported better-than-expected 1Q17 earnings on the heels of record breaking iPhone sales. Subsequently, the price continued moving higher in a swift fashion, leaving the up-gap behind it. Often, proponents of this theory use support and resistance levels, or technical indicators, as a confirmation that the gap has occurred at an important juncture and that it can be trusted. For example, zooming out and looking at the stocks price action since 2015 (Figure 3), traders who utilize gaps as continuation patterns can claim that the breakout occurred above the interim high of the multiple bottom formation, and therefore, carried high predictive power. Figure 3. AAPL 2-Day Chart 2. A gap is an overreaction. Strategy taking a position, on Gap Day, in the opposite direction of the gap Advocates of this theory are convinced that gaps are a result of market participants overreacting to news (or noise) and that once participation subsides, the gap is expected to get filled. The famous adage all gaps get filled is often used in an attempt to support this supposition. Similar to the previous strategy, support/resistance levels and technical indicators are expected to provide further confirmation if the particular gap is to be filled. For example, looking once again at the MMM chart (2-day chart Figure 4), one may say that the down-gap took prices close to a well-established uptrend (green trendline) and to a key moving average (100 SMA yellow line). Also, to further support the thesis that prices will reverse, one may point to the positive reversal in RSI (not to be confused with a positive divergence), which indicated that the correction has taken the stock to oversold levels during the uptrend (i.e. RSI making a lower low, while prices making a higher low). Figure 4. MMM 2-Day Chart The above two strategies are a perfect example of technical analysis being more of an art than science, where it is up to the technicians discretion to decide what action to take after observing a gap. While, after testing both strategies (see K-Divergence section), I found that neither the simple continuation nor reversal strategies are profitable on a systematic basis, there are definitely specific situations where the probability of a gap reversing is higher and vice versa. Unfortunately, the next strategy, the one found in almost any TA book, is one of the reasons why technical analysis has a bad name among most non-technicians. 3. A gap could be either a continuation pattern or an overreaction based on its classification. Strategy an ambiguous one based on hindsight As it had become evident that gaps cannot be all continuation patterns or overreactions, the popular gap classification system was born where gaps are categorized as either breakaway, continuation/runaway, exhaustion and common. This classification is based on two criteria 1) the location of the gap relative to preceding price action and 2) whether the gap gets filled or not. However, as one can imagine, there is no way to know on Gap Day whether a gap will be filled in the future. That is, the classification system is based on hindsight. Lets prove this point by looking at an example. Figure 5 shows an up-gap after a prolonged uptrend. Based on the widely-used classification system this gap can be runaway (if the gap does not get filled and prices continue higher), exhaustion (if prices quickly reverse, fill the gap and continue lower) or even common (if prices fill the gap but do not reverse or consolidate). Given the colour of the candle and the long upper wick, it seems like it is an exhaustion gap, right? Figure 5. Daily Chart (real chart, ticker hidden) Clearly, it is only in hindsight that this gap can be classified. In this case, the gap turned out to be of the runaway type as it did not get filled and the stock (MSFT) continued propelling higher (Figure 6). The point is, the classification system is futile for making decisions on Gap Day. Figure 6. MSFT Daily Chart K-Divergence (K-Div) Theory 4. Most gaps occur after prices have moved away from a significant support or resistance levels. Strategy taking a position in the direction of the gap, only after prices have returned to pre-gap levels More specifically, the theory suggests that in most cases an up-gap transpires after prices have already jumped from a key support level and a down-gap after prices have already fallen from a key resistance level. The theory is based on the premise that before a gap occurs prices have already reached a key level and have bounced from it. It is only later on, after most market participants agree on the direction of the next move and take positions in the same direction that gaps occur. This means that it is not the gap itself that should serve as a support or resistance, but rather the range of prices preceding it (pre-gap range). The most important implications of the theory are 1) the gap itself should not serve as support or resistance and 2) a filled gap is not insignificant. So why does the K-Divergence make sense from a technical point of view? After all, if prices gapped due to news that nobody was aware of, this would mean that gaps are nothing more than prices adjusting to the new information. Any such conclusion should render fundamental and technical analysis useless, for it would imply that no analyst is able to purchase a security before news gets disseminated. On the contrary, the K-Divergence assumes that the most astute market participants (i.e. the best fundamental and technical analysts, quants and even insiders) are able to trade in advance of the gap occurring. Therefore, true support and resistance levels lie prior to the gap transpiring and subsequent filling of the gap does not render it insignificant. It is best to illustrate this with an example. I will use one of my most recent predictions based on the theory, which was sent to one of my clients. First, I will describe the rational in detail with an updated chart (Figure 7), which will be followed by screenshots from the day the signal was given. After the close on February 1, 2018, Google reported its 4Q18. The next day, the stock opened sharply lower and continued falling into the close (Feb 2 Down Gap in Figure 7). The stock continued falling along with the market until the Feb 9 low was set. Subsequently, while NASDAQ was making new highs in early March, GOOG reached the pre-gap range (Bearish K-Divergence Range violet horizontal trendlines) and started stalling. Due to the strong bounce by the broader markets, the stock recovered and filled the gap. However, when the stock started trading at the pre-gap range, market participants were given a second chance to sell the stock for the same price it was trading at before the 4Q18 earnings were released. Price action confirmed the bearishness of the set-up (GOOG March 13 & 16 Figures 8 & 9). Figure 7. GOOG Daily Chart Figure 8. GOOG March 13 Figure 9. GOOG March 16 In order to validate the theory, I developed two trading strategies based on it (one with the gap and one with the window variation) and backtested them along with 5 variations of the traditional gap strategies discussed above. Figure 10 shows the 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 30- and 44-day period returns of the 7 strategies (#6 & 7 being the two based on the K-Divergence theory) and Figure 11 shows the annualized returns for the those same periods. The backtest took into account a total of 14,219 gaps over nearly a 2-year period. Figure 10. 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 30- and 44-day period returns Figure 11. Annualized 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, 30- and 44-day period returns The two K-Div strategies were profitable throughout all periods. The only other consistently profitable strategy was Fading the Gap strategy which entailed taking a position in the opposite direction of the gap on Gap Day, but closing it immediately after the gap was filled. This once again goes against traditional theories which suggest that once a gap is filled, prices should continue going against the gaps direction as, supposedly, an important support/resistance was breached. It is noteworthy that the K-Divergence theory does not suggest that all gaps have occurred after important support/resistance levels or that they can all be traded profitably in a similar fashion as the GOOG example. Rather, it provides a framework for analyzing the gap phenomenon, on that all active investors/traders should believe in, which assumes that some market participants are able to act ahead of major moves (i.e. prior to the appearance of gaps). Furthermore, it eliminates the use of the hindsight gap classification system. For more on gaps, I recommend reading Julie R. Dahlquist and Richard J. Bauers Technical Analysis of Gaps book, where they conduct, one of the first on the topic, objective investigations of the phenomenon. For a much more in-depth coverage of the K-Divergence and my research on gaps, you can view my thesis for the Master of Financial Technical Analysis (MFTA) Program, published in the 2018 IFTA Annual Journal. Conclusion In the future, regardless of whether you look for opportunities to trade gaps on Gap Day (strategies 1 & 2) or decide to use the K-Divergence as part of your trading arsenal, I hope this article would make you think more critically the next time you hear terms such as the runaway gap. And even more importantly, will push you to analyze gaps even after they have been filled, and according to traditional theory, have become insignificant. Happy gap trading. Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock. Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink. Rate this post: Important for improving the service. Please add a comment in the comment field below explaining what you rated and why you gave it that rate. Failed Trade Recommendations should not be rated as that is considered a failure either way. (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this. Loading... Konstantin Dimov 4.7 stars on average, based on 9 rated posts Follow @HackedCom Feedback or Requests? Continue Reading Analysis Silver Prices Poised for a Breakout Overview of Key Trigger Levels Published 1 day ago on April 21, 2018 By Konstantin Dimov Long-Term View Since 2003, silver has exhibited spectacular volatility, increasing by more than ten-fold by the 2011 peak, before declining by more than 72% by end of 2015. Despite the volatility over this 15-year period, the commodity has found support on several occasions at a key long-term trendline (green trendline; retests green arrows in Figure 1). More specifically, silver bounced off the support in 2008, 2015, and most recently in 2017 (green trendline currently at $15.50). For 2 years (2011- early 2013), silver found support just around the $26 level, before finally breaking below and plummeting in April 2012 (blue horizontal trendline; sell signal last blue arrow). While, it can be said that silver, similar to gold, has been forming a large inverse H&S pattern since 2013 (neckline yellow trendline), silver is further away from giving a buy signal based on this potential development. It is really the short-term view that reveals a well-defined pattern, whose completion may give a timelier signal. Figure 1. Silver (XSLV.X) 8-Day Chart // -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace. Short-Term View Zooming in, the daily chart reveals a strong support in the $15.50 $15.80 area (violet line at $15.70). Notice how when the commodity broke below $15.50 for the first time, it moved sharply lower, before finding support at the long-term support discussed in the long-term view (green arrow). Within a couple of trading sessions, silver was back above $15.50. A much more well-defined inverse H&S pattern is observed on the daily chart (lows orange ellipses, neckline orange downward sloping trendline, target orange vertical line). Figure 2. Silver(XSLV.X) Daily Chart // -- Become a yearly Platinum Member and save 69 USD and get access to our secret group on Workplace. Click here to change your current membership -- // Implications A break above the neckline of the small inverse H&S will activate an upward target of $21.75. Furthermore, such a breakout would trigger a buy on the larger inverse H&S. While, a potential buy signal on the longer-term view may generate a target close to $28, the $26 level is expected to serve as a major resistance (i.e. resistance at $26 should take precedence over most other technical developments). Outlook Neutral with a bullish bias. If silver breaks the orange trendline (a close above $17.80 should be used as a trigger) outlook will shift to bullish. If the commodity breaks below $15.50, outlook will shift to bearish, as that would imply that both the $15.50 $ 15.80 support area (violet trendline) and the long-term support (green trendline) have been breached. Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock. Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. 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BitcoinBusinessFeatured newsNews January 5, 2018 By Samuel Rae 5314Views 2Comments Spread the loveNexus (NXS) is a top 70 coin right now but weve taken a look at the coin and the technology that underpins it and theres a real chance that this one could continue to make its way up the cryptocoin market cap charts as we head into the first half of 2018. NXS Daily Chart As things stand, NXS is priced at $8.93. At the start of December, the coin went for just $1.50 a piece and a market capitalization of around $83 million. This latter figure, market cap, is now up at $490 million. Over the last twenty-four hours alone, weve seen NXS run more than 90%. So why do we like this one and whats coming next? Lets take a look. First up, a quick introduction. The company describes itself as follows: a decentralized currency project looking to distribute networks fairly worldwide via infrastructure such as cube satellites in space. Forget that space thing for a moment. Its neat and a USP (and certainly a good sound bite, given that the companys founder has ties to Elon Musk) but it sort of diverts the attention away from whats really important here that Nexus is trying to basically take what Satoshi Nakamoto put together as part of the original bitcoin white paper and reinvent it so as to make something thats truly decentralized, isnt going to run into the sort of scaling concerns that bitcoin has, isnt going to suffer from the security issues that many of todays leading coins do and basically is a cryptocurrency and decentralized ledger that truly offers what bitcoin promised it might in the early days. Again, this seems ambitious, and weve got to keep in mind right now that this thing is very much at project development level. The coins are available, sure, and the blockchain is up and running (of course, since the coins are trading and can be exchanged) but the real world application of the coins and the blockchain that underpins them is yet to be realized. For us, however, thats not too much of a concern. We could have said the same thing about Ethereum a couple of years ago. Or something like XRP as little as six months ago. These things take time to develop and when youre looking through the list of tradable cryptos in an attempt to sort the wheat from the chaff, youve got to (to some degree) be able to look past development progress and focus on what the successful execution of the company in questions roadmap might mean for the industry long term. And with Nexus, when you consider it in this light, its a real winner. We arent saying, of course, that readers should disregard the nascent stage of any potential cryptocurrency investment. The less developed a coin or a technology is, and the less active it is fro a community and user perspective, all that sort of thing, the higher the level of the risk any investor is being asked to take on when he or she takes a position. Combine that with the inherent riskiness of this space as a whole right now and the risk is amplified. With that said, however, theres also an incredible amount of reward on offer for anyone that is willing to shoulder a degree of risk in anticipation of their expectations playing out to fruition. The action weve seen in NXS over the last few weeks suggests that there are plenty of traders and investors that fall into the latter category those willing to take a risk and this points towards strong sentiment going forward. The bottom line on this one: a risky play, sure, but potentially an incredibly rewarding one. We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest on NXS, sign up below! Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency. Image courtesy of Nexus Spread the loveTags: cryptocoins, Nexus, NXS